‘The Testaments’ Season 1 Finale Finally Tells Agnes the Truth, and Season 2 Is Already Greenlit

Gilead has never been short on secrets, and ‘The Testaments’ spent its entire first season parceling them out with patience and precision. The Hulu series is a sequel to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, adapted from Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name, following three protagonists through a world set roughly fifteen years after the events of the original show. At its heart, the series has always been a story about what it means to grow up without knowing who you really are.

The Season 1 finale, titled “Secateurs,” was written by showrunner Bruce Miller alongside Maya Goldsmith and Gianna Sobol and directed by franchise regular Mike Barker. The episode carried enormous weight heading in, given that earlier installments had already escalated dramatically, with Becka (Mattea Conforti) killing her abusive father Dr. Grove and facing consequences that left every major character standing at a crossroads.

The emotional core of the finale, however, belonged entirely to Agnes. Undercover Mayday operative Daisy (Lucy Halliday) chose to return to Gilead rather than take her chance at escape, and in a private meeting she told Agnes (Chase Infiniti) the identity of her biological mother. Agnes’s stunned response was simply, “The terrorist?!” It was the kind of quiet, gutting revelation the show had been carefully earning for ten episodes straight.

Halliday described the exchange as among the most difficult scenes of the entire season to film. “It’s not done out of malice, and it’s not done out of a desire to evoke some sort of storm within Agnes,” Halliday told TV Insider, explaining that the production returned to the scene again and again to capture the quiet kindness underneath the disclosure. She later said she was proud of what ended up on screen, calling it “potentially one of the biggest points of the series.”

The finale closed on the image of Agnes, Daisy, and Shunammite (Rowan Blanchard) walking together through the halls of Aunt Lydia’s school with pinkies interlocked, a moment that quietly signals the flames of rebellion burning brighter ahead. Elisabeth Moss, who reprised her role as June Osborne and serves as executive producer, was moved by that final image. “When I see in that finale, those three girls walking down the hall, I get chills talking about it,” she told Variety.

Meanwhile, the question of Daisy’s own parentage continues to linger. In Atwood’s source novel she is Nichole, the biological daughter of June and Nick Blaine, but the show’s altered timeline makes that specific connection impossible to replicate directly. Creator Bruce Miller confirmed he made the deliberate decision early on to diverge from that element of the book, noting that in ‘The Testaments’ Agnes and Nichole