Everything To Remember From ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Before Its New 10-Part Sequel Premieres

Praise be! The wicked world of Gilead continues its religious oppression in The Testaments, the sequel series to The Handmaid’s Tale. Hulu’s adaptation of famed author Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian thriller saw Elisabeth Moss in a career-defining performance as its main protagonist, June Osborne, aka Offred. Throughout its run, The Handmaid’s Tale won 15 Emmys, captivating millions of viewers across six nail-biting seasons.

One year after the series finale of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments looks to be yet another timely tale about privilege and complicity told through a coming-of-age story, but how does it tie into its predecessor? Let’s take a look at everything you need to remember about The Handmaid’s Tale before watching the premiere of its sequel series.

How Does ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ End?

The final season of The Handmaid’s Tale was markedly much less tragic and painful than previous seasons, but it was not without moments that tugged at your heartstrings. Season 6 focused largely on the rebellion movement, as well as the efforts of June and the main resistance group, Mayday, to liberate Boston from Gilead’s oppression.

Episode 8 sees the Handmaids leading a massive rebellion during Serena’s (Yvonne Strahovski) marriage to Commander Wharton (Josh Charles), which began after a wedding cake laced with sedatives immobilized Gilead’s high society. Episode 9 takes a turn with Gilead’s retaliation through the capture of June and dozens of other Handmaids before efforts to murder them via public execution. However, at the perfect moment, the Mayday-led rebellion emerges and frees the women before slaughtering as many Commanders and Gilead army members as possible.

Then, in yet another triumph, June works with Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) to kill the most powerful remaining oppressors with an airplane bomb, which unfortunately involves the Commander sacrificing himself in the process, taking Nick (Max Minghella), the father of June’s second child, Nichole, along with him. June and the Handmaids finally win, liberating Boston and leaving Gilead the same empty shell its incarcerated Handmaids once were, for so long. Though Gilead is destroyed in Boston, it remains intact throughout the rest of America and is strategizing to maintain power.

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In Episode 10, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” rebel forces mobilize to try to take the country back. June finally reunites with Nichole, and she and Luke (O-T Fagbenle) decide to end their marriage while vowing never to stop searching for their daughter, Hannah, who remains firmly in Gilead’s grip. Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) experiences a huge change in personal morality, no longer supporting the men of power in the oppressive regime, and after receiving June’s forgiveness, Serena sets out for a refugee camp with nothing but her infant son Noah and a plastic bag of personal belongings. Our one-eyed favorite, Janine (Madeline Brewer), is saved by June from an abusive Commander and reunited with her daughter, Charlotte, and Emily (Alexis Bledel) is also shown to be liberated from her circumstances.

As The Handmaid’s Tale ends, it takes things right back to the beginning, with June returning to the mansion where she once served as a Handmaid. There, she confidently begins to record her story, making it clear that Gilead will continue to fall across the United States, and that she will continue to fight undercover as part of the resistance until she finds Hannah.

‘The Testaments’ Takes Place Four Years After ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

Image via Hulu

The Testaments novel takes place more than 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, but the TV adaptation will pick back up in the same world as its predecessor, set just four years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale finale. While the setting remains inside the Republic of Gilead, the plot doesn’t revolve around the Handmaids. Lydia’s evolution will continue as she moves from being a ruthless zealot and disciplinarian to a double agent desperately searching for a way to overthrow Gilead from the inside out.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, while Season 1 of The Testaments will shed light on Aunt Lydia’s life before Gilead through a series of “strategically placed flashbacks,” the sequel’s narrative largely centers on a completely different generation at an elite prep school where a group of young women, raised in luxury and advantage, are being groomed for marriage.

‘The Testaments’ Tells a New Coming-of-Age Story

Aunt Lydia’s school is more like an authoritarian refining academy, where young women are sent to learn how to carry out the various wifely duties expected of them as future spouses of Gilead’s most highly ranked Commanders. At this school, servitude and obedience are prioritized over education, and uniform colors are coordinated — the Pinks are the youngest girls, the Plums are older teens, and the Greens are the eligibles ready for marriage. The transition to Green only occurs if a Plum gets her period, which is marked by a public confession and praise ceremony.

Having grown up inside the regime as the daughter of a powerful Gilead leader, Agnes MacKenzie (Chase Infiniti), who is also June’s daughter, Hannah, knows no other lifestyle beyond the regime’s oppression and brutality. In training as a wife-to-be, Agnes is dutiful and pious; however, she changes her mind and decides to become an aunt instead of marrying her arranged husband. New arrival Daisy (Lucy Halliday), who is a few years younger than Agnes, enters Gilead and the school as a committed convert, but she is soon revealed to have ulterior motives.

As the two young women navigate the opulent halls of an institute where obedience is brutally instilled with divine justification, they form an intense bond neither of them truly understands. It will soon become the catalyst for upending their past, present, and future, with Daisy’s honesty leading Agnes to question the world around her in ways that threaten to change her life forever.

Just like with The Handmaid’s Tale, don’t expect The Testaments to be a true adaptation. While it will draw on the novel’s main characters, their world, and their situations, the show is expected to take specific liberties to explore the characters’ lives beyond what just one novel could. Remaining a political cautionary tale, The Testaments feels like a warning against both complicity and complacency, as well as a love letter to friendship and an eye-opening reminder of the power of teenage girls to change the world.

The Testaments premieres April 8 with its first three episodes on Hulu.