The Testaments (1.01 - 1.03
Apr. 10th, 2026 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThe first three episodes of The Testaments have been dropped in my part of the world on Disney +. It's an adapatation of Margaret Atwood's novel of the same name, which is a decades later written sequel to her famous dystopian classic The Handmaid's Tale; when it was published, I reviewed it here. Just to make their lives more complicated, though, the show is also a sequel to the tv series The Handmaid's Tale. The first (very good) season of which I watched, but not the later ones, as word of mouth about diminishing quality and lack of time have detained me, but I did osmose this presents a problem because not only is the backstory the showin its later seasons developed for one of the central characters (Aunt Lydia) very different from her backstory in the novel, but the timeline of another central character is different as well. With this in mind, my spoilery reaction to the first three episodes is beneath the cut. Above cut: those first three episodes are well acted and produced and make some interesting choices re: adapting the source material - and I don't mean "interesting" as a euphemism for bad -, but haven't revealed yet how they'll solve the Lydia problem.
First of all, what is instantly noticable is both what is kept (and wasn't kept in both the previous adaptations of The Handmaid's Tale) and what is altered about the way the story is told. By which I mean: like "1984", the granddaddy of terrible 20th century written dystopias, The Handmaid's Tale, the novel, has an afterword written from an academic pov decades after the fall of the society it describes, which is the only grim reassurance you the reader get to the terror described, i.e. this horrible society, contrary to what its powerful people believe, will not last. Now, both Schlöndorff's movie and the first season of the Handmaid's Tale tv show ignore the afterward (understandably in the later case). The Testaments consists of, well, the recorded testimony of the three narrators put together AFTER the fall of Gilead, and in this tv show, this is made clear from the start. Possibly because of the world we're currently living on; that reassurance is emotionally needed, is what I mean.
On the other hand, while the novel switches between three narrators - Lydia, Agnes and Daisy - the tv series in its first three episodes has stuck to Agnes' pov for the first two episodes and Daisy's for the third, and avoided Lydia's pov altogether so far, keeping her very much on the periphery . This, I suspect, goes with the fact the tv show goes far more for a mystery structure, and also a different starting point. A book reader knows from the beginning who Daisy is, and she doesn't encounter Agnes until mid point or so. (As far as I recall, but it's been years since I read the novel.) A book reader also knows from the start Lydia isn't who the girls think she is because we get her first person narration. Whereas this show has the encounter between Agnes and Daisy happen in the first episode, remaining strictly in Agnes' pov where she assumes Daisy is there to spy on her for the Aunts, and while giving us hints in the first two eps this isn't exactly the case doesn't fill us in on Daisy's backstory until episode 3, and then not completely. So "What is Daisy up to?" is an ongoing question these first three episodes when it's not in the novel.
Another difference is that they seem to have melded two schools together, because the instiution where Agnes and Daisy do encounter each other in the novel, which has the statue to Aunt Lydia, isn't the one for Commanders' daughters, it's, SPOILER, for future Aunts and comes after Lydia has already intervened in Agnes' and Becca's lives, which she hasn't yet done in the show. (That Agnes knows.)
Another big difference is that June is there. She's not in the novel except for the very end, the very last scene. Presumably the show writers decided this would not fly with an audience who comes to the show primarily from the previous show where June was the main character. So June gets the narrative place of the person who recruits Daisy into Mayday in the novel (as we see in the flashbacks revealing key parts of Daisy's backstory in episode 3), which is a fascinating choice, especially if Daisy is still who she is in the book, but even if she isn't. Because in terms of the larger story, the person recruiting Daisy after her adopted parents' deaths will sell her on the incredibly dangerous mission to Gilead, and few things would underline June's current ruthlessness more than her doing that to any teenage girl, never mind *spoiler*. Elizabeth Moss plays those scenes beautifully, btw, all lintensity a mixture between empathy, ruthlessness, and determination.
One last thing about Daisy - as a reader, I found her voice the least convincing of the three perhaps precisely because she's meant to be the most "normal", i.e. a teenage girl who grew up not in Gilead but in a similar society to our own. I didn't have that problem with the tv version, and kudos to the young actress who plays essentially two characters - Daisy as she appears to Agnes at first and how she has to appear in Gilead, the zealous convert, and Daisy in the flashbacks as well as when she breaks cover in Gilead. The scene where the first breaking of the zealous convert facade happens - when the students cheer on the punishment (dismemberment of an arm) of a man who leered at them - was incredibly well shot and played, with the dawning horror on Daisy's face (who has heard about these rituals but has never ever seen something like this done to another human being, and it shows).
So far, though, Agnes is the main character of the tv series, and while the show does rely more on a mystery structure than the book, the casting alone makes it clear from the get go she's really Hannah, June's older daughter. She's the pov introducing us to Gilead this time around, and the filming is committed to that - for example, on the rare occasion (just one so far) when Agnes comes across her father and other Commanders, we see them solely from her pov and in bits and pieces as she first observes from a door frame and then goes into the room, kneeling down in front of her father and isn't allowed to look anyone else in the face. And when the girls during an excursion get into a brief fire fight and have to run into a house for cover, again we only see what Agnes and Daisy see while cowering down. This pov limitation is used to great and brutal effect as well when early on Agnes and her friends are cheerfully strolling and then you see dangling feet from above getting into the camera frame and realise they're passing hanging bodies.
