Is Elisabeth Moss Returning as June in The Testaments Spinoff? What We Know So Far
Hulu expands The Handmaid's Tale with The Testaments — and the big question is whether Elisabeth Moss is back as June. After a coy tease on The View in March, here's what she's saying now.
Hulu is not done with Gilead. The Testaments picks up the thread a few years after The Handmaid's Tale ended, and yes, the big question was whether Elisabeth Moss would actually show up. Short answer: she does. Longer answer below.
So, did Elisabeth Moss come back as June?
In March, Moss played coy on The View when they asked if she was returning. She also made it clear she stayed close to the franchise by producing the spinoff, which, in her words, meant she did not have to say goodbye to that world. She even shouted out Chase Infiniti, who plays her onscreen daughter, calling it an honor to work with her and pitching The Testaments as something that works for both longtime fans and total newbies.
'I couldn't tell you if I was! It’s been really cool. [Producing the show] means I didn't have to say goodbye to the world, which I was very happy about.'
One month later, when The Testaments premiered, Moss popped up in several episodes. So, yes — the secret was safely kept until it wasn’t.
Where this lands in the timeline
The Handmaid's Tale (based on Margaret Atwood's novel) ran from 2017 to 2025 and lived in a brutal near-future where plummeting fertility rates turned women into state-controlled surrogates. The Testaments jumps ahead about three to four years. This time, Ann Dowd's Aunt Lydia is our narrator, and the story splinters across Gilead and Canada: Agnes and Daisy go undercover as 'Pearl Girls' to get into Canada and move incriminating intel about Gilead's regime, while Aunt Lydia quietly feeds information from the inside.
Who is in it
- Chase Infiniti (25)
- Ann Dowd
- Eva Foote
- Rowan Blanchard
- Kira Guloien
- Amy Seimetz
- Brad Alexander
- Birva Pandya
- Zarrin Darnell-Martin
- Mattea Conforti
- Shechinah Mpumlwana
- Mabel Li
- Isolde Ardies
How closely it sticks to Atwood
Creator Bruce Miller has been upfront that this is a sequel to the TV series first, not a page-by-page adaptation of Atwood's The Testaments. Back in 2022, he told TVLine they had to deviate from the novel’s hyper-specific character work on The Handmaid's Tale and would do the same here.
'It’s not going to track precisely.'
A small, telling on-set moment
Chase Infiniti told People in January that she did not really meet Moss until the end of filming. When they finally crossed paths, Moss basically handed her the baton with a hug and some simple, very June energy:
'You got this. You got this. OK? You got it.'
When and where to watch
The Testaments premiered April 8 on Hulu.