The hit series "The Handmaid's Tale," based on the dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood, has been renewed for a fourth season, Hulu announced on Friday.

The drama series, which first aired in April 2017, is set in a world where women are reduced to sexual slavery under a totalitarian regime called Gilead. The show, which Hulu says is the most watched on the streaming service, has earned 11 Emmys including one for lead actress Elisabeth Moss and one for supporting actress Ann Dowd.

The third season, which ends in August, sees Moss' character, June, trying to save her children from the tyrannical regime.

However, with the plots running far beyond Margaret Atwood's original story in Season 3, the critical reviews and rating of the audience began to swerve as well. 

For the third season, which started with an indicated focus on the revolution within and outside Gilead, the motions of the characters and the storyline seem to have been lost in the middle. Audiences start to complain about losing their patience while watching each episode with repetitive stories and performances while no development at all in either plots or growth of the characters.

Most of the audiences give one star or less out of the full five-star evaluations on Rotten Tomatoes, and the score has fallen to 49 percent.

"Season 3 is slow, boring and going nowhere. They seem like they are stretching out what should be just two episodes into an entire season," a comment reads on Rotten Tomatoes.

"Season 3 is just absurd. They ran out of ideas and they're just stretching as much as they can. I really liked the first two seasons but now it became just nonsense," reads another.

In China, the audience who were amazed by the first two seasons and expected Season 3's return have been confused as well.

"Serena's sudden betrayal is weird enough, and it is the beginning of this season's collapsing storyline. I'm almost sick of seeing the extremely arrogant expressions on June's face," a viewer complained on Douban.com.

The show became wildly popular with audiences and was released in the months following President Donald Trump's inauguration as the United States grappled with allegations of sexual misconduct against their president as well as rising concerns over racism, sexism and corruption.

Sales of the novel surged after Trump's 2016 election and the red cloaks and white bonnets worn by the women in the series have become a symbol of resistance.

(Cover image: Women dressed as handmaids promoting the Hulu original series "The Handmaid's Tale" stand along a public street during the South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Film Interactive Festival 2017 in Austin, Texas, U.S., March 11, 2017. /VCG Photo)

(With inputs from AFP)