The Testaments Is a Worthy, Relevant Follow-Up to The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale, the Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood's frighteningly prescient 1985 novel, will always be associated with the MAGA era. Landing on Hulu in the spring of 2017, roughly three months into Donald Trump's first presidency, the unflinching drama depicted an America that forces women to suffer under a deeply conservative, patriarchal government, which, in its initial seasons, played like a sneak preview of this country's immediate future. The parallels between fiction and reality even bled into the actual world, where the uniform of the handmaid — the crimson-red robe and vision-blocking white bonnet — became a symbol of female defiance in protests at the local and federal levels.

But when The Handmaid's Tale ended its six-season run last year, four months into Trump's second term, it was hard to imagine that a planned follow-up based on Atwood's 2019 book, The Testaments, could have the same impact as its predecessor, especially when the current real-life political climate is so exhausting. Now that follow-up is here — The Testaments starts streaming April 8 on Hulu — and it turns out to be as compelling and relevant as the story that came before it. 

Picking up four years after the uprising in Boston that liberated that city from Gilead, the oppressive government that has taken over much of the United States, the drama switches the franchise's perspective from once-liberated women forced to serve as baby-making slaves to teenage girls who have been raised within Gilead's system and therefore don't realize how much of their freedom has already been stolen. 

7.5

The Testaments

at Hulu

Like

• Gripping
• Well acted
• An extremely timely follow-up to The Handmaid's Tale

Dislike

• Some elements of the series are underbaked
• Some viewers also may be triggered by the subject matter and should proceed with caution

The primary focus is on Agnes (Chase Infiniti, as grounded here as she was in One Battle After Another), who struggles to reconcile her societal responsibilities — which are, ideally, to marry a Gilead commander and bear his children — with her independent nature. "I guess it's easier to accept a story, even a childish one, rather than believe that the people around you are monsters," Agnes says via voiceover narration in the first episode. She's talking about how Gilead succeeded in brainwashing so many young women, but the notion of realizing how many people around you are monsters taps directly into the present moment, when the Jeffrey Epstein files continue to expose how many men, from so many sectors of life, had ties to the pedophile and convicted sex trafficker.

By coincidence or design, several plot and production design choices in The Testaments are extremely evocative of Epstein's world, from the twisted quote-unquote prom where much older men attempt to choose their new brides from a group of young women who are basically still children, to the decor in a medical office that looks almost like a photo pulled directly from the Justice Department's files. For some viewers, these details may be, understandably, too triggering to take. But they also give The Testaments a relevancy that makes it feel important to watch this very second. 

The Handmaid's Tale, which, like The Testaments, was developed for television by Bruce Miller, captured the urgent need to fight back against a regime stripping away Americans' fundamental rights. The Testaments is about that, too, but it also exposes the depth of the sickness and rot within that regime, from the point of view of an insider this time. My God, how 2026.

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Structurally, The Testaments is sort of like a high school show, if your high school were run by Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd, still a stern moralist in the role) and its idea of an assembly were watching a guy get his hand chopped off for masturbating. Agnes and her friends who attend Aunt Lydia's academy — loyal Becka (Mattea Conforti), know-it-all Shunammite (Rowan Blanchard), and Daisy (an exceptional Lucy Halliday), a newcomer to Gilead who has chosen to be "saved" after living on the streets of Toronto — have concerns that are common for teenage girls in any environment. They gossip about, become jealous of, and betray each other, all while stressing about when they will get their periods and whether they will be chosen as a potential romantic mate. It's a little Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret., except it's more like I Know You're There God, So Why Are You Making Me Marry Some Guy Who's as Old as My Dad?

The series remains loyal to the broad strokes of Atwood's 2019 book, while simultaneously taking some surprising, dramatic swings that vary from the text. There are also some elements that seem a little underbaked. The sixth episode is a stand-alone that attempts to explain how Aunt Lydia originally got indoctrinated into Gilead and isn't quite as persuasive as it clearly wants to be. (The inciting incidents in this episode are also alarmingly 2026.) The Testaments also doesn't fully engage with racial issues that exist pretty blatantly within the show's subtext. Agnes is biracial, which no one in her orbit mentions, although at one point, someone tells her she comes from "weak genes," a comment that could allude to the fact that Agnes is a descendant of parents who rejected Gilead but feels more loaded than that. That loadedness is never fully interrogated.

Even with its flaws, The Testaments remains an undeniably addictive and satisfyingly dense work of television that certainly does not provide an escape from current events, but may allow for new insights into how a democracy can descend into fascism. And in its depiction of fully indoctrinated Gilead women finally waking up to how fully they have been deceived, it conjures a feeling close to hope. Blessed be the fruits of that effort.

Premieres: Wednesday, April 8 on Hulu with three episodes, followed by a new episode each Wednesday
Who's in it: Chase Infiniti, Lucy Halliday, Ann Dowd
Who's behind it: Bruce Miller (creator)
For fans of: The Handmaid's Tale, timely stories of liberation
How many episodes we watched: 10 of 10