The Republic of Gilead, an ultra-religious regime bent on returning women to their “rightful place,” has always been portrayed as a nightmarish hellscape in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Over six seasons, viewers watched Handmaids struggle to break free and resist from outside Gilead’s borders — but its upcoming sequel series, The Testaments, will depict a similar fight from within the regime’s own confines. The show is taking shape as a dystopian coming-of-age thriller that feels uncomfortably close to our real world, following a group of young women as they grapple with the future awaiting them as wives and Handmaids to a dehumanizing, chauvinist elite.
The first trailer for The Testaments plays with that tension in entertaining ways, reintroducing a character well-known to The Handmaid’s Tale fans. Chase Infiniti, star of One Battle After Another, portrays Agnes — the daughter taken from June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) and raised in Gilead’s society. She has no idea her mother is a revolutionary fighting the very forces holding her hostage; in the trailer’s opening moments, she’s completely unaware she’s a prisoner at all. Her charmed life as a member of the “Plums” is set to The Cranberries’ “Dreams,” which effectively highlights that false sense of security. And while that bubble eventually bursts, it’s clear The Testaments is charting a new course for the franchise, giving this gritty dystopia a young adult (YA) spin.
“A plucky heroine rises up against an all-powerful authoritarian regime” is a timeless trope in YA fiction, but it’s been less prominent since The Hunger Games and its clones exhausted the trend in the 2010s. That said, it’s still incredibly effective — especially when paired with a world like Gilead. The Handmaid’s Tale never shied away from depicting Gilead’s indoctrination tools, but The Testaments brings a fresh feel to this. Narrated by Agnes, its first trailer repeats countless platitudes straight out of YA novels. “It’s easier to accept a story than believe the people around you are monsters,” she says, hinting at the start of a very different revolution.
The Plums don’t take long to radicalize themselves, and the arrival of Daisy (Lucy Halliday) — a disguised member of the Canadian resistance — will only accelerate this uprising. Her presence forces a reckoning for Agnes and her classmates, who each begin to realize how insignificant their own desires are. Change is in the air, and not just because hormones are raging, tempting the Plums into “impulsive” decisions. The heroines of The Testaments are coming into their power just as their predecessors in The Handmaid’s Tale did — and with this YA setting, their fight against Gilead might not be quite so bleak.
The Testaments debuts April 8 on Hulu and Disney+.