With The Handmaid’s Tale suddenly rocketing back into pop-culture consciousness due to its upcoming sixth and final season—and the fact that it’s unfortunately very culturally relevant again—the Hulu show has just set another reminder: the sequel series that was first being talked about in 2019 is still happening.
First floated at the height of Handmaid’s initial popularity—it premiered in 2017, and had just wrapped up its third season at the time of the announcement—The Testaments will be based on Margaret Atwood’s 2018 book of the same name, itself a sequel to her groundbreaking 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s set 15 years after Handmaid’s and takes place in the still-dystopian realm of Gilead; it’s narrated by Handmaid‘s character Aunt Lydia, played on the series by Ann Dowd with Emmy-winning ferocity.
In 2021, Dowd said she’d be returning for The Testaments, and now we have more details as to who’ll be sharing the screen with her. Deadline reports that young actress Lucy Halliday has joined the show as Daisy, completing the trio of leads alongside Dowd as Aunt Lydia as well as Chase Infiniti as Agnes, who was announced last month.
The Testaments will share a creator and showrunner with Handmaid‘s, Bruce Miller—and Deadline reported in February that Handmaid‘s lead Elisabeth Moss may guest-star on the show, though that’s not yet been confirmed. It could be a spoiler to say, considering season six of The Handmaid’s Tale is yet to come and her character’s ultimate fate is not known.
According to the trade: “The Testaments takes place in the dystopian theocracy of Gilead more than 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale. The story follows the lives of three women, The Handmaid’s Tale‘s Aunt Lydia (Dowd), Agnes (Infiniti), and Daisy (Holliday), whose fates become intertwined as they uncover the secrets of Gilead and the resistance against its regime.”
Sounds like Gilead is still not a great place to be a woman 15 years later—but will audiences be hungry for more of this story nearly a decade after the original series? There’s no news yet on when The Testaments might premiere, but we do know The Handmaid’s Tale will return for its final round starting April 8.
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