‘The Testaments’: Trailer for ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Sequel Series Reveals a Coming-of-Age Thriller

Coming of age in the universe of The Handmaid’s Tale was always going to be a horror story, and the new trailer for The Testaments reveals just how terrifying things will get for the girls who are growing up in Gilead.

Hulu has released the highly anticipated first look at the sequel series to the Emmy-winning Margaret Atwood adaptation that captivated viewers for six seasons until it signed off in May 2025. The Handmaid’s Tale brought the Elisabeth Moss-starring tale full circle, but also set her protagonist June Osborne on an open-ended journey when she vowed to never stop fighting for the return of her first daughter Hannah, who has been renamed Agnes ever since she was taken from her and is now growing up as a young teen in Gilead.

Now enter The Testaments, and viewers meet grown-up Agnes, who is played by Chase Infiniti. The trailer shows Agnes as a “Plum” (colors mean everything in Gilead), which means she is coming of age under the totalitarian regime that her mother and a growing resistance are fighting against, and is in training to be a Gilead wife.

“It’s easier to accept a story than believe that the people around you are monsters,” Agnes begins in the two-minute trailer (below), which is set to The Cranberries’ iconic ’90s staple “Dreams.” As the trailer gets deeper into its introduction, Agnes’ plum view on her world gets darker and darker, as familiar Gileadean images of this patriarchal world surface, like people being hung on “the wall” and the Wives laying down Gilead law to their “daughters.”

But the trailer ends with the key ingredients of The Handmaid’s Tale — resistance and hope. Agnes grabs the hands of her fellow Plums and vows to fight. “We had no idea what we were capable of,” she says, trying on her mother’s famously irreverent smile. “It was time for us to change things.”

The Testaments, adapted from Atwood’s sequel novel of the same name, comes from the showrunner and executive producers of The Handmaid’s Tale series. The MGM Television and 20th Television sequel series is created by showrunner/executive producer Bruce Miller and is executive produced by Warren Littlefield, Moss, Steve Stark, Shana Stein, Maya Goldsmith, John Weber, Sheila Hockin, Daniel Wilson, Fran Sears and Mike Barker, the latter who will also direct the first three episodes and finale.

The cast includes The Handmaid’s Tale‘s Emmy-winning star Ann Dowd, reprising her role of Aunt Lydia, alongside the new cast of Infiniti, Lucy Halliday, Mabel Li, Amy Seimetz, Brad Alexander, Rowan Blanchard, Mattea Conforti, Zarrin Darnell-Martin, Eva Foote, Isolde Ardies, Shechinah Mpumlwana, Birva Pandya and Kira Guloien.

While Moss has not been confirmed among the cast, she is an executive producer and her June will remain present over The Testaments given how The Handmaid’s Tale ended. The Testaments picks up four years after The Handmaid’s Tale ended, with the point of view now from Gilead’s young women. “They have never known a world that didn’t have Gilead in it. So it’s not all ugly,” executive producer Warren Littlefield previously explained to The Hollywood Reporter. “As Margaret wrote in the book, the school that educates these young women is Lydia’s school. So we proudly embrace Ann Dowd to carry us forward and she is a very important rudder from one universe into the next.”

Miller added, “You get adolescent wives. It’s the dynamic between girls of a certain age who are as worry-free as you can be in Gilead — with this huge sword, a marriage of Damocles, hanging over their heads.” (Read The Hollywood Reporter‘s oral history on The Handmaid’s Tale for more.)

Here is the official logline for The Testaments: “An evolution of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments is based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name and is a dramatic coming-of-age story set in Gilead. The series follows young teens Agnes, dutiful and pious, and Daisy, a new arrival and convert from beyond Gilead’s borders. As they navigate the gilded halls of Aunt Lydia’s elite preparatory school for future wives, a place where obedience is instilled brutally and always with divine justification, their bond becomes the catalyst that will upend their past, their present, and their future.”

The Testaments debuts April 8 with three episodes, then releases new episodes weekly on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers.