The Testaments Trailer: Back To Gilead We Go

The Testaments takes us 15 years past The Handmaid’s Tale, but adds the slightest note of hope.

The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the best and most depressing – and arguably prescient – series of recent years. Based on the 1985 novel by absolute fuckin’ literary queen Margaret Atwood, the series puts us in a future United States that has been taken over by a coterie of insane, misogynistic, right wing theocrats – and there was a time when that seemed far fetched. It follows the lives of various women trapped in that particular hellscape, mainly Elisabeth Moss’ June Osborne, AKA Offred, who is forced to become a brood mare to one of the high muckety-mucks in the country now known as Gilead.

Good times! Well, no, not really. Bad times, but a series worth watching, no matter how much you have to just gut your way through it. But now it has a sequel series, based on the novel of the same name by Atwood: The Testaments. And much to my surprise, it has a somewhat hopeful tone.

The Testaments Trailer

What’s the plot?

As the official synopsis tells us:

Years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments follows young teens Agnes, dutiful and pious, and Daisy, a new arrival and convert from beyond Gilead’s borders. As they navigate the gilded halls of Aunt Lydia’s elite preparatory school for future wives, a place where obedience is instilled brutally and always with divine justification, their bond becomes the catalyst that will upend their past, their present, and their future.

This dramatic coming-of-age story finds a new generation of young women in Gilead grappling with the bleak future that awaits them. For these young women, growing up in Gilead is all they have ever known, having no tangible memories of the outside world prior to their indoctrination into this life. Facing the prospect of being married off and living a life of servitude, they will be forced to search for allies, both new and old, to help in their fight for freedom and the life they deserve.

…yeah, that’ll about cover it.

Who’s in it?

• Chase Infiniti as Agnes MacKenzie.
• Lucy Halliday as Daisy, a young Canadian teen who has entered Gilead.
• Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia, the headmistress of a school for the daughters of Gilead’s most senior leadership.
• Rowan Blanchard as Shunammite, a pampered teen from a bigwig Gilead family.

When’s it out?

The Testaments hits Disney+ – and can we all agree that’s funny as hell – on April 8. Triple episode premiere, eight episodes in total.

What’s the vibe?

Bleak, friendos, bleak – but essential.