The Testaments ends on a powerful note of resistance. By the final episode of season 1, the bond between Agnes (Chase Infiniti) and Daisy (Lucy Halliday) is stronger than ever, and the cracks in Gilead’s fascist regime are beginning to show.
Does this mean that Gilead’s days are numbered? It sure does if Mayday and Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) get their way. Yet the key to Gilead’s defeat might actually lie with the connection forged between the girls at the heart of this show, the young women who demand something better, even if they don’t actually know what that looks like.
Looking back on the season 1 finale, showrunner Bruce Miller told Radio Times that “sisterhood” will ultimately prove to be Gilead’s downfall.
“No matter how much they tried to drive these girls apart, every single solution to almost every problem they faced was solved through communication between them with sisterhood and trust and belief. Also an absolutely unwavering belief that if I tell you something, you’ll never tell.”
“Gilead said, ‘Well, the Handmaids, they were from another world, these Martha’s, all these people, we have to break them.’ But these women, ‘Oh, we don’t have to break them, we can build them from the ground up and only empower them in the ways that are perfect for Gilead.'”
“But that’s complete and utter bulls**t,” Miller laughs. “They’re teenage girls, they empower themselves in every way you can imagine.”
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Miller adds: “There’s a goofy absurdity to the way that the men in Gilead imagine women are, and imagine they’re going to control them… The guys are so blinded by misogyny, their disrespect for women is so high, that they completely ignore the danger they’re creating on their own, because they just don’t have enough respect for the women.”
With Gilead essentially setting up its own downfall, how long will it be until the story of The Testaments will come to an end?
When asked if this sequel could run for six seasons like The Handmaid’s Tale, Miller explained more about this his approach to creating TV: “When I start on a project, I sit down and I try to think of 200 story ideas, not necessarily for this show, but for that dynamic. If you can’t come up with that, don’t start. If you hit a home run and it happens to be that people want more episodes, but you’ve chosen to set it up in a way where that just doesn’t work, that’s the worst. You’ve gotta plan for success as well.
“The period I’m in now, I wrote a whole season. Now I’m watching it. I’m over the moon, excited to start the next one, because all of a sudden, you’re like, ‘Oh my god, they did it, they could do it, they did this. I wonder if they could do that.’ So a lot of it is you’re playing, can you top this with your actors, season after season.
“The fact that it’s even a discussion in anybody’s head that I might have that great gift to be able to end it in a particular way would be fantastic. If it was only a year and I could do that, that would be great.”
The Testaments season one is available to watch on Disney+.
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