The Testaments season one finale arrived on the heels of some good news: it’ll be back for more. Fans will be especially glad to know this information while watching “Secateurs” because it drops some big pieces on the board for season two.
That episode title, by the way, comes from another name for “pruning shears,” last week’s memorable weapon of choice. Murder comes with consequences, but even in Gilead there’s some wiggle room.
“After it was all over, I found the coroner’s report” is how Agnes’ voice-over kicks off the episode. Dr. Grove’s autopsy revealed he was stabbed in the lungs, liver, and subclavian artery… and along with some defensive wounds, took some symbolic hits to the genitals too.
At school, the other girls are frantically trying to figure out what’s going on with Becka. Before Agnes can say anything, everyone’s herded into the dining room for a special meeting.
In a jail cell, Becka is near-catatonic, singing hymns to herself. “Don’t agitate her,” the jailer (cameo alert: it’s Margaret Atwood!) tells Aunt Lydia. Since Becka is unresponsive, the agitation is left entirely to Lydia to feel; she’s horrified by what she sees.
Things look dire, but Lydia’s instinct is to offer reassurance: “We will sort this out, dear,” she calls through the bars.
Commander Judd appears. His take on the situation is that Becka murdered her father, and even broader than that, “A man of Gilead was slain by a woman.” The most hideous crime imaginable. He also implies that it’s partially Lydia’s fault, seeing as how Becka was her pupil.
Aunt Lydia points out Dr. Grove was not exactly a man of God and confirms what we’d already suspected: he was slated to be executed for his crimes anyway.
That doesn’t matter to Judd. His focus is now to “minimize the fallout,” and he gets awfully glib when Aunt Lydia insists that Becka not be “sacrificed on the altar of fallout,” suggesting that maybe Becka could become a Handmaid. It’s a better fate than being hanged, at least.
Anyway, it’s not up to him, he adds, even though it’s totally up to him. “The court will dictate her fate.”
When Lydia protests that “we can’t allow that to happen,” he sneers back, “There is no ‘we’ anymore.”
Back at school, Aunt Vidala tells the school that Becka isn’t coming back after “the untimely passing of her father.” The girls who have context regarding Gilead’s sleaziest dentist look shocked. Agnes runs outside to find Garth, hoping he’ll be able to tell her what happened to Becka after she was dragged away by the Eyes.
He has zero information, but he does allow an awkward hug—and tells off Aunt Estee when she scampers up, horrified that a man is touching one of her students.
“You know what happened to her friend,” Garth snaps in a way that suggests maybe there’s some empathy lurking within him after all. “Show some grace.”
Aunt Estee, at least, lets Agnes know that she’s not going to tell Aunt Lydia about this transgression. Inside, Agnes is swarmed by Shu, Hulda, and Daisy, who are dying to know what’s going on.
She doesn’t say the exact words “Becka killed her father,” but they understand. They also know what it means when Agnes says the Eyes took Becka: she’s doomed.
Daisy declares the only thing to do is to help her. Agnes agrees. She finds Aunt Vidala and asks her what she’s doing to protect Becka. Vidala tries to skate away with a “God will protect her,” but that’s not good enough for Agnes, who is no longer the dutiful Gilead believer we met when The Testaments began.
“You are the instrument of God,” she tells Vidala. “You have to do something.” And what’s more, the Aunts do have some blame for Becka’s actions.
“She thought she was doing God’s will as you taught us: ‘Blessed are those who thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied,'” Agnes says, invoking all the brutal punishments the girls have witnessed the Aunts handing out over the years.
And just praying about it isn’t going to hack it this time. “I prayed for Becka too,” Agnes says. “I prayed she might have someone to defend her.”
Aunt Vidala has developed a very thick skin, but she has tears in her eyes as she takes this in.
Meanwhile, Daisy tracks down Garth and tells him Mayday needs to intervene. When he dithers, she declares she’ll take matters into her own hands: “Fuck Mayday!”
At the Mackenzie mansion, Commander Weston has stopped by to check on his bride-to-be in the wake of Becka’s arrest. When the dreaded Paula steps out of the room, Weston assures Agnes that since they’ll be married soon, “My concerns are your concerns, and your concerns are mine.”
We know he’s awful—he is literally the head of the Eyes—and has a sinister past, but in this moment he does seem genuine. That doesn’t mean he’s sympathetic to Becka, of course, seeing as how she “broke the laws of God.”
Agnes says, “Her father broke the laws of God first.” And what’s more, Becka did what she did “to protect your future wife.”
Weston doesn’t follow, so Agnes has to spell it out: “I was one of the girls he hurt.”
He’s startled by this, asks if her parents know (they don’t), and thanks her for being honest. Then he promises to do whatever he can for Becka.
And he does. As we soon see, Becka gets to go home—temporarily—and be with her mom while Gilead figures out her punishment.
Elsewhere, Garth turns on his radio and immediately receives a broadcast aimed just at him from June (was June’s message repeating over and over in the hopes he would catch it?). Daisy receives a note while she’s working in the Pearl Girl forced labor honey production area: BE HERE 10 BELLS.
They could have just written “10 p.m.” But anyway, we follow Daisy as she’s smuggled across the border, where June is waiting for her.
At first, Daisy is relieved to see that Mayday is backing her up. But then she realizes this isn’t about Becka. This is just an extraction. But the game has changed for Daisy. She doesn’t want to leave the fight—but she also doesn’t want to do things Mayday’s way anymore.
