The sequel to 'The Handmaid's Tale' that promises more suffering
Disney+ premieres 'The Testaments', continuation of the universe created by Margaret Atwood
BarcelonaThe nightmares of the theocratic dictatorship of Gilead did not end the day that The Handmaid's Tale aired its last episode. The series starring Elisabeth Moss and based on Margaret Atwood's novel concluded in mid-2025, but before saying goodbye to viewers, it was already official that it would have a continuation titled The Testaments. The new fiction premieres this Wednesday on Disney+ and picks up the action years after the original series ended. If viewers didn't suffer enough then, this new foray returns ready to test their endurance.
The expansion of the Gilead universe takes as a reference the book The Testaments (Quaderns Crema), which Atwood published in 2019, two years after The Handmaid's Tale had been airing. The new series is not a literal adaptation but rather a free one, as explained by Bruce Miller, creator of both productions. The two protagonists are Agnes (Chase Infinity) and Daisy (Lucy Halliday), two teenagers facing a bleak future in Gilead, a dictatorship obsessed with women's reproductive capacity. They both meet in an academy where various young women learn everything necessary to be the best wives for Gilead's ruling class. In this scenario, it becomes clear that even girls from supposedly well-off lives are victims of repression and, at the same time, can be repressors.
The person in charge of the academy where the protagonists study is Aunt Lydia, a familiar face to fans of The Handmaid's Tale. Ann Dowd reprises this character who, at the end of the original series, had already begun to glimpse the cracks in the system. "The Handmaid's Tale focused on people in the lower classes of Gilead, and this series shows the women who are part of the elite. But it also shows how women, both those in the upper and lower classes, are very similar," Miller explained at the SeriesMania festival, where The Testaments was the festival's opening series.
Teenage Wives
Agnes and Daisy come from two different worlds. The former was raised in Gilead with a family that adopted her because she was born before the establishment of the dictatorship. Followers of the universe created by Margaret Atwood will quickly detect that the young woman is the eldest daughter of June, the protagonist of The Handmaid's Tale. In contrast, Daisy has just arrived in Gilead from Canada, theoretically attracted by a sin-free society, unlike the Canadian one. The reality, however, is very different. In the academy, Aunt Lydia will pair them up and entrust Agnes with being the newcomer's cicerone. A very close bond will develop between them because, without realizing it, they share a family connection.
They are not the only two students at the academy. Along with them, there is a trail of teenagers who are also being trained: Shunammite (Rowan Blanchard), a spoiled teenager from a prominent Gilead family; Becka (Mattea Conforti), a girl from a humble background who attends school with Gilead's elite and questions what she is being prepared for; Hulda (Isolde Ardies), an innocent girl, full of emotion at the prospect of becoming a woman; Jehosheba (Shechinah Mpumlwana), a competitive classmate from a respected family; and Miriam (Birva Pandya), a girl on the verge of womanhood struggling under the pressure of marriageable age. "They go from being girls to being married, so what we'll see are teenage wives," Miller remarks to The Hollywood Reporter.
As in the novels and the original series, the color palette of the story is very important. In The Testaments, the chromatic game is divided between the color plum and white. The former is what the girls who are preparing to be wives wear, but who have not yet had their first period. White is the color that designates the "pearls," the girls who have just arrived in Gilead and who represent the hope of a future full of fertile women.
In The Handmaid's Tale, Elisabeth Moss was the big star, the woman who suffered a thousand and one humiliations, but remained firm in her fight against the dictatorship. In the new series, Moss takes a step back and appears only as an executive producer. Even so, the person responsible for The Testaments has not ruled out that the actress may make a special appearance, especially considering the bond that June has with several of the characters who star in the series.
