‘The Testaments’ Review: A Coming-of-Age Story That Plays Like a Young Adult Version of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

The series The Handmaid’s Tale initially leaned on the novel it was based on, before branching out on its own in later seasons. Margaret Atwood’s 1985 classic was essentially covered in that first installment; everything that followed was shaped by the imagination of showrunner Bruce Miller and his team. Somewhere in between those seasons (the series ran from 2017 to 2025), Atwood herself wrote The Testaments, a sequel to the original novel—not the series—set 15 years after its events. But because the show kept moving forward, this new adaptation now lands almost like a direct continuation, with far less temporal distance between stories.

This continuation differs along three central axes. First, the protagonist is no longer June (Elisabeth Moss), but Agnes (breakout performer Chase Infiniti), a teenager raised entirely within Gilead. It’s the only world she knows, and she seems fully accustomed to its demanding, peculiar, and deeply “traditional” customs. She’s also a character with a significant past—though viewers unfamiliar with The Handmaid’s Tale‘s lore may be better off not knowing too much about it in advance.

Agnes’s voice-over guides much of the narrative, though it comes from an undefined future. We don’t know from where—or under what circumstances—she’s recounting these events, but her tone suggests that what we’re seeing belongs firmly in her past. As she narrates, she gradually recognizes her own former innocence in the face of this rigid and unsettling world. Eventually, the voice-over will shift to other protagonists, though that takes time.

The third key difference—and perhaps the most defining one—is the age of its leads. The Testaments operates, to some extent, like a young adult novel, echoing a wave of dystopian fiction from the 2010s in which teenagers drove epic survival narratives (with The Hunger Games as the clearest example). That framework is essential to understanding the story’s logic: it hinges on Agnes’s slow but decisive realization that the “normal” world she inhabits is anything but.

That revelation unfolds gradually. At the outset, Agnes is polite, devout, and obedient, following every rule imposed on girls her age. Like the others, she wears purple and eagerly awaits her first menstruation, which will mark her readiness to be married off by her severe stepmother Paula (Amy Seimetz) and overseen by the fervent network of “Aunts” who regulate every aspect of girls’ lives in Gilead—including the now-iconic Lydia (Ann Dowd), whose arc in the original series took several turns and now places her in a particularly ambiguous position.

The first season focuses on Agnes’s gradual awakening to the misogynistic prison she inhabits. That process begins when Lydia assigns her the task of connecting with—and “educating”—Daisy (Lucy Halliday), a girl her age who, unlike Agnes, arrived in Gilead after growing up in Toronto. Daisy sees things differently: she remembers life outside this strange totalitarian state, which feels like an exaggerated hybrid of two supposed geopolitical opposites, the United States and Iran.

Although Daisy initially appears to make an effort to adapt, a late reveal in the first episode—via a flashback featuring a notable cameo—makes it clear not only that she can’t assimilate, but that she may have plans of her own. Scenes from her previous life soon become integral to the narrative, suggesting that what’s happening in Gilead may not be coincidental, but part of something more organized.

Atwood herself has said she drew inspiration for this sequel from movements like Argentina’s #NiUnaMenos and from youth-led anti-abortion campaigns, to the point that the color green will eventually take on symbolic importance in the girls’ lives. That influence shifts the story’s center of gravity: rebellion here is driven less by adults than by younger generations. In that sense, the show echoes other franchise expansions that enter familiar worlds through teenage perspectives—much like Wednesday did with The Addams Family.

By depicting the various processes Gilead imposes on young women—prepared by mothers and “Marthas” for lives of submission in a kind of trad-wife ideal, and routinely exploited by men—The Testaments builds a tense narrative of suspense, rebellion, and potential escape. These subjugated girls, much to Lydia’s surprise, prove capable of combining outward docility with startling levels of violence and cruelty.

Along the way, the series leans on some more conventional narrative devices—misunderstandings, possible romances, moments of confusion, sexual tension—but maintains a constant sense of peril. The girls are always one misstep away from losing everything. When one of Agnes’s friends nearly drops a teapot, she instantly understands that, by Gilead’s rules, her future may already be ruined. That’s how fragile—and how tense—this world is.

Structurally, The Testaments follows the blueprint of its predecessor. What feels most refreshing is the generational shift, and especially the emergence of Infiniti as a charismatic lead whose character evolves as Agnes begins to grasp the oppressive system she once accepted as normal. Unlike the earlier series, this one isn’t trying to predict the future so much as exaggerate the present. Atwood’s 1985 novel was pure speculative fiction; her 2019 sequel, now adapted for television, edges much closer to realism.