‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is Officially Returning for a Fourth Season

Given the critical success and cultural capital of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s hard to imagine that its third season would be its last. On Friday, Hulu confirmed as much when it announced that the dystopian drama will be returning for a fourth installment, Variety reports.

The streaming giant made it official at the the 2019 Television Critics Association summer press tour. While no details about what fans might expect from the fourth season were revealed, it will likely continue to chronicle the rebellion against the oppressive regime running the Gilead.

Since premiering in 2017, The Handmaid’s Tale has become one of television’s most talked about shows, and has earned a whopping 11 Emmys. Based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, it has been hailed for its timeliness, especially in Trump’s America.

Many critics have noted that the series has already covered everything in Atwood’s original text, questioning where it could possibly pick up in season four. But showrunner Bruce Miller recently disputed that notion in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. “People talk about how we’re beyond the book, but we’re not, really,” he said. “The book starts, then jumps 200 years, with an academic discussion at the end of it about what’s happened in those intervening 200 years. It’s maybe handled in an outline, but it’s still there in Margaret’s novel. We’re not going beyond the novel; we’re just covering territory she covered quickly a bit more slowly.”

And if Miller ever does run out of ideas that were originally conceived by Atwood, he’s in luck. The iconic Canadian novelist is set to release a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, titled The Testaments. Out on September 15, it will reportedly pick up 15 years after the events of the original book.

Related: Margaret Atwood Is Writing a Sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, Titled The Testaments