Aunt Lydia speaks! Episode 6 of The Testaments finally allowed Ann Dowd’s much-feared character to narrate The Handmaid’s Tale spin-off. And, boy, was it worth the wait.

When Aunt Lydia was first introduced in Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s seminal Handmaid’s Tale novel, she favored strict discipline that was often physically punishing as a way to keep the Handmaids in line. After Boston fell at the end of the preceding series, Gilead’s leaders saw her as failing in her duties. Nevertheless, Lydia remained in a position of power… just with an adjustment about whom she oversaw.

When we first see her in The Testaments, she’s a literal statue at the Aunt Lydia School that the students — known as Plum Girls — walked by multiple times a day. But the three-part series premiere showed she’s still up to her old games, asking Agnes (Chase Infiniti) to help recent arrival Daisy (Lucy Halliday) settle into Gilead as a Pearl Girl as a way to test the potential of one of her prized students.

More than halfway through the first season, it’s now clear why Lydia still holds sway in Gilead society. This origin story episodes flashes back to the foundational days of the regime, when she caught the ear of Commander Judd (Charlie Carrick) and convinced him that the men shouldn’t be bothered with teaching female citizens how to be women of God. She further proved her loyalty to his cause — as well as her fierce desire to survive — by agreeing to execute her former colleague, Vivian (Mabel Li).

“I was a little stunned by it,” Dowd tells Gold Derby about learning this new piece of her alter ego’s backstory. “Lydia comes to know herself extremely well in that moment, because how can you prepare for that until you’re in it? When she’s got [the gun] in her hand and has to make the choice [about Vivian], it’s death or follow through.”

As we come to discover, though, there was no bullet in the gun that Judd gave Lydia. Thus, Vivian survived and became Vidala, an Aunt who now works alongside Lydia at the school.

The duo seemed like reluctant colleagues in the distant past, but they band together when the coup that creates Gilead arrives on campus. In fact, Vivian is the one who walks into the teacher’s lounge and announces there are armed men outside, being sure to ask to speak to the one male instructor in the hallway — a tactic employed separate him from the women so she and Lydia could shoot him.

“I was talking to [episode director] Jet Wilkinson about how long Gilead has been forming in everyday life,” Li says. “We landed on [the idea] that military presence was more normal during that time, but this was the first time that a school has been seized.”

After the coup, Lydia and Vivian are among hundreds of women taken to a stadium where they are stripped of their valuables and made to await their fates for days on end. “We did spend [quite] some time just sitting in the stadium,” Li says of shooting that sequence. “It felt very immersive.”

“Sitting for hours in the stadium was so deeply, deeply helpful in this relationship and in knowing what happened, what that backstory was,” echoes Dowd. “I thought to myself, ‘If I had to spend one night here, I would go mad.'”

But any new understanding between Lydia and Vivian proves short-lived. When Lydia sits in front of Judd to learn her fate, he asks her to killer her former colleague — and she’s willing to do it. “Gilead is about survival,” Dowd says matter-of-factly. Judd also drops another bombshell: Lydia had an abortion when she was younger, something that Dowd didn’t expect to learn nine years and one Emmy statuette into playing the character.

“I just didn’t see her in that circumstance,” she explains. “But I love those little surprises that you come to know about her.”

Back in the present day of The Testaments, Lydia and the woman who is know Vidala have never discussed that near-death experience, resulting in an understandably tense relationship. And Vidala often wonders whether she should push Lydia aside to be in closer lockstep with Judd.

“The lack of acknowledgement of what happened is fertile ground for her to make really interesting choices,” Li notes. “It what a lot of people do — they get numb. And it makes total sense in a place like Gilead; what time do you have to relax or cry about that trauma?”

“Who wants to open Pandora’s Box?” Dowd adds. “How do you work your way through it without disappearing in guilt?”

Whether Lydia is a character that ever feels guilt about her actions is debatable. But what’s not up for debate is her genuine love for the girls she’s caring for, which she exhibits by listening to what — like Agnes’s desire to fast-track Garth (Brad Alexander) for this current wedding season.

“She’s able to relate to the girls in a way that’s more human; it’s gentler,” Dowd considers. “I love how that happens. You think there’s hope here, and that these changes are real. We can begin to trust her… maybe.”