The revolution against the ruthless, theocratic, and totalitarian regime of Gilead didn’t end in The Handmaid’s Tale. In fact, it’s only just begun in The Testaments—now with a new, younger generation joining the dangerous fight. Though the story is fictional, the terrifying themes explored in this patriarchal universe have sadly never been more real or timely.
Hulu’s upcoming sequel series is based on Margaret Atwood’s powerful, Booker Prize-winning 2019 novel of the same name. It was the author’s long-awaited follow-up to her groundbreaking 1985 book The Handmaid’s Tale, which spawned the streamer’s Emmy-winning smash adaptation, starring Elisabeth Moss, about a fictional (or ominously prophetic?) dystopian future where women lost all their rights and freedoms.
While the sequel novel is set 15 years after the first book, the TV series picks up four years after the explosive Handmaid’s Tale series finale. The Testaments follows a group of teen girls growing up in Gilead, totally unaware of what life is like outside their misogynistic society, or that a deadly fight for freedom is being waged by the Mayday resistance on their behalf. All they know is what they’re told by the adults in their life—i.e., basically nothing real—as they attend a strict, elite preparatory school intended to shape them into obedient, pious, future wives of high-ranking (read: very old) Commanders. Yeah, if you thought your teen years were difficult, you haven’t seen anything yet.
While this dramatic coming-of-age story is a direct sequel to the original series—with returning characters and shocking twists tying the two shows together in ways you’ll never see coming—you don’t need to have watched The Handmaid’s Tale to tune in to this show. And if you did The Handmaid's Tale, you don’t need to rewatch all six seasons if you don’t have the time (or just don’t want to relive that trauma), because we’ve rounded up everything you should know before watching The Testaments.
Below, check out our primer on all the details to be aware of ahead of the new series premiere, including its cast of new and returning faces, how it connects to The Handmaid’s Tale, and more.
What happens in The Handmaid's Tale?
The original series follows June Osborne (Moss), a woman forced into sexual slavery when the militaristic and power-hungry government of Gilead took over the United States after a bloody civil war that was sparked by declining birth rates. Based on the new regime’s theocratic laws, June is now considered an “adulteress” due to her scandalous romantic history—because the law is now judging your dating past. And since she is fertile, she becomes a Handmaid, a.k.a. forced to endure sexual servitude in order to bear children for high-ranking families in the government.
Ripped apart from her husband Luke (O-T Fagbenle) and their young daughter, Hannah, a furious June quietly plots and ultimately sparks a revolution inside Gilead by radicalizing her fellow Handmaids to fight back against the many injustices they face every day, including rape, physical torture, and the loss of all their personal freedoms. Meanwhile, Hannah is given to a high-ranking family to be raised in Gilead without any knowledge of her true parents, and Luke escapes imprisonment by crossing the border into Canada to join the Mayday resistance.
How does The Handmaid's Tale end?
After six seasons of harrowing drama, false victories, and low defeats, June finally helps coordinate the successful mass murder of all the Boston Commanders with a secret bomb on their private jet (which also kills Commander Nick Blaine, the father of June’s second daughter, Nichole), striking a serious blow to Gilead’s regime. Mayday and American forces liberate Boston, and June returns to the Waterford house, where her journey as a Handmaid began, to write her personal account of how she survived her time in Gilead, bringing awareness to all the atrocities still happening inside its borders.
But it isn’t a happy ending, necessarily. Despite the loss in Boston, Gilead still stands strong. And though June and Luke finally reunited after years of turmoil, they part ways again with a promise to meet after defeating Gilead while fighting on different fronts: June with the American military, and Luke with Mayday.
The most important aspect of The Handmaid’s Tale ending as it pertains to The Testaments? While June successfully got her baby daughter Nichole out of Gilead, she never saved her older daughter Hannah (played by Jordana Blake in later seasons)—though it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. The last time June got close to recovering Hannah was in season five, when the American military tracked her to a school in Colorado where she and other young girls were being groomed to become child brides for high-ranking Gilead Commanders. Sadly, the raid was unsuccessful, and Hannah remains in Gilead, separated from her real family and facing a bleak future.
How is The Handmaid's Tale connected to The Testaments?
