Not quite a year after Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale wrapped its six-season run, the sequel series, The Testaments, kicked off with a bang, dropping its first three episodes on Hulu this week. Based on Margaret Atwood’s books The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, these TV shows are steeped in their own lore. So you may be wondering whether you need to have watched all six seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale to understand what’s happening in The Testaments — especially if you started watching the original show, but fell off at some point.
Fortunately, by now, the showrunners are pretty adept at explaining the franchise’s conceit. You can easily pick up on the story of The Testaments without ever watching The Handmaid’s Tale. But here are a few setup details that might help along the way.
The Republic of Gilead
The Handmaid’s Tale had six seasons to flesh out the complex regressive social structure of Gilead, the setting of these books. So some of those details won’t make it to The Testaments. What you need to know is that Gilead is the successor state to most of what was once the United States. It was established in a time of political turmoil by fascists who believed the only step forward for society was the harsh subjugation of women. This was initially put into motion by a catastrophic drop in fertility rates among cis women, making Gilead’s horrific systemic rape disturbingly palatable to many.
That might not sound totally out of the realm of possibility given the politics of 2026 America, and that’s intentional. Though the original novel was written in the mid-’80s, the twisted political landscape of Gilead was always intended to serve as a dark mirror for our own contentious systems. As such, Gilead is known for complex doublespeak, in which female slavery is viewed as a positive, and is often maintained by women themselves.
The benefits of Gilead for men are obvious, but as in any fascist state, there are other comforts to be found. In the wake of accumulating environmental disasters brought on by climate change, Gilead focused much of its energy on establishing an environmentally sound society. As such, The Handmaid’s Tale is a tale of complicity, and what we lose when we uphold the systems that harm us.
The color coding and naming conventions
Gilead forces strict adherence to a color coding system for women. “Handmaids,” who are forced to bear children for infertile wives, wear red, Wives, who adhere to their husbands’ demands, wear blue. “Marthas,” who serve as housekeepers, wear green. The Aunts, who oversee the training and discipline of Handmaids, wear brown. “Plums,” the daughters of commanders, wear purple. “Pearls,” girls who were brought in from outside Gilead, wear white.
As in all patriarchal societies, men are also oppressed by Gilead, forced into staunchly masculine behavior and made to wear lifeless black attire. Those who don’t wish to play by Gilead’s rules are punished or even killed, with a number of hanged men littering the otherwise peaceful landscape throughout the first episodes of The Testaments.
The cast
The Handmaid’s Tale racked up a whole lot of Emmys over its time on the air, in no small part due to the cast. The Testaments is booking right along that same path, introducing promising new characters via the friend group of the main character, Agnes. This includes Agnes’ fellow Plums, Becka (Mattea Conforti) and Shunammite (Rowan Blanchard), as well as a Pearl named Daisy (Lucy Halliday). The great Ann Dowd reprises her role as Aunt Lydia Clements. Agnes MacKenzie (Chase Infiniti) is our POV character for the opening episodes. We’ve already seen Handmaid’s Tale protagonist June (Elisabeth Moss) popping up in flashbacks, and there are bound to be more cameos and recurring characters from the original series on the way.
Family ties
Agnes was once named Hannah Bankole. She is the daughter of June and Luke Bankole (O-T Fagbenle). Luke spent much of the original series separated from June, but was heavily involved in the resistance movement in Canada. In The Testaments, this family unit is still mostly strewn to the winds, with Luke absent so far, and Hannah/Agnes trapped in Gilead with little memory of her birth parents. June has another daughter named Nichole with her ally-turned-betrayer Nick Blaine (Max Minghella).
We are seeing some strong hints dropped that Nichole might just be newcomer Daisy, who was adopted by resistance members as June apparently kept her distance out of safety concerns. How this is going to play out is anybody’s guess, but it’s clear this family has been put through the wringer.
Aunt Lydia began as one of The Handmaid’s Tale’s major villains
Of all the shocking changes major characters undergo over the course of the original series, none are so striking as the arc of Aunt Lydia. In the original run, Aunt Lydia was among Gilead’s most ruthless defenders, rejoicing in her role as a domineering Aunt. By the end of Season 6, Lydia had undergone a remarkable change, from an oppressor to a woman whose strict belief system had been shattered.
Now apparently hoping to change the world by instilling subversive values in the next generation, Lydia remains one of the franchise’s most compelling wild cards. Will Lydia be Agnes’ guardian angel when she was once her mother’s devil? Only time will tell, but it’s clear that Aunt Lydia, now commemorated by her own public statue in Gilead, will continue to be a major player in The Testaments.
“Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”
The phrase, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down” has been repeated regularly throughout the early episodes of The Testaments. This calls back to the ninth episode of Season 6 of The Handmaid’s Tale, in which June and several other Handmaids revolt and are nearly hanged for treason. With a rope around her neck, June, in her traditional Handmaid’s garb, gives a rousing speech punctuated with this phrase.
As violence breaks out among the crowd, June escapes. There has been a small but effective resistance movement working against Gilead since the early days of the show. In The Handmaid’s Tale’s finale, June’s longtime ally Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) sacrifices himself by boarding a doomed flight with the remaining Gileadean leadership. Having gone through a storied arc of his own throughout the series, this founding father of Gilead finds redemption in his final moments by eliminating most of his peers from the board.
Though many resistance leaders had infiltrated Gilead over the years, the enslaved Handmaids were always destined to play the biggest role in their own liberation. In The Testaments, we see that June has continued her work as a rebel leader, and continues to battle Gilead’s oppressive regime.
