BACK IN 1985, renowned author Margaret Atwood wrote a novel that still has chilling relevance in the world.

The Handmaid’s Tale is the story of Offred, a woman living in the Republic of Gilead. The dystopian tale is set during an imagined time when the United States government has been overthrown and its new patriarchal rulers limit women’s rights to a terrifying degree. 

Atwood famously said that all of the details in her novel were taken from real life, though the story of its protagonist Offred – who effectively becomes a slave in the home of some of the ruling class in Gilead – was thankfully fiction.

In 2016 a TV series of the Handmaid’s Tale was created by Bruce Miller, starring Elisabeth Moss as Offred. It expanded her story across six seasons before coming to an end last year.

Now comes a new series, The Testaments, which is is also set in the Handmaid’s Tale universe.

Here’s what you need to know about The Testaments.

What’s it about?

Disney+ Disney+

This latest series – which also has Bruce Miller behind it – is based on Atwood’s 2019 novel The Testaments, which is set 15 years after the Handmaid’s Tale.

The focus in this book and series is on the next generation of women born after Offred, (aka June Osborne), a mother who is separated from her husband and daughter at the beginning of the story.

The Testaments is mainly set at an academy presided over by Aunt Lydia, who was also in the previous series. Ann Dowd returns in this role.

The girls attending her academy are being prepared for marriage to the Commanders, who are the ruling (all male) class of Gilead. So this series combines a coming-of-age story with the dystopian situation we’re familiar with from the first series/book.

Who stars in the series?

Chase Infiniti as Agnes Disney+ Disney+

Chase Infiniti – who you’ll recognise from the Oscar-winning One Battle After Another – stars as Agnes MacKenzie. Agnes’s real name is Hannah, and she’s June Osborne/Offred’s daughter. But it appears she doesn’t know much about her legacy.

Also playing a major role is the Scottish actor Lucy Halliday as Daisy, a young Canadian teen who joins the school. She has discovered her own link to Gilead and there are hidden reasons as to why she decamped to the country.

Unlike June, Agnes and her friends don’t know any other world besides Gilead. 

What else do we know about the school?

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In the original series, colour helped to show what role people played across society (the handmaids, for example, wore red).

In The Testaments, Daisy wears white because she is a ‘Pearl Girl’, or an Aunt-in-training, while Agnes wears plum because she’s eligible to be married, and such girls are known as ‘Plums’.

Reports say this series starts off as lighter than its predecessor, at least initially. But as Daisy gets more embedded into the school, secrets are unveiled.

Meanwhile, the series will also contain flashbacks to Aunt Lydia’s life. In The Handmaid’s Tale she was a tyrant who eventually had to come to terms with the horrors being inflicted on women in Gilead. 

In this series, we find out more about how she wants to overthrow Gilead from the inside. No doubt Agnes and Daisy will play a role here. 

What are the makers of The Testaments saying about it?

Daisy, Aunt Lydia and Agnes Disney+ Disney+

Here’s what Disney has to say:

As they navigate the gilded halls of Aunt Lydia’s elite preparatory school for future wives, a place where obedience is instilled brutally and always with divine justification, their bond becomes the catalyst that will upend their past, their present, and their future.

Bruce Miller told The Hollywood Reporter:

“There are parts of the [Testaments] book that take place very far in the future, and we want to save those things for far in the future; they’re goals we’re working towards.”

But there’s a compact bit of the story that takes place with the girls when they’re going through this process of finding husbands. That, as a core, is what we’re shooting for.

Here’s how Miller describes Aunt Lydia:

“She has put herself in a position where she doesn’t have to do the bad things anymore — but she’s absolutely at the center of influence and power.”

Meanwhile, Infiniti said in the same article: “I feel like The Testaments has a beautiful darkness to it because it has this very youthful, bright appearance that’s blanketed over all the cruel things that happen to these girls.” 

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When can we watch the series?

The Testaments will begin streaming on Disney+ this coming Wednesday, 8 April. It will launch with three episodes, followed by weekly episodes.