The sixth season of the adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale may have just finished, but streamer Hulu doesn’t plan to loosen its grip on the famed Margaret Atwood saga. Next up will be The Testaments, an adaptation of Atwood’s Handmaid’s sequel, which was published in 2019 — more than three decades after its predecessor.
The Testaments takes place more than 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale and will pick back up inside the Republic of Gilead, a dystopian theocracy built on what former Handmaid’s Tale showrunner Bruce Miller called 'a perversion, misreading of Old Testament laws and codes.' The story follows three women — Aunt Lydia, Agnes, and Daisy—as their lives weave together under Gilead’s iron fist.
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Here’s what we know about the new series so far.
Who is developing The Testaments?
Hulu and MGM Television scooped up the rights to Atwood’s sequel before it even hit shelves, and per The Hollywood Reporter, Miller has been hard at work on developing The Testaments for 'several years.' As he did with The Handmaid’s Tale, he will lead The Testaments as showrunner.
Miller has also stressed that The Testaments will explore 'the top of the food chain for women in Gilead' — marking a narrative shift away from The Handmaid’s Tale. 'It's a look at the lives of these young women and Hannah and her friends, who were at the very top of the heap, and about to be married, whereas June was at the bottom of the heap,' Miller told TV Guide in May 2025. 'It's all these wonderful things and all these horrible things. If you're in Gilead, a lesson that Agnes, or, excuse me, Hannah, will learn is that whether you're on the top or the bottom, it's difficult to be a woman in Gilead and it's difficult to live in a world that doesn't respect them.'
Miller stepped down as showrunner for The Handmaid’s Tale ahead of its sixth and final season to focus on The Testaments, opening the door for executive producers and writers Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang to take over Handmaid’s closing season.
Who’s in the cast? Will Elisabeth Moss appear as June?
Ann Dowd will reprise her Handmaid’s role as Aunt Lydia, while Chase Infiniti (Presumed Innocent) will step into the role of Agnes and newcomer Lucy Halliday (Blue Jean) will play Daisy. Alongside them will be Rowan Blanchard (Poker Face) as Shunammite, whom Deadline reports is 'a pampered teen from a prominent Gilead family whose status affords her a certain level of respect and power amongst her peers.'
Mattea Conforti has also signed on to star as Becka, Agnes’s school friend who begins to question her Gilead-Girl life, while Mabel Li plays Aunt Vidala, the heir-apparent in the Aunts’ hierarchy.
While she has signed on to executive produce the series, according to Deadline, 'the hope has been' for Handmaid’s lead actor Elisabeth Moss to also reprise her role as June in The Testaments, but it is 'uncertain whether that would happen.'
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Miller discussed June's involvement and how it would affect the finale of season six of The Handmaid's Tale.
'When [Atwood’s sequel novel] The Testaments comes out, you know certain things — you know that June’s not dying, you know [her daughter] Hannah is still in Gilead. There’s a whole other book about that story.' He added: 'You appreciate the end of the novel and why leaving you loose ends is still satisfying because you feel like, "This woman is still around. She made it this far." If she didn’t make it any further, that’s okay, but what a story of her making it this far. It is the story of women through history.'
He also revealed that when Atwood decided to write The Testaments she spoke to Miller and gave him a short 'no kill list' of Aunt Lydia and June's daughters.
'Margaret came to me as soon as she was having the inkling [of writing The Testaments], so it was very early for me to get the information,' he told The Hollywood Reporter. 'She let me know as the creator of the world that things might be shifting a little under my feet. The show went past the book, The Handmaid’s Tale. So I was trying to come up with an ending that fit well and certainly I was playing with a lot of the things that she talked about doing in The Testaments. But this is called The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s not June’s Tale. It’s her time as a handmaid. And at the end, the final episode is that she’s not a handmaid anymore in any way, shape or form. She’s nobody’s handmaid: She’s Onjune.'
When will The Testaments start filming?
Production officially kicked off on April 7 in Toronto, one day before the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale premiered in the States. To mark the occasion, Hulu released a photograph of the cast at their first table read alongside Bruce Miller and the series' executive producer and director Mike Barker in attendance.
When will The Testaments be released?
With production now underway, the show is estimated to premiere in 2026, possibly stretching into early 2027.
This story will be updated.
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Naomi May is a seasoned culture journalist and editor with over ten years’ worth of experience in shaping stories and building digital communities. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard, where she worked across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Digital Editor at ELLE Magazine and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others. Naomi is also the host of the ELLE Collective book club.
