[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale Season 6 Episode 8, “Exodus.” It also contains discussion of The Testaments book plot.]
Ann Dowd will reprise her role as Aunt Lydia in The Testaments, a spinoff of The Handmaid’s Tale currently filming in Canada. The last two episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale‘s final season — set to come out on May 20 and May 27 on Hulu — will bring the Emmy-winning drama to a close while setting up the spinoff. Lydia isn’t the only Handmaid’s Tale character at the center of the story.
June (Elisabeth Moss) and Luke’s (O-T Fagbenle) daughter, Hannah, will be a main character. Hannah (who was renamed Agnes by her Gilead parents) will be slightly older and played by Chase Infiniti. The third main character is named Daisy, to be played by Lucy Halliday. The series is set in Gilead in the years after the end of the plot of The Handmaid’s Tale. Dowd tells TV Insider that the spinoff kicks off about “four to five years” after the events of the series finale.
“For these young women, growing up in Gilead is all they have ever known, having no tangible memories of the outside world prior to their indoctrination into this life,” the series description says. “Facing the prospect of being married off and living a life of servitude, they will be forced to search for allies, both new and old, to help in their fight for freedom and the life they deserve.”
The Testaments is an adaptation of the 2019 Margaret Atwood novel of the same name, the only official sequel to the 1985 Handmaid’s Tale novel. In the book, the Pearl Girls are a subclass just before becoming an aunt. The Pearl Girl system was founded by Aunt Lydia as part of her efforts to reform Gilead. The Pearl Girls are aunts in training who chose this path often as an alternative to being forced to marry too young. They undergo years of training as Supplicants, and then become Pearl Girl missionaries sent to different countries such as Canada to recruit young women to move to Gilead and join their cause. A successful Pearl Girl mission means becoming an aunt at the end. The Pearl Girls uniform is a silver dress and fake pearls.
It’s not known if Hannah/Agnes and Daisy will be Pearl Girls in The Testaments series, but the Pearl Girls will be of great importance to Aunt Lydia.
TV Insider spoke with Ann Dowd about Lydia’s major climactic moment in The Handmaid’s Tale Season 6 Episode 8, “Exodus,” in which Lydia sets her handmaids free, thus allowing them to carry out a plot to kill the Boston commanders. The fallout of this decision will be seen in Episodes 9 and 10, the final two episodes of the series. Here, Dowd previews how the final episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale set up The Testaments, teases the new Lydia viewers will see in the spinoff, and shares some insights about the Pearl Girls.
You’re filming The Testaments now, right?
Ann Dowd: Yes, we are.
I know you can’t tell me much in way of plot, but how much time has passed since the end of The Handmaid’s Tale when The Testaments begins?
Four to five years, I would guess. I think that’s what I was told.
Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Season 6 Episode 8, ‘Exodus’ (Disney / Steve Wilkie)
Lydia falls to her knees and begs God for forgiveness after she lets the Handmaids go in Season 6 Episode 8. What is the status of Lydia’s relationship with God after this? And how is that evolving in The Testaments?
Her belief in God and the feeling [of] can she please be forgiven that she has done wrong, it brings her to her knees, begging for God’s forgiveness. She doesn’t let go of God. She holds on even tighter and begs for forgiveness. Her belief in God stays present right through The Testaments. She’s not put to the test like she is in Handmaid’s in The Testaments, at least not yet, but belief in God and God is central to their world, no question. And in her world, for sure. And [it] stays that way.
In The Testaments, is she in more of a revolutionary mindset, or is she protective? Is it both?
I would say protective. They’re living a life that Lydia believes in, and the fact that these Pearl Girls come of their own volition, they make the decision to come and wish to be healed, they’re very, very precious to Lydia as always. That remains the same, her devotion to her girls. It’s not the Handmaids in The Testaments, it’s the Pearl Girls. The Handmaids are still part of Gilead, but that’s not what we’re focusing on in The Testaments.
And these Pearl Girls have chosen this life?
Yes, they have. They’ve come to her broken.
I imagine that’s a huge thing for Lydia. She’s not forcing these girls into this anymore. Now she’s taking care of girls who choose to be there.
Yes, exactly. [They] go out looking for people who need to come to Gilead. That’s their job to graduate into the highest place. They have a lot to do with bringing in the girls. Once they’re there, Lydia and her aunts take charge, and they’re willing. They’re willing. They want to learn. They want to know about God. They want to talk about God.
It sounds like Aunt Lydia is the same but still very different in The Testaments. It’s not as much of a stark difference from Handmaid’s into Testaments.
Well, not from the end of Handmaid’s. What you see at the end of Handmaid’s deeply, deeply affects how she goes through The Testaments. Getting her place, finding her way. What does Gilead mean to me now? What can I hold onto that is truthful and holy and not full of violence and lies and corruption? I mean, to think that the commanders have been doing this for so long, and it went right over “my” head. When you have to live with yourself after these mistakes, you go away and you go to a place where there’s silence and you’re alone, and you’re with God only, and you are sorting out your next step. “What am I going to do?”
The Handmaid’s Tale, Tuesdays, Hulu
The Testaments, Series Premiere TBA, Hulu
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
