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Plot: The series follows young teens Agnes, dutiful and pious, and Daisy, a new arrival and convert from beyond Gilead’s borders. As they navigate the gilded halls of Aunt Lydia’s elite preparatory school for future wives, a place where obedience is instilled brutally and always with divine justification, their bond becomes the catalyst that will upend their past, their present, and their future.
Review: Margaret Atwood’s best-selling novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, became one of the most acclaimed series of the last twenty years when it debuted on Hulu in 2017. Led by Elisabeth Moss, The Handmaid’s Tale told a dystopian story of the oppression of women in a male-dominated country known as Gilead, following a second civil war that destroyed the United States. After six seasons, The Handmaid’s Tale ended just under a year ago. While the series expanded on the original novel, Atwood penned a sequel in 2019 that picked up the story fifteen years later. That novel, The Testaments, is now a continuation of The Handmaid’s Tale featuring an all-new cast of characters led by One Battle After Another‘s breakout star, Chase Infiniti, alongside an ensemble of actors portraying the next generation of Gilead women. A vastly different series from its predecessor, The Testaments is still an eerily prescient cautionary tale about the slippery slope between politics and totalitarian control, as relevant now as ever. It is also another example of the talent that will make Chase Infiniti one of the most in-demand actors working today.
Where The Handmaid’s Tale chronicled the journey of June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) from subjugated handmaiden to resistance fighter, The Testaments takes a different angle. Within the timeline of the original series, June was part of a revolutionary group called Mayday that fought against the oppressive, religious regime of Gilead. In The Testaments, the story picks up several years later with Gilead still firmly controlled by an authoritarian regime of Commanders who continue to enslave women as servants and vessels for bearing children. But, instead of focusing on handmaidens, The Testaments shifts to a school run by Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd reprising her role from the original series), where the next generation of girls are taught the ways of being a proper companion and spouse to the Commanders. Each girl is ranked by color as they grow from a child to an eligible wives once she gets her period. At the forefront of the story is Agnes MacKenzie (Chase Infiniti), the daughter of a powerful leader. Aunt Lydia pairs her with a transfer student from Canada named Daisy (Lucy Halliday), who is one level below Agnes and her friends in the caste system, including Shunammite (Roward Blanchard) and Becka Grove (Mattea Conforti).
Over the ten-episode first season, all of which were made available for this review, Agnes and her classmates discover how women are treated in Gilead and how propaganda and misinformation have clouded the work of Mayday and other uprisings throughout the country. At times, The Testaments feels like the 66 episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale barely affected Gilead’s society, allowing this series to serve as both a continuation and a partial reboot of the original. The narrative does a great job of connecting The Handmaid’s Tale, so fans familiar with that series can get the next chapter of the story, while newcomers can begin watching without having seen the original show. The rules of Gilead are clearly explained, and seeing the journey of wives compared to that of handmaids builds the fully realized dystopian society at the center of this series. The Testaments could have easily been a teen-centric take on The Handmaid’s Tale, but the focus on both youthful and adult characters avoids the pitfalls of the series being stuck in one subgenre.
The Testaments mines all the coming-of-age drama you would expect in any story about characters in the teen age range, but the added complexity of becoming betrothed to totalitarian husbands and subjugated takes on a unique perspective for each character. Agnes believes in the rules of the culture she was raised in, but she begins to question blind allegiance, especially when Daisy, as an outsider, asks questions the others are afraid to. Becka Grove and Shunammite are also interested in how they decide to push back against their classmates’ rebellious acts, which takes on another dimension when an adult in their lives takes advantage of the young women. Dealing with themes of sexual harassment, pedophilia, and more, The Testaments deals with real issues and topics made all the more horrifying by the bleak, near-future it portrays. The appearance of characters from The Handmaid’s Tale adds to the connective tissue between the two series, but the new additions, including Amy Seimetz as Agnes’ stepmother Paula, Mabel Li as Aunt Lydia’s second-in-command Aunt Vidala, and Brad Alexander as prospective commander Garth, all round out a stellar ensemble cast.
The Handmaid’s Tale showrunner Bruce Miller departed that series before the final season began so he could focus on developing The Testaments. That focus shows in Miller’s familiarity with Margaret Atwood’s novels and in how he adapted them for the screen, allowing this series to feel less like a sequel and more like a companion that benefits from the world-building of the first series. Miller wrote or co-wrote four episodes of The Testaments alongside a team comprised of Stuti Malhotra, Bayan Wolcott, Elise Brown, Sam Rubinek, Nate Burke, Gianna Sobol, Maya Goldsmith, and Ben Miller. Frequent The Handmaid’s Tale director Mike Barker helmed four episodes include the first three and the final chapter. Barker evokes the same style as The Handmaid’s Tale while focusing on just a few locations rather than the larger geography of the original series. Barker keeps the series tone and style feeling more mature than you would expect from a younger-skewing series, and he keeps the surprises feeling organically part of the overall season narrative. Barker was joined behind the camera by Quyen Tran, Shana Stein, and Jet Wilkinson on two episodes each.
Anchored by solid performances from the new cast and legacy characters, The Testaments digs into a different side of Gilead by examining a new set of women fighting for their rights in a world that treats them as cattle. Seeing this side of the story of wives, which butts up against the handmaids, offers another disturbing glimpse of a society that is not that far from a potential reality. The grounded and realistic storytelling that Margaret Atwood put into her novels is disturbingly realized on screen, thanks to Bruce Miller and Mike Barker bringing their experience from the first series into this new one. The Testaments will please fans of The Handmaid’s Tale while opening both series to a new generation of viewers. A powerfully told story that strikes the right balance of drama and commentary, The Testaments has some surprises in store that will be talked about as soon as the first episodes debut.
The Testaments premieres with three episodes on Hulu and Disney+ on April 8th.
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