The Handmaid’s Tale has officially drawn to a close with the arrival of the Season 6 finale. Now, series creator Bruce Miller has now spoken on whether Elisabeth Moss will be reprising her role as June Osborne in The Testaments. Warning: spoilers ahead!
In Season 6 Episode 10, titled ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, Mayday and the US government have successfully liberated Boston from Gilead’s clutches, but there’s still work to be done. June makes the difficult decision to keep fighting and find Hannah.
After Luke and Holly convince June to write a book about her experiences, she heads to the Waterford’s old home and begins an audio recording. The click of the tape is the same one heard in The Handmaid’s Tale pilot, bringing her story full circle.
This ending was in Miller’s mind long before The Testaments was confirmed. However, it’s equally fitting for the sequel series, which began filming a day before the Season 6 premiere release date.
Will June be in The Testaments?
Although the upcoming Hulu series will focus on Aunt Lydia, Agnes (Hannah), and Daisy (Nichole/Holly), it’s looking likely Elisabeth Moss will reprise her role too. She is also serving as executive producer.
In a conversation with Variety, Miller explained that they’re making a few changes from Margaret Atwood’s sequel novel of the same name, including the time jump.
When asked how June and Nick (who died in Season 6 Episode 9) will be incorporated into the plot, he said, “We’ll certainly reference them, and bring it into relief a lot more than it is in the book, and earlier.
“Because the book is really focused on her life, Agnes and Lydia, and all those points of view in their life, and only does it come to bear at the end.
“But I think where we are and what we’re doing with the story, with a few slight differences, they are thinking more in the front of their minds, but characters are thinking more about the particular people who made the changes in the end of the last series.
“So I think that June is much more present. And although Agnes doesn’t know in the story that that’s her mother, she’s telling a story in retrospect in The Testaments, just like The Handmaid’s Tale, so that Agnes certainly knows the whole story.
“So her very strange, very influential collection of mothers is a big part of the story. It’s amazing when you start thinking about who the women are in her life who have influenced her, and, of course, she’s got a lot of June in her, which means she’s big trouble.”
Adding to this, Miller told The Hollywood Reporter, “That’s a good thing to hope for. I hope she shows up there, too. She’s still doing her job, still doing what she was doing in The Handmaid’s Tale.
“Luke and Moira are still out there somewhere, ringing the bell to get Hannah back. The beauty of having watched The Handmaid’s Tale is that you understand there’s this huge operation of people who are out there who care and who are risking themselves to get to reunite with their children.
“The people in The Testaments show don’t feel that. But from experiencing Handmaid’s, you know there’s this whole operation. So is June influencing The Testaments? Absolutely. She’s out there. She’s trying to get Hannah back.
“Do we see her? I would love to see her. I love Lizzie Moss, she’s awesome! She’s very involved behind the scenes.”
Moss gave a similar answer about her potential return, stating, “You’re just going to have to watch the show. I won’t be there [on set of The Testaments], which is different as a producer.
“But I can’t not be hands on. I don’t know how to do it any other way. And it certainly feels hands on, given the amount of emails!”
Time jump after The Handmaid’s Tale
Atwood’s novel, which released in 2019, takes place 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale. Miller explained that they’re approaching this differently in the new TV show, with a three to five year time jump instead.
“No, it can’t really be that, because it covers Hannah when she’s kind of in her 14, 15, 16-year-old years,” he told Variety.
“So it’s about five years after The Handmaid’s Tale, probably more like three or four, depending on how we judge – there’s always a little bit of guesswork involved, it’s not a real world, but it’s somewhere around three or four years after.
“And the biggest and the only reason it’s any different is because none of that stuff tracks age-wise. Because our show takes place over a certain time frame, and babies only grow over a certain time frame, and people aren’t just the right ages.
“Nichole is not going to high school, and so we had to make changes for that. But I have to say, Margaret came to speak with me about The Testaments being an idea, and we spoke very early on about the notion of it. There was just as much of her giving me hints then.”
Miller added that Atwood “wasn’t asking me for permission, by any means, but she was giving me insight into what I should do with the characters to put them in good stead naturally for The Testaments.”
There’s another reason for the shortened time jump: they’re bringing Ann Dowd back as Lydia. If it had stuck to the book, she would’ve been around 80 years old, which wouldn’t bode well when she’s such a major character in the Hulu show.
As for Daisy, who’s actually Nichole, and Agnes, aka Hannah, they’re two and 12 years old, respectively, by the end of The Handmaid’s Tale. There will need to be more of a time jump later in The Testaments, judging by the casting for these characters.
Confirmed The Testaments cast
Lucy Halliday is taking on the role of Daisy, while Chase Infiniti is playing Agnes. In real life, Halliday is 21 and Infiniti is 25.
In terms of the characters’ ages in The Handmaid’s Tale, if the three to five year time jump is to be believed, that would put Daisy at around five to seven years old and Agnes at 15 to 17 years old.
While this could work for Agnes, it doesn’t for Daisy. But as Miller said, “we had to make changes for that,” so no doubt we’ll learn more about how this is handled in the coming months.
Alongside Halliday, Infiniti, and Dowd, the series creator said he’s game for other Handmaid’s Tale cast members to return.
“Anybody who has an hour free, I would carry over, if I could manage to make it work. There are, of course, business concerns, but story-wise, I think a lot of them fit into The Testaments world,” he continued.
“These are spectacular people, and they’re my friends, and they do their jobs beautifully, and I would be honored to have them come back and be part of the story again whenever we can figure it out. They’re very connected.
“I mean, it’s not like a sequel like some other things where you’re just cutting it off. The first set of characters matter hugely to the second set of characters.
“So these stories are very tied together, and it’s very much a continuation of this Handmaid’s Tale that we’ve seen. You’re just following the daughter instead of the mother.”
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