The Republic of Gilead is not done with us yet. Less than a year after The Handmaid’s Tale drew its devastating curtain, showrunner Bruce Miller returns to Atwood’s world with The Testaments – a sequel series based on Margaret Atwood’s 2019 Booker Prize-winning novel, and one that immediately makes a bold, if not always seamless, declaration: this is a new story, for a new generation.
That new generation is quite literal. Set a few years after the events of the original series, The Testaments steps back from June Osborne’s fiery resistance and instead follows the young women growing up inside Gilead – shaped by it, confined by it, and only beginning to question it. It’s a YA-tinged reboot of a deeply adult world, and across its first three episodes, it’s both thrillingly promising and occasionally unsteady on its feet.
Gilead, But Make It Purple
The show’s most immediately striking quality is aesthetic. Where The Handmaid’s Tale draped its horror in blood-red and oppressive shadow, The Testaments arrives in shades of pink, purple, and teal. The young girls of Gilead’s elite are the “Plums” – dressed in deep purple robes as they complete their education and await eligibility for marriage. It’s a colour palette that feels almost whimsical until you remember, with a cold jolt, exactly what these girls are being groomed for.
At the centre of it all is Agnes (Chase Infiniti), the adopted daughter of Commander MacKenzie, and, as any returning Handmaid’s viewer will immediately recognise, June Osborne’s stolen daughter Hannah. Infiniti, who turned heads in Presumed Innocent and One Battle After Another, is quietly magnetic here. She plays Agnes with a carefully restrained simmering – a girl who has absorbed Gilead’s logic so completely she doesn’t yet know she’s suffocating in it. The performance is understated by design, and it works.
Equally compelling is Lucy Halliday as Daisy, a “Pearl Girl” – a white-clad convert recruited from outside Gilead, in this case from Toronto. The dynamic between Agnes and Daisy crackles with intrigue, and their relationship forms the backbone of what promises to be a rich central arc. Daisy’s outsider perspective gives the audience a foothold in a world that Agnes can no longer see clearly.
Aunt Lydia, Back in All Her Terrifying Glory
If there’s one thing the first three episodes do unambiguously right, it’s the return of Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia. Presiding over the girls’ preparatory school – and commemorated in its atrium in the form of an imposing stone statue – Dowd once again commands every scene she inhabits. Whether the show is following the book’s more layered interpretation of Lydia’s arc remains to be seen, but the groundwork being laid is tantalising.
Episode three is where the season truly finds its footing. It’s here that the emotional stakes sharpen, Agnes begins quietly accumulating forbidden relics of the old world (think Ariel’s grotto, but with far darker implications), and the relationship between the girls deepens in ways that hint at the story’s queer undercurrents. It’s the episode that transforms The Testaments from a promising spin-off into something that feels essential.
Still Finding Its Voice
That said, the first three episodes aren’t without their friction. The opening instalment leans heavily on narration and exposition – a necessary evil when rebuilding a complex world, but one that occasionally stops the drama from breathing. Viewers unfamiliar with The Handmaid’s Tale will also find themselves at a disadvantage; the series assumes a significant amount of prior knowledge, and while introductory text tries to bridge the gap, it only goes so far.
There’s also a tonal tension that hasn’t quite resolved yet. The YA flavour – a girl-power soundtrack, Mean Girls-adjacent social hierarchies among the Plums – can feel at odds with the show’s darker subject matter. The balance improves across the three episodes, but it remains an ongoing negotiation.
Verdict
The Testaments is not The Handmaid’s Tale, and it’s not trying to be. It’s something slightly different – brighter on the surface, and quietly devastating underneath. Chase Infiniti is a star in the making, Ann Dowd remains one of television’s great forces of nature, and by the time episode three wraps, the show has staked its claim as a compelling, worthwhile successor. It stumbles out of the gate, but it’s finding its stride fast.
Gilead’s grip hasn’t loosened. It’s just wearing a different colour.
The Testaments is streaming now on Disney+. New episodes drop weekly.
