The Handmaid’s Tale spinoff The Testaments hasn’t even aired yet, but it has already introduced a major change from Margaret Atwood’s book.
Based on Atwood’s novel of the same name, The Handmaid’s Tale, which aired from 2017 to 2025, took place in a dystopian future where low fertility rates led women to be assigned to men for bearing children.
The Handmaid’s Tale’s final season was announced in 2022, which is when creator Bruce Miller stepped down as showrunner to work on The Testaments. Executive producers Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang took over the day-to-day duties on the flagship drama.
“We are making The Testaments, and it’s not going to track precisely,” Miller told TVLine at the time. “Margaret writes these absolutely deliciously specific characters. We had to go away from that in Handmaid’s, and we’re going to have to go away from that in Testaments. Testaments is certainly going to be a sequel to the show.”
Atwood’s version of The Testaments is set 15 years after The Handmaid’s Tale. Aunt Lydia (played by Ann Dowd) narrates the return into a dystopian future with characters such as Agnes from Gilead and Daisy from Canada who work together to smuggle incriminating information about Gilead’s regime out of the country.
Hulu’s upcoming series, meanwhile, is set only three to four years later than when the series finale of The Handmaid’s Tale takes place.
“Although I could not continue with the story of Offred, I could continue with three other people concerned in these events and tell the story of the beginning of the end, because we know from The Handmaid’s Tale that Gilead vanishes,” Atwood told journalists at an event in 2019. “It’s no longer present 200 years into the future, because they’re having a symposium on it. How did it collapse? How do these kinds of regimes disappear? I was interested in exploring that.”
She continued: “There [are] some new costume choices in this book. Human beings throughout time love outfits that tell you who you’re looking at, like football teams and things like that. So yes, we have some new outfits.”
In addition to Dowd, The Testaments features Chase Infiniti, Lucy Halliday, Rowan Blanchard, Amy Seimetz, Mabel Li, Brad Alexander and Mattea Conforti.
Infiniti, 25, plays Elisabeth Moss‘ daughter Hannah, a.k.a Agnes. The One Battle After Another actress recently revealed she didn’t meet The Handmaid’s Tale OG until she was nearly done filming The Testaments.
“I actually didn’t get to meet Elisabeth Moss really until the end [of filming],” Infiniti told People in January.
Infiniti recalled Moss’ advice to her, adding, “But she kind of immediately after I met her, wrapped me into a big hug and was kind of like, ‘You got this. You got this. OK? You got it.’”
The Testaments premieres on Hulu April 8.
