Daisy’s Parents Revealed in The Testaments: The Twist That Could Upend The Handmaid’s Tale Timeline
The Testaments blows up Margaret Atwood’s blueprint—starting with a radical rethink of Daisy. Set roughly four years after The Handmaid’s Tale’s finale and June’s liberation of Boston, Hulu’s sequel charges into Gilead on its own terms.
Hulu has rolled out The Testaments, a sequel series to The Handmaid's Tale, and it is already messing with the book in some pretty major ways. Biggest swing so far: what the show is doing with Daisy.
Heads up: spoilers for The Testaments episodes 1-3 and for Margaret Atwood's book.
Where The Testaments picks up
The show lands about four years after The Handmaid's Tale finale, the one where June Osborne and a whole lot of former Handmaids helped liberate Boston. Now we pivot to a younger set of players: Agnes, a Gilead-raised girl being groomed to become a Commander's wife, and Daisy, a new arrival from Canada who supposedly came to Gilead for a better life.
Daisy in the show: not a Pearl Girl, a plant
Daisy is not in Gilead to be a Pearl Girl (their perky, missionary-lite recruiters). She is there to gather intel for Mayday, the resistance network. The show reveals that Daisy was actually born in Gilead, smuggled out as a baby, and raised in Canada by Neil and Melanie as their own. That peace ends when Gilead targets their shop and kills them. June shows up to lay out the truth — yes, Elisabeth Moss pops in for a cameo — and Daisy redirects her grief into revenge. The lingering question the series is clearly saving for later: who are Daisy's biological parents?
The book did it differently
In Atwood's novel, Daisy turns out to be the daughter of June and Nick (technically Offred, since the books never give her real name). Her arc serves a similar function, but the timing is different: there's a bigger age gap between Daisy and Agnes, and Daisy doesn't enter the story until a few more years have passed. Also key: the book is set about 15 years after the original Handmaid's Tale novel, which ends at the same point season 1 of the TV show wraps, so the timelines don't line up cleanly.
No, Daisy is not Nichole
"Daisy is not Nichole."
Showrunner Bruce Miller confirmed that in an interview with Deadline, but the math already gave it away. Back in season 1, Hannah was about eight, and that was before Holly/Nichole was even conceived. The series has always been a little fuzzy with time — Hannah basically hit growth spurts while Nichole stayed a toddler — but there are still roughly 9-10 years between them. Nichole was still tiny at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, so there was no realistic path to making her a teenager here.
June still has a tie to Daisy
Even if Daisy isn't her kid, June has clearly known about her for a while. She knew Neil and Melanie, she knows Daisy's backstory, and she steps in at exactly the right moment, which hints at a deeper connection. And purely on casting vibes, Lucy Halliday's Daisy looks and moves like she could be June's teen daughter — the resemblance is uncanny. This switch-up also changes the Agnes/Daisy dynamic: unlike in the book, they're not on a collision course to discover they share the same mother.
So who are Daisy's real parents?
The show is telegraphing a reveal, but the obvious options don't fit neatly:
- Janine's daughter Charlotte/Angela? Unlikely. She's only about a year older than Nichole, which doesn't match Daisy's age, and it doesn't fit the 'smuggled out as a baby' detail.
- One of the 86 kids from Angel's Flight, the season 3 rescue into Canada? Cool connective tissue, but those children were older — not babies — which clashes with Daisy's origin story.
- A different Handmaid's child we haven't met? Very possible. It keeps Daisy linked to June's world without breaking the show's already-wobbly timeline.
- Given the build-up, expect the parents to be someone we know. The risk: forcing it could mangle the timeline even more.
Release plan
The Testaments drops new episodes on Wednesdays on Hulu.