(Which isn't to say there are no sweeping shots - the introduction sequence to where Agnes lives, the large estate of the Commander she thinks is her father, for example, or the various differently dressed groups of girls entering and leaving the school.)
Agnes in the book starts as a true believer in Gilead who responds to the growing evidence (as she gets older) of not just horrible-to-us sights like the reminders of executions but of the inner corruption of Gilead by first trying to believe it's just a few corrupt people, not that the system is completely wrong, and it takes the varous events of the novel to push her further, which I always thought was psychologically plausible. The show's version of Agnes seems to follow a similar arc; we can see she's got a compassionate nature (affection for "her" Martha Rose, not ratting Daisy out for her reaction to the assembly despite at this point not liking her, supporting her friend Becca), but she's still fully integrated into the system she's been raised in, participating in the orchestrated rage outbursts, taking it for granted that marriage (and motherhood) is her sole purpose (which causes a mixture between dread and anticipation in her), etc. I found it interesting that while her stepmother Paula was introduced unsympathetically in the first episode (true to the book), she does get a less hostile scene in the second episode when she adivises Agnes on her first period. It reminded me of the fact that while Serena Joy in the Handmaid's Tale novel and both adaptations has been a villainess, the tv show added layers to the hows and whys of her without making her lass culpable. That scene could hint at them doing something similar with Paula (who is relentlessly unsympathetic in the novel, though also not that present once Agnes ends up in the Aunts' school). By contrast, Agnes' contrast of her dead first adopted mother, Tabitha, are more important in the early part of the novel than they were in these first three episodes, w here we only get one of those memories. Possibly because the show audience is aware, as book Agnes was not at this point, that Tabitha wasn't her biological mother, either? Then again, the scenes between June and Daisy in episode 3 include a great and passionate speech by June about Daisy's adopted parents (as Daisy reacts to the reveal they weren't her biological parents with the shocked assertion that she would have known if they weren't her "real" parents, to which June basically says they loved her and raised her so they are her real parents, so it's not like the show pushes a "only biological parenthood counts" subtext here.
The actress playing Becca, a very important supporting role, is also great, saying so much with her face. Not just but especially if you know what's happening to Becca during this time which Agnes only finds out later.
Lastly: during one of the Daisy-in-Canada flashbacks in episode 3, Daisy talks about learning about Gilead in schoool, about how it didn't happen overnight and there were early signs according to her teacher, like when people were voted into office who bashed gay people and openly talked about how women should solely be mothers and wives again and were cheered on by their voters. I don't think Margaret Atwood was as blatant as this in the novel, but I can see why the scriptwriters had to.
First of all, what is instantly noticable is both what is kept (and wasn't kept in both the previous adaptations of The Handmaid's Tale) and what is altered about the way the story is told. By which I mean: like "1984", the granddaddy of terrible 20th century written dystopias, The Handmaid's Tale, the novel, has an afterword written from an academic pov decades after the fall of the society it describes, which is the only grim reassurance you the reader get to the terror described, i.e. this horrible society, contrary to what its powerful people believe, will not last. Now, both Schlöndorff's movie and the first season of the Handmaid's Tale tv show ignore the afterward (understandably in the later case). The Testaments consists of, well, the recorded testimony of the three narrators put together AFTER the fall of Gilead, and in this tv show, this is made clear from the start. Possibly because of the world we're currently living on; that reassurance is emotionally needed, is what I mean.
On the other hand, while the novel switches between three narrators - Lydia, Agnes and Daisy - the tv series in its first three episodes has stuck to Agnes' pov for the first two episodes and Daisy's for the third, and avoided Lydia's pov altogether so far, keeping her very much on the periphery . This, I suspect, goes with the fact the tv show goes far more for a mystery structure, and also a different starting point. A book reader knows from the beginning who Daisy is, and she doesn't encounter Agnes until mid point or so. (As far as I recall, but it's been years since I read the novel.) A book reader also knows from the start Lydia isn't who the girls think she is because we get her first person narration. Whereas this show has the encounter between Agnes and Daisy happen in the first episode, remaining strictly in Agnes' pov where she assumes Daisy is there to spy on her for the Aunts, and while giving us hints in the first two eps this isn't exactly the case doesn't fill us in on Daisy's backstory until episode 3, and then not completely. So "What is Daisy up to?" is an ongoing question these first three episodes when it's not in the novel.
Another difference is that they seem to have melded two schools together, because the instiution where Agnes and Daisy do encounter each other in the novel, which has the statue to Aunt Lydia, isn't the one for Commanders' daughters, it's, SPOILER, for future Aunts and comes after Lydia has already intervened in Agnes' and Becca's lives, which she hasn't yet done in the show. (That Agnes knows.)
