When The Handmaid's Tale showed up in April 2017, it felt uncomfortably on time. We were fresh off President Donald Trump’s first inauguration, #MeToo was about to roar, and Margaret Atwood’s 1985 nightmare started looking less like fiction and more like an annotated warning label. Less than a year after the series wrapped its six-season run, the sequel show The Testaments is gearing up to take another swing. The only question is whether audiences are ready for round two, or if the timing lands like a gut punch.
Why the timing lands like a punch
The original series planted us in Gilead, a theocratic North America where women are treated as baby-churning chattel. It was brutal, and it echoed real life in queasy ways: marching crowds on cable news, debates over bodily autonomy, all framed against Roe v. Wade (1973). Now, one year into Trump’s second term, reproductive agency is all but or completely illegal in more than a dozen U.S. states. The word Gilead has stopped feeling like a setting and started sounding like a threat. If The Handmaid’s Tale hit hard almost ten years ago, The Testaments could hit like a hammer.
So what is The Testaments?
The Testaments adapts Atwood’s much-anticipated 2019 sequel and picks up about 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale. The new series centers on two teens inside Gilead’s machinery: Agnes, raised to be dutiful and devout, and Daisy, a recent convert from outside Gilead’s borders. Ann Dowd is back as Aunt Lydia, and Golden Globe nominee Chase Infiniti leads a cast stacked with newcomers. The show’s official line paints a very familiar kind of nightmare:
"The series 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."
Expect Season 1 to start fairly close to the book in tone and narrative, at least out of the gate.
Moss moves behind the camera (and still looms large)
Elisabeth Moss might be done onscreen as June — emphasis on might — but she is executive producing The Testaments. Even if June never appears, Moss’s hand on the wheel pretty much guarantees the character’s presence will be felt in the themes.
In a 2025 interview, Moss described watching early camera tests for the new cast:
"I cried, because seeing these incredible young women inhabit these characters and new costumes and seeing the story carry on in this younger generation... I was very moved by it."
"There’s this younger generation who’s going to carry on with this fight... you want to fulfill the promise [for Handmaid’s fans], but also bring it to a new place, because you don’t want to make the same show. I think everyone has done a really good job of leaning into making it a new show that can stand on its own."
Translation: familiar fire, different burn. And yes, those feminist and anti-authoritarian notes will clash hard with the current moment outside the show.
The context that makes it sting
Roe v. Wade’s overturning in 2022 sparked a domino run that keeps picking up speed. Think about Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision that granted marriage equality. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Emily (Alexis Bledel) likely lived with that right before Gilead stripped it away, then punished her for who she was. The franchise has always argued this: when the state flips rights off for one group, the lights tend to flicker for everyone else. The Testaments seems set to carry that thread. The open question is whether people have the bandwidth to keep watching it reflected back at them.
The fanbase is both a gift and a trap
We live in the era of brain-soothing TV: you put a show on, you scroll your phone, you call it a night. After years of pandemic doomscrolling, that checks out. It also means The Testaments can’t just rely on the original’s baked-in following. Some fans might feel they already learned the lessons the first time. To lock people in, the new series needs a fresh angle — not a rerun with new uniforms.
Release plan, such as it is
Here’s where it gets weird. One set of materials points to an April 2026 premiere. Another plan has the first three episodes dropping on Hulu/Disney+ on April 8, 2025. That is a wide berth for a date range, so consider the window open and the specifics in flux.
- Setting: Gilead, roughly 15 years after The Handmaid’s Tale ends
- Focus: teens Agnes and Daisy navigating Aunt Lydia’s elite school for future wives
- Cast: Golden Globe nominee Chase Infiniti leads; Ann Dowd returns as Aunt Lydia; Elisabeth Moss executive produces
- Tone: initially close to Atwood’s 2019 novel; same rebellious spine, sharpened by the current climate
- Release: Hulu/Disney+ — either a three-episode drop on April 8, 2025, or a premiere in April 2026, depending on what sticks
Will The Testaments be too heavy to handle or exactly the jolt people need? We’re about to find out — assuming we get enough time to press play.