1 of 5 | Daisy (Lucy Halliday, L) meets Agnes (Chase Infiniti) in “The Testaments,” premiering Wednesday on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Disney
When Margaret Atwood wrote her sequel The Testaments, she had more to say about The Handmaid’s Tale. Yet coming after Hulu’s adaptation, The Testaments, premiering Wednesday on Hulu, is essentially a retread with little to add.
In Gilead, Agnes (Chase Infiniti) grew up hoping to be a handmaid one day. She hasn’t had her period yet, and the show focuses on Agnes and other Plums, young girls who wear purple robes instead of the Handmaids’ red ones.
Agnes is also assigned to show Daisy (Lucy Halliday) around. Daisy is a Pearl Girl, taken in from Canada, so they wear white robes.
For Atwood, showing a different aspect of Gilead would have further developed her world building. However, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale went far beyond her book, and lasted several seasons after June (Elisabeth Moss) escaped and led successful rebellions against Gilead.
So The Testaments shows Gilead rebuilt despite June’s efforts, and essentially tries again with different costumes. Agnes is Hannah, the daughter June and Luke (O-T Fagbenle) left behind in Gilead, though the connection is not clear enough to evoke the emotional benefit of June’s previous struggles.
Agnes will presumably find out more about her past as the series continues, but as it begins she introduces the new Gilead which is essentially the old one with new costumes. While prepubescent girls have even less autonomy with which to resist oppression, it’s still a regression from The Handmaid’s Tale.
Agnes has no experience with America to compare Gilead to, but viewers do. So The Testaments shows viewers the same hangings of rebels, a commander’s wife, Paula (Amy Seimetz), who orchestrates budding fertile women, and frames everything as blessings with the authoritarian tone that you dare not question.
Ann Dowd reprises her role as Aunt Lydia, but the nature of her return regresses her character too. Even though her complicated arc in The Handmaid’s Tale suggests duplicitous motivations, The Testaments only shows Lydia serving the commanders and justifying sexual abuse, now with even younger women. Other returning characters are just a cameo parade.
Atwood’s book was published in 2019 when American politics already began to resemble her cautionary tales. Now, when the show talks about candidates decrying women’s rights and the LGBTQ+ community, it cannot play as prescient, and even feels like too little too late after the fact.
There are young characters allied with the rebellion outside Gilead, so it’s the same plotting escape and overthrow, just with younger rebels. Follow-ups to Handmaid’s Tale subplots feel less like answered questions and more like redundancies.
Since the Plums and Pearls are teenagers, the oppressive society now includes mean girls sniping and backstabbing, made more dire by Gilead. It’s not just about popularity, but maiming punishments, with Gilead encouraging their bloodlust.
New terminology doesn’t mask the retreaded nature. Schoolgirls even younger than Plums wear pink. Perhaps a third spinoff can use yellow and green robes.
The Testaments has no shortage of depictions of disturbing atrocities against women even younger than The Handmaid’s Tale’s characters. The dramatic inertia makes that feel more like exploitation than a cautionary tale.
If The Testaments was going to be this similar, it would have been more honest to call it The Handmaid’s Tale Season 7.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
