Less than a year after the end of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, a sequel to the Emmy-winning series arrives. ‘The Testaments’ will debut on April 8. A classic coming-of-age drama set in the oppressive pressure cooker of Gilead, the follow-up series shifts the focus from the handmaids to their successors: the young women who are groomed to marry the ruling class of commanders at the preparatory academy. ‘The Testaments’ is based on the novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood and stars Chase Infinity as Agnes MacKenzie.
A sequel to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
Showrunner Bruce Miller told The Hollywood Reporter, “This is a sequel to Handmaid’s Tale, the show.” This sequel takes place four years after the end of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. The producers told the outlet: “There are parts of the book (Testaments) that take place in the very distant future, and we want to save those things for the distant future; they are goals that we are working towards. But there is a compact part of the story that takes place with the girls when they go through this process of finding husbands. That, as a core, is what we are looking for.”
The central plot of ‘The Testaments’
While continuing to shed light on Aunt Lydia’s life before Gilead through a series of strategically placed flashbacks, the 10-episode first season focuses primarily on Agnes MacKenzie (played by star Chase Infiniti). “Agnes” is the Gilead name for June and Luke’s daughter Hannah, who is introduced in this series when she comes face to face with Daisy (Lucy Halliday), a newcomer from Toronto with ulterior motives for joining Aunt Lydia’s academy.After Lydia asks Agnes to show Daisy the ins and outs of the all-girls school, the teens quickly begin to feel like kindred spirits. “Just making friends is very difficult,” Miller says, “so the fact that they quickly fall into a relationship of trust and trust in each other is remarkable, and something that they both feel happens so smoothly that they’re both a little worried about it.”In one of the first episodes, viewers will learn through flashbacks the real reason why Daisy decided to enter this regime of her own free will. As Halliday clearly puts it, Daisy is on a mission: “She sees Gilead as this force that has decimated her life in Toronto. Daisy doesn’t even live in Gilead, and yet Gilead has been impacting her. She’s determined to take down Gilead and take from Gilead what Gilead took from women,” Miller says.As Miller likes to say, “There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a 14-year-old girl.”
Daisy will share kinship with the girls of Gilead
What Daisy doesn’t anticipate, however, is feeling a kinship with the other girls, whom she initially (and mistakenly) assumed were “robots” without any crushes or dreams of their own. “Relationships are very much a wonderful byproduct of this adventure in Gilead,” adds Halliday. “It’s not something Daisy is looking for or even wants initially, but it is something that transforms her and her vision for Gilead.”