What better news could there be than waking up on a Tuesday morning to the announcement of a surprise Olivia Rodrigo song?
Her third studio album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, released on June 12 has gone triple platinum in my headphones, so naturally, I was thrilled.
Yet it was the title “serena joy” that truly piqued my interest. A quick Google search later and I realised that Serena Joy is the calculating antagonist of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, which was later adapted into the acclaimed television series starring Elisabeth Moss.
So, is Rodrigo simply a superfan of The Handmaid’s Tale? Not exactly.
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Who Is ‘Serena Joy’ In The Handmaid’s Tale?
For those unfamiliar with Atwood’s story, The Handmaid’s Tale is set in the dystopian theocracy of Gilead, a society in which women have been stripped of their autonomy and reduced to instruments of reproduction.
The story follows June Osbourne (Moss), formerly referred to by her patronymic, Offred, as she is transformed from an ordinary, free woman into a Handmaid, forced to live with a wealthy Commander and his wife, Serena Joy, and bear children for them.
Through its depiction of brutal and normalised violence, The Handmaid’s Tale offers a chilling glimpse into a world structured around male authority and religious extremism. Serena is, in many ways, one of the architects of this world. She embraces the ideology that gives birth to Gilead and participates in the dehumanisation of women like June. Yet what makes her such a compelling and deeply contradictory character is that she is both beneficiary and victim of the system she helped construct.
She helps erect the cage only to discover that she too must live inside it. In “serena joy”, Rodrigo never explicitly names Serena. Instead, she draws on the character as a symbol of complicity, complacency and the consequences of supporting oppression.
Unpacking The Meaning Behind ‘Serena Joy’
She opens the song by singing, “Yeah, it’s all for the cause / For the good of us all / And if you close your eyes / Then it can’t be your fault.”
There is something deliberately sinister about the lyrics. “For the good of us all” is the rhetoric of nearly every ideology that seeks to sanctify its own violence. Cruelty becomes palatable when it is reframed as necessity, morality and collective benefit. Rodrigo points toward the uncomfortable idea of wilful blindness and the idea that refusing to look directly at suffering will allow you the privilege to preserve the comforting idea of innocence.
That context lends the song an added political resonance. The song continues, “While they’re out on the streets / Man, we’re having a ball” capturing Serena’s insulated privilege.
While suffering unfolds beyond her comfortable existence, she is able to reap the rewards of the society she helped construct. But the song warns this comfort is ephemeral.
“If they do it to them / They’ll do it to you.” The distinction between “them” and “you” is crucial. Serena can convince herself that the violence of Gilead belongs to other women, yet the logic of an oppressive system is rarely satisfied with a single target.
Eventually, its restrictions will reach even those who once believed they were protected by the system. The lyric ” Now go bother your neighbours / While we do what we wish” similarly evokes the politics of distraction and scapegoating.
This could allude to how, if ordinary people can be persuaded to direct their anger towards one another (their “neighbour”), whether that be towards immigrants or another vulnerable group, those with genuine power can continue to operate beyond the glare of public scrutiny. The masses are encouraged to feud while those at the top quietly consolidate their authority.
The song soon switches gears to the perspective of the resistance: “And we’ll never give up / And we’ll never submit.”
Gilead is built upon the conviction that women can be subdued through physical and psychological violence. “Never submit”, therefore, could represent the persistence of inner freedom and rebellion that the system ultimately could never take away from them.
The political parallels surrounding Rodrigo’s activism make the song particularly pointed. Her support for organisation such as Planned Parenthood places the song within a broader contemporary conversation around reproductive autonomy and the political control of women’s bodies.
The imagery of The Handmaid’s Tale consequently becomes less adjacent to a fictional dystopian future and more like a warning about how quickly rights can become ideological battlegrounds.
Rodrigo has been openly critical of the Trump administration in the past. In 2025, she condemned the use of her song in an ICE-related video, describing the actions depicted as “awful and barbaric and cruel” and saying she was “really sad to be in a country that thinks that’s okay.”
With this in mind, “serena joy” becomes a vessel through which Rodrigo explores the seductive nature of complicity and the temptation to believe that a system is acceptable because, for the moment, it benefits you.
The song was initially surprise-released as a limited edition CD, with only 500 copies made, before it was released on streaming platforms. Its arrival also coincides with Rodrigo’s inaugural Daisy Chain Fields festival in Irvine, California, an all-women festival whose proceeds support organisations including Planned Parenthood and the National Institute for Reproductive Health.
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