The Testaments has arrived, picking up about four years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale with a (mostly) new cast and a fresh story set within the familiar evils of Gilead. Hulu dropped the first three episodes all at once, “Precious Flowers,” “Perfect Teeth,” and “Daisy,” which means viewers have now been let in on something that The Testaments has been carefully keeping under wraps.
Obviously, turn back now if you haven’t watched the first three episodes! But if you’re all caught up on your Gilead re-entry and want to see what The Testaments and The Handmaid’s Tale creator Bruce Miller had to say about the reveal, read on.
She’s right there at the very end of the first episode, during the flashback to Daisy’s (Lucy Halliday) pre-Gilead life in Toronto: yep, that is indeed June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss), the main character in The Handmaid’s Tale. Last we saw her, she was in the war-ravaged remains of the mansion where she was forced to be a Handmaid, getting started on writing down her incredible story.
There was very much a sense of the fight not being over for June, and as The Testaments progresses, we get more glimpses of June and her continuing work with the resistance group Mayday. Her appearance in the sequel series might feel inevitable, but Miller and his team didn’t want to publicize June’s return ahead of time and deliberately strove to keep it secret.
“I was trying to at least retain some of the fun of the surprise,” Miller told io9 at a recent Testaments press day. “For the rest of time, the spoiler will be out there. This is the only chance people have to watch it fresh. And so that’s a fun thing … I don’t think you need to have watched The Handmaid’s Tale at all or know what a Handmaid is to enjoy [The Testaments], hopefully. And I think the character that June plays in The Testaments would also be a character that would be very intriguing if you have no idea who she is [at first].”
The June we meet in The Testaments has changed a bit since The Handmaid’s Tale ended. “We’re trying to build up a ‘where is she now’ [for June],” Miller explained. “She’s kind of a patient person when [before] she was so impatient. She doesn’t want to have any conflict; she’s conflict-averse, whereas before she was very [conflict-driven]. So I didn’t want to have you imagine her story all together before you saw it. I’m just hoping that I can give people kind of a fun reveal and a fun story in the first three episodes. And then to feel like she’s operating from the outside, [once] you actually know who June is and what she would be doing as she’s pulling strings off screen.”
Without getting into any spoilers for the yet-to-air episodes, the first season feels very much like an opening chapter with more story to follow. So far, Hulu has only confirmed one season of The Testaments, but Miller has hopes that won’t be the end.
“I’m trying to be very practical. Of course, on the creative [side], I think these guys are spectacular actors, and the performances are great, and the stories are so rich that I could go on as long as they will keep the lights on,” he said. “But I also feel a responsibility to try to make an ending for the story … I am hoping that I have enough time to think it through, but my sense is that—given the vagaries of television—I’m thinking between three seasons and five seasons and trying to be flexible within that creatively to build an ending that people can feel satisfied with.”
He’s also, he emphasized, well aware that might not happen. “The business just doesn’t work that way—they don’t tell you usually until it’s too late to pivot. But with that in mind, I’ll try very hard to make it as satisfying as possible.”
The first three episodes of The Testaments are streaming now on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.
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