The Testaments continues the story of The Handmaid’s Tale from a different perspective: Hannah’s. Now played by One Battle After Another breakout star Chase Infiniti, Hannah has grown up to be a dutiful, pious teen, now named Agnes, and is fully indoctrinated into Gilead’s society. She has no memory of her life before Gilead, and she doesn’t even remember her real name or her parents. All she knows is that if/when she gets her first period, she’ll be married off to an older Commander—and she has no choice who her future husband will be.
But first, she’ll have to graduate from Aunt Lydia’s (returning Handmaid’s Tale star Ann Dowd) brutal authoritarian school to prove she’ll be a perfect Gileadan wife—subservient, unquestioning, and docile. But it’s hard to keep a teen girl in line, no matter how strict her upbringing may be.
What happens to Hannah in The Testaments?
While The Handmaid’s Tale chronicles the traumatic reality of being a Handmaid, The Testaments follows the higher (but still inferior to men) class of Daughters, a.k.a. female children raised in Gilead’s new society. Like Hannah/Agnes, most have been unknowingly ripped away from their true parents and have no knowledge of what life before or outside Gilead is like.
But being groomed to be a child bride for high-ranking Commanders is no better than being a Handmaid, despite its much more polished and privileged facade. The young girls (played by Rowan Blanchard, Mattea Conforti, Isolde Ardies, Birva Pandya, and Shechinah Mpumlwana) are taught how to run a household and how to serve their husbands by birthing children, but nothing about history, politics, or even science—and especially not sexual education. Even though that’s, you know, pretty important when it comes to conceiving children. But ignorance is Gilead’s best tool in shaping its future generation of subjugated women.
As Hannah/Agnes and her friends struggle with growing up “under his eye” in Gilead, the arrival of an outsider, Daisy (Lucy Halliday), at the school is the catalyst that will change everything for the young girls. Teen runaway Daisy is a convert who chooses to come to Gilead from Toronto, making her a Pearl Girl training to become an Aunt, a.k.a. the brutal women who help enforce Gilead’s patriarchal teachings, often through violence and psychological torture. But Daisy is hiding a massive secret about why she left behind her freedom in Canada to live in Gilead’s oppressive society.
Aunt Lydia, having evolved from a villainous tyrant into a woman seeking redemption for her own complicity in Gilead’s rise, assigns Daisy to follow and learn from Hannah/Agnes at school. Despite their different upbringings, the two girls quickly bond. As they navigate school and their impending fates in Gilead, their fragile friendship has the power to change everything. The fight against Gilead now shifts to the younger generation as they learn the harsh truth about their reality.
Does The Testaments cover Margaret Atwood’s entire sequel book?
No—at least, not yet. The story in Atwood’s sequel spans more than 15 years, alternating between the perspectives of three women: Lydia, Agnes, and Daisy. The 10-episode first season covers part of story in the novel, focusing on Agnes’s life inside Gilead and how Daisy’s arrival changes her. Expect to also learn more about how Lydia rose to power as one of Gilead’s top-ranking Aunts, and how her experience in The Handmaid’s Tale changed her. If The Testaments returns for additional seasons, we could see more of the book adapted.
Has The Testaments been renewed for season 2?
While The Testaments hasn’t officially been green-lit for a second season, showrunner Bruce Miller (who also ran The Handmaid’s Tale) has said that he hopes this sequel series will run for multiple seasons. Plus, multiple writers and producers shared photos on social media last month revealing that they’re already hard at work developing season two, so it’s very likely we’ll return to Gilead after the first season's finale.
When do new episodes of The Testaments come out?
Get ready to binge-watch! The first three episodes premiere April 8 on Hulu, with an episode debuting weekly each Wednesday after that. It all leads up to the season one finale, which will be available to stream on May 27.
Is there a trailer for The Testaments?
The latest trailer for The Testaments features Agnes in voiceover looking back on her experience growing up in Gilead, when she and her friends “still believed in this world” and were unaware the people around them were “monsters.” The ominous narration from the young teen signals major change is coming, for her and the future of the totalitarian regime. Because, as Agnes declares, “it was time for us to change things.” Check out the trailer below:
