A new age in Gilead is upon Us.
The Testaments, a spinoff of Hulu’s six-season hit The Handmaid’s Tale, debuted a first look at the highly anticipated series on Saturday, December 6.
“A defiant coming of age story begins in April 2026 when The Testaments comes to @hulu and with #HuluOnDisneyPlus,” an Instagram caption reads.
A handful of images feature Chase Infiniti as protagonist Agnes (a.k.a. June’s daughter Hannah, whose name was changed by her adopted parents in Gilead) dressed in her all-purple dress at her “Wives School.”
In other photos, Rowan Blanchard, Mattea Conforti, Isolde Ardies and Birva Pandya wore matching lilac garb. Ann Dowd’s Aunt Lydia also makes an appearance in the snapshots, dressed in her signature olive uniform.
The Handmaid’s Tale is based on Margaret Atwood’s dystopian 1985 novel of the same name, where lower-class women are forcibly assigned to each noble family to serve as surrogates in an attempt to address declining birth rates. Both the book and series is told through the lens of Offred/June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss), who was forced to give up daughter Hannah for indentured servitude.
Atwood, 86, published her The Testaments sequel in 2019, set during Hannah’s teenage years. After Hannah was sent to a finishing school, she crossed paths with a girl named Daisy, later revealed to be Baby Nichole. (Nichole, spoiler warning, is June’s daughter with Nick, who was played by Max Minghella on the original show.)
Before The Handmaid’s Tale premiered its sixth and final season earlier this year, Hulu greenlit a spinoff following Lydia and the next generation of Gileadian women.
“There will be cliffhangers for The Testaments, so it doesn’t conclude everything,” showrunner Yahlin Chang told TV Insider in March, referring to the series finale. “Any fans that are left wanting more are going to get more in The Testaments, which will be great for them. It does conclude in some very satisfying ways many of the story lines, but not every single one.”
The Testaments book is set 15 years after the events of the original story and is narrated by Lydia, while Agnes and Daisy pose as “Pearl Girls” — Gilead missionaries — to gather incriminating information about the dystopian government.
“Although I could not continue with the story of Offred, I could continue with three other people concerned in these events and tell the story of the beginning of the end, because we know from The Handmaid’s Tale that Gilead vanishes,” Atwood said of focusing on a new generation of characters in the follow-up during a 2019 event. “It’s no longer present 200 years into the future, because they’re having a symposium on it. How did it collapse? How do these kinds of regimes disappear? I was interested in exploring that.”
Just as June is no longer the narrator in The Testaments, many of the original cast members will not appear in the new show.
“Probably not. I feel like I’ve had enough of Margaret Atwood‘s trauma for a while,” Samira Wiley, who played Moira, exclusively told Us Weekly in May when asked if she’d make a cameo. “I have never had the pleasure of playing a character for eight years and never had a character whose journey that I’ve been able to tell this story from the beginning all the way to the end. I’ll miss my cast mates very, very much. But I’ll also miss her [Moira]. I’ll miss the fictional character of Moira that I was able to create.”
O-T Fagbenle (Luke Bankole, Hannah’s dad) and Sam Jaeger (Mark Tuello), meanwhile, would both be open to reprising their roles.
“It was so funny when I learned how they were creating The Testaments. Originally in the book, it was so much further in the future,” Jaeger, 48, told Us. “I just assumed that it was different, and they would have a different actor come in, but it doesn’t seem they’ve shifted things in a way. If they want me back, I would probably willingly do that. It’s such a great group of people. And to see the next iteration — I’m excited to see it as just a fan.”
The Testaments premieres on Hulu in April 2026.
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