The Testaments Spinoff Unveils Its Cast — Featuring Handmaid's Tale Alums

Hulu is officially widening The Handmaid's Tale world with The Testaments, a follow-up series set years later that shifts the spotlight and doubles down on the regime-toppling intrigue. If you want the who, what, and why-now of it all, here’s the lay of the land and who is playing whom.

Where this lands in the timeline (and behind the scenes)

The Testaments is positioned as a sequel to the TV show, not a straight shot-for-shot of Margaret Atwood’s book. After Hulu announced The Handmaid’s Tale would end with its next season back in 2022, longtime creator Bruce Miller stepped back from showrunning duties on the mothership to focus on developing The Testaments. Day-to-day on Handmaid’s shifted to executive producers Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang.

Miller has been clear the spinoff will chart its own course while staying in the show’s continuity: it is set 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, and it won’t track the source material precisely.

'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... How did it collapse? How do these kinds of regimes disappear? I was interested in exploring that.'

— Margaret Atwood, on what drove The Testaments

What The Testaments is actually about

The series returns to Gilead with Aunt Lydia serving as our narrator and a covert player inside the regime. Two new focal points are Agnes (from Gilead) and Daisy (from Canada), who start quietly collecting and smuggling incriminating information out of the country. The pair pose as 'Pearl Girls' to infiltrate Canada — yes, that’s Gilead’s missionary cover — while Lydia feeds intel from within. Star Chase Infiniti has teased a 'beautiful darkness' to the spinoff’s tone, which frankly tracks.

The cast so far

• Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia — returning from the original series, now a key figure working to help bring Gilead down from the inside.
• Chase Infiniti as Agnes — June’s daughter, raised in Gilead and formerly known as Hannah, who becomes part of the resistance.
• Lucy Halliday as Daisy — a Canadian teenager whose life is upended as she becomes crucial to taking down Gilead.
• Rowan Blanchard as Shunammite — a pampered, prominent Gilead girl whose path intersects with Agnes and Daisy.
• Mattea Conforti as Becka — described as a kind but shy girl from a lower-class background who becomes a Supplicant and ally.
• Mabel Li as Aunt Vidala — a powerful, hardline Aunt vying for authority.
• Amy Seimetz as Paula — Agnes’s harsh stepmother.

Atwood is in the loop (and there are new outfits)

Atwood has been consulting as the TV universe pivots to The Testaments. She says she reads scripts and gives notes — influence, not control — and that she and Miller are generally aligned. Also, costumes are getting an update. Atwood has said people love uniforms that clearly telegraph who is who, and the spinoff will introduce some new looks accordingly.

A quick rewind to the original series

Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale launched in 2017, adapted from Atwood’s 1985 novel about a near-future theocracy born from a fertility crisis that assigns women to bear children. The series stars Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Madeline Brewer, Ann Dowd, O-T Fagbenle, Max Minghella, Samira Wiley, and Amanda Brugel. As of now, the only returning caster officially locked for The Testaments is Dowd; no word yet on additional crossover players.