Another big difference is that June is there. She's not in the novel except for the very end, the very last scene. Presumably the show writers decided this would not fly with an audience who comes to the show primarily from the previous show where June was the main character. So June gets the narrative place of the person who recruits Daisy into Mayday in the novel (as we see in the flashbacks revealing key parts of Daisy's backstory in episode 3), which is a fascinating choice, especially if Daisy is still who she is in the book, but even if she isn't. Because in terms of the larger story, the person recruiting Daisy after her adopted parents' deaths will sell her on the incredibly dangerous mission to Gilead, and few things would underline June's current ruthlessness more than her doing that to any teenage girl, never mind *spoiler*. Elizabeth Moss plays those scenes beautifully, btw, all lintensity a mixture between empathy, ruthlessness, and determination.
One last thing about Daisy - as a reader, I found her voice the least convincing of the three perhaps precisely because she's meant to be the most "normal", i.e. a teenage girl who grew up not in Gilead but in a similar society to our own. I didn't have that problem with the tv version, and kudos to the young actress who plays essentially two characters - Daisy as she appears to Agnes at first and how she has to appear in Gilead, the zealous convert, and Daisy in the flashbacks as well as when she breaks cover in Gilead. The scene where the first breaking of the zealous convert facade happens - when the students cheer on the punishment (dismemberment of an arm) of a man who leered at them - was incredibly well shot and played, with the dawning horror on Daisy's face (who has heard about these rituals but has never ever seen something like this done to another human being, and it shows).
So far, though, Agnes is the main character of the tv series, and while the show does rely more on a mystery structure than the book, the casting alone makes it clear from the get go she's really Hannah, June's older daughter. She's the pov introducing us to Gilead this time around, and the filming is committed to that - for example, on the rare occasion (just one so far) when Agnes comes across her father and other Commanders, we see them solely from her pov and in bits and pieces as she first observes from a door frame and then goes into the room, kneeling down in front of her father and isn't allowed to look anyone else in the face. And when the girls during an excursion get into a brief fire fight and have to run into a house for cover, again we only see what Agnes and Daisy see while cowering down. This pov limitation is used to great and brutal effect as well when early on Agnes and her friends are cheerfully strolling and then you see dangling feet from above getting into the camera frame and realise they're passing hanging bodies.
(Which isn't to say there are no sweeping shots - the introduction sequence to where Agnes lives, the large estate of the Commander she thinks is her father, for example, or the various differently dressed groups of girls entering and leaving the school.)
Agnes in the book starts as a true believer in Gilead who responds to the growing evidence (as she gets older) of not just horrible-to-us sights like the reminders of executions but of the inner corruption of Gilead by first trying to believe it's just a few corrupt people, not that the system is completely wrong, and it takes the varous events of the novel to push her further, which I always thought was psychologically plausible. The show's version of Agnes seems to follow a similar arc; we can see she's got a compassionate nature (affection for "her" Martha Rose, not ratting Daisy out for her reaction to the assembly despite at this point not liking her, supporting her friend Becca), but she's still fully integrated into the system she's been raised in, participating in the orchestrated rage outbursts, taking it for granted that marriage (and motherhood) is her sole purpose (which causes a mixture between dread and anticipation in her), etc. I found it interesting that while her stepmother Paula was introduced unsympathetically in the first episode (true to the book), she does get a less hostile scene in the second episode when she adivises Agnes on her first period. It reminded me of the fact that while Serena Joy in the Handmaid's Tale novel and both adaptations has been a villainess, the tv show added layers to the hows and whys of her without making her lass culpable. That scene could hint at them doing something similar with Paula (who is relentlessly unsympathetic in the novel, though also not that present once Agnes ends up in the Aunts' school). By contrast, Agnes' contrast of her dead first adopted mother, Tabitha, are more important in the early part of the novel than they were in these first three episodes, w here we only get one of those memories. Possibly because the show audience is aware, as book Agnes was not at this point, that Tabitha wasn't her biological mother, either? Then again, the scenes between June and Daisy in episode 3 include a great and passionate speech by June about Daisy's adopted parents (as Daisy reacts to the reveal they weren't her biological parents with the shocked assertion that she would have known if they weren't her "real" parents, to which June basically says they loved her and raised her so they are her real parents, so it's not like the show pushes a "only biological parenthood counts" subtext here.
The actress playing Becca, a very important supporting role, is also great, saying so much with her face. Not just but especially if you know what's happening to Becca during this time which Agnes only finds out later.
Lastly: during one of the Daisy-in-Canada flashbacks in episode 3, Daisy talks about learning about Gilead in schoool, about how it didn't happen overnight and there were early signs according to her teacher, like when people were voted into office who bashed gay people and openly talked about how women should solely be mothers and wives again and were cheered on by their voters. I don't think Margaret Atwood was as blatant as this in the novel, but I can see why the scriptwriters had to.