June tries to change her mind. “Sometimes you are going to have to stand by and watch people you care about become collateral damage,” she says, but that’s not what Daisy wants to hear, and they have a brief but pointed argument about their clashing philosophies.
June’s got a long-range plan to take down Gilead. She’s less focused on individuals. But Daisy is intent on saving Becka, right here right now.
However, they’re both fighting for the same reasons—to free the women of Gilead and make sure future generations are free too. And June softens when Daisy starts talking about the girls she’s met there, especially someone named “Agnes.”
Daisy realizes then that Agnes is the daughter June was forced to leave behind. She describes her as brave, beautiful, and kind, saying, “She’s the one that we all want to be like, you know?”
Daisy is determined to save Agnes and the rest. “I can do this. You know I can,” she says. Then she tells June, “You need to learn to believe in someone other than yourself.”
That might not have worked on the June we first met in The Handmaid’s Tale, but this June—who’s been through hell and back on repeat—understands. She doesn’t want to, but she lets Daisy go back to Gilead to do things her way.
At the school, Vidala goes to talk to Lydia. The tension between them bubbles up—Lydia’s willingness to shoot Vidala back in “Stadium” gets a mention—but then Vidala proposes a truce. Together, they can work as “God’s instruments” and help Becka.
This idea gets nudged along ever further when Daisy—who’s been caught outside the dorm on her way back, though thankfully Garth helps cover for her—gets called in for a scolding. “I have always strived to be a mother to God’s lost children,” Lydia tells Daisy as the conversation shifts, and then it’s Daisy’s turn to encourage her to do something to help Becka.
The Aunts’ solution is far from perfect. At Becka’s house, Lydia and Vidala go over a new version of the story in which Becka’s mother will take all the blame. Becka doesn’t want to do it, but her mother insists. The truth doesn’t matter in Gilead, and anyway, “It’s what should have happened,” her mom says.
Agnes learns of this development from her dad, who also drops the bomb that because of the “Grove scandal,” Commander Weston has called off the engagement. “It struck me as a lot of nonsense,” Commander Mackenzie says, but of course Agnes knows exactly why Weston backed away.
Her dad also calls Weston an “overly pious piece of shit,” which is very satisfying; amid all this, at least Agnes’ dad is on the less evil end of the “Gilead man” spectrum.
Mackenzie is irritated by the broken engagement, but Paula. Is. Nuclear.
In the middle of the night, Agnes finds her scrubbing the bathroom floor, drunk as a skunk, making this turn of events all about her: “I devoted all of my time to your success.”
Agnes refuses to engage when Paula wonders how Agnes managed to “scare him off.” Since she knows Agnes is upset about Becka, she lands some jabs there. Nobody’s gonna marry her now. She’s “fallen,” and Garth would be “a fool not to take the out.”
Then Paula launches into her nastiest screed yet, telling Agnes that “after that Handmaid attack, Gilead wanted to make her pay.” Reading between the lines a little, it seems Commander Mackenzie is the only reason Gilead didn’t send Agnes’ fingers and toes to June as revenge.
“Your ingratitude is astounding,” Paula screeches.
Hearing this—the part about Becka; she ignores the other stuff for now—Agnes runs to Garth’s house and begs him to go through with the marriage. “I’ve thrown my whole life away to help Becka,” she says. “Now it’s your turn.”
And he does. Becka, weeping as the sedatives kick in, cracks the only smile on her wedding day when Agnes reassures her everything will be OK.
“I know, because you’re here,” Becka says and kisses Agnes on the lips. They embrace, and Becka’s face slowly drops.
Daisy and Agnes watch as Garth is promoted to Commander, then a very dazed Becka stumbles down the aisle. Intercut with this, we see Becka’s mother sobbing as she’s being led in for her execution.
The wedding, overseen by Commander Judd, is nearly as grim as the hanging. When the new couple arrives home, Garth has to carry Becka upstairs. He kindly takes off her shoes and turns out the lights, but he also locks her into the room when he leaves.
After this completely joyless wedding, Daisy and Agnes have a moment alone. Agnes confesses she’s always been scared she’d mess up her life, and now she has. “I ruined everything,” she realizes.
When Daisy offers sympathy, Agnes replies, “It was worth it.”
Daisy takes this opportunity to tell Agnes who her birth mother is: June Osborne. “The terrorist?” is Agnes’ loud response. Not exactly, Daisy says. June “fights for what she believes in. Just like you do.”
Also: “Your mother wasn’t just a handmaid. She was THE handmaid.”
Agnes is still skeptical, but then Daisy tells her she knows her real name. “Hannah” stirs something deep in Agnes, and we see that in her secret stash of objects hidden in her room, she has a child’s drawing—signed “Hannah.”
As the episode ends, we see June has received a note from Daisy tucked into the lid of a honey jar. This is intercut with Agnes going back to school, her only path forward now that she’s escaped Weston’s clutches. When Agnes tells Aunt Lydia that “June Osborne, the criminal” is her mother, Lydia doesn’t seem surprised.
“I knew your mother quite well actually,” she tells Agnes. “One thing I can say about her is that she never gave up and neither will we.”
In Daisy’s letter, she tells June, “I’m going to destroy Gilead with what it values most. I’m staying in the fight, and I’m gonna create my own army. Because nothing can be more powerful than a teenage girl.”
In Toronto, June smiles. In Gilead, we see Shu, Agnes, and Daisy, pinkies locked together, doing a slo-mo walk down the school hallway.
Ok, season two. We are ready for you!
Season one of The Testaments is streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
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