After a six-season run, “The Handmaid’s Tale” came to an end in May 2025, but its finale left a lot of questions about Gilead and the fate of the characters. On Wednesday, April 8, the sequel series “The Testaments,” based on author Margaret Atwood’s 2019 novel of the same name, premiered its first three episodes on Hulu.
“The Testaments” will test a new generation of young women in Gilead, including Agnes MacKenzie, also known as Hannah, June Osborn’s (Elizabeth Moss) lost daughter. Agnes is played by Chase Infiniti. This series is said to explore the downfall of Gilead through new perspectives. Streaming on Wednesdays, there are currently five out of ten episodes available on Hulu, but even with that, there is plenty to unpack.
Unlike Atwood’s book, which took place 15 years after “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the show takes place about four to five years after the events in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” “The Testaments” picks up shortly after the War of Massachusetts, which was depicted in Season 6 of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Despite efforts to resist and rebel in the previous series, “The Testaments” exemplifies how strong and powerful Gilead has remained. Nevertheless, Mayday – an underground resistance group – persists fiercely in fighting back against Gilead’s oppression.
While “The Handmaid’s Tale” was a series on how to survive an authoritarian regime, “The Testaments” is more about how to run one, as there is a big emphasis on teaching the young girls how to obey and conform to the oppressive society. Even so, the show is undoubtedly still about survival, as all the female characters are constantly vulnerable to the cruel way of living in Gilead. As the series gets deeper into the story, the experiences each of the women are forced to go through become darker.
Set within the separate women’s sphere, the series mainly follows Agnes and her friends at the Gilead preparatory school. Some of the characters include Becka (Mattea Conforti), Shunammite (Rowan Blanchard), Huldah (Isolde Ardies) and “Pearl Girl” Daisy (Lucy Halliday), who joinsthe crew later on. At a school run by Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd), the girls are taught embroidery, flower arranging and how to properly run a household.
The girls are separated into different groups by the color of their clothes: young girls wear pink, older girls wear plum and girls “ready” for marriage wear green. There are also the girls from out of Gilead that are recruited by missionaries, the “Pearl Girls,” who wear white. The series does a good job of descriptively breaking down the hierarchies in regard to the daughters and young girls of Gilead.
“The Testaments” gives viewers a closer look at what life is like in Gilead. The episodes give glimpses of experiences different characters have gone through in the duration of the years that followed the War of Massachusetts. There is a highlight of Aunt Lydia’s position of power as well as her relationships with other aunts and authoritative figures.
A big theme throughout the series so far is that of growing upand preparing to become the perfect wife. Agnes and her closest friend, Becka, actively bond over and grapple with their journey to becoming wives. Aunt Lydia also tasks Agnes with helping Daisy fit into her new life in Gilead as Daisy has come to Gilead from Canada.
Given the details shared about Daisy, there is lots of speculation about whether she is actually June’s daughter, Nicole, but like many other mysteries, nothing has been confirmed quite yet.
