I’m going to be very honest here: I hated watching The Testaments. It’s not that it’s not an expertly crafted series, it is – the writing is good (if a bit on the nose), the acting is stellar (especially the core group of young women at its center), and the design of the show is perfectly terrifying. And I’ve read the Margaret Atwood novel it is based on – the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale – and enjoyed it, so it’s not the story itself that is the issue (although the series makes a key change from the book that I’m not sure works as well – more on that in a minute). But, much like the later seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale series, it’s excruciatingly hard to watch The Testaments because everything in this story is hewing just a bit too closely to the current political climate in America. And, frankly, I’m not at a point where I can watch something this horrific – something that is clearly coded as a warning to our current state as a nation* – and enjoy it as entertainment. And if you’re like me and really don’t want to stare down the barrel of what could very reasonably happen here, well, I can’t in good conscience recommend watching it.
*Case in point: a voiceover from Daisy, one of our two leads, early in the series lays out just how Gilead got to this place, highlighting that politicians started talking about how women should be subservient to men and people dismissed it as crazy. And then one day, they woke up and women had no rights. And as for gay people? Well, we all know what Gilead does to them. If you watched The Handmaid’s Tale, one of the most effective episodes was the flashback of this happening to June (Elisabeth Moss). And, if you’re paying attention to the news, this is a point of view that a segment of the current Presidential Cabinet seems to ascribe to.
But if you’re able to dive into this particular story at this time, here’s what you’re signing up for. The series takes place after the end of The Handmaid’s Tale – although you don’t need to have watched that show in its entirety to follow the action here. Our dual leads are Agnes (Chase Infiniti – the perfect choice for this difficult role), the adopted daughter of a mid-level Commander who is about to start the process of trying to find a husband, and Daisy (Lucy Halliday, a great find), a recent arrival from Toronto who has joined the Pearl Girls (a pious group of transplants learning about the ways of Gilead) who Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd, reprising her role) pairs with Agnes. Of course, there’s a deeper connection between the girls that is hinted at early on and more or less confirmed by mid-season (that I won’t spoil here, but it follows the book). However, unlike in the novel, the girls appear to be roughly the same age – which doesn’t quite work should the series want to hew close to the novel.
The girls go to a finishing school of sorts, which is where we meet Agnes’ friends – a host of girls from other prominent Gilead families. There’s Shunammite (Rowan Blanchard, perfectly bitchy), the group’s mean girl who still buys into the lies of Gilead, Huldah, (Islolde Ardies) the nerdy one of the group, and Becka (Mattea Conforti, for my money, the strongest actor of this lot), Agnes’ best friend with a secret that might break her. Watching these girls try to navigate a world that is set up to value them only insomuch as they can provide children and tend a home is hard. But watching them slowly come to the realization that the tale they have been sold isn’t really what they want – or what they thought it would be – is the tragedy of the series. Of course, much like The Handmaid’s Tale, the arc is pretty clear: girls believe (with various levels of fervor) in the promise of Gilead, they start to realize that it’s not safe or what they want and there’s a world out there that would be better, and they try to navigate a way out and a way to change things. When the story is pretty clear-cut from the jump, you need a hook to keep the audience invested (because you can’t just let the characters wake up and then try to escape – that’s not going to sustain a series). And here, it’s the relationships between the girls.
While the core cast are all young adults playing teenagers, the chemistry between them all works so well you don’t really think about the age difference. You can easily buy into these deep friendships – especially the Becka-Anges friendship and the burgeoning one between Agnes and Daisy, both of which are essential for this series to work as well as it does in the novel. Infiniti, who is having a hell of a year between this and One Battle After Another, is great as Agnes. She starts the show protected from the deeper horrors of this world, innocent in a way that other characters are not. But over the course of the first few episodes it becomes clear that there is a rebellious streak to the character – not overt, not revolutionary, but Infiniti makes sure we see the questioning in her eyes, that Agnes doesn’t accept everything here at face value. And Halliday’s Daisy is a cypher early on until we get a clear look at just who she is and why she’s here in Gilead – and Halliday is great at showing us just how tenuous Daisy’s place within this world is. But it’s Conforti’s Becka that is the most interesting and compelling of all the young characters. Struggling with a deep secret, she’s terrified at the prospect of being married off – because unlike her classmates, she truly understands her “worth” within Gilead and doesn’t want anything to do with the world. A dangerous place to be, but one that makes her fear, worry, and inability to tell anyone – not even Agnes – what she wants all the more tragic.
Like I said up top, this is a good show with a good cast. It’s just not something that I want to watch at this moment in time – which is something I suspect will be the case for a lot of people. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the show. The writing can be a bit abrupt at times (it is certainly not subtle and would much rather scream out a point than tease it out), but that was the case with The Handmaid’s Tale as well. If you were a stalwart who stuck that show out until the end, there’s a lot here for you to enjoy. But if like me, you had to tap out before the end, The Testaments is likely not going to be for you. Perhaps down the road, when things here are a bit less Gilead-adjacent, I’ll come back to this one. But for now, I’m going to have to step away.
The Testaments premieres on April 8. All ten episodes were provided for review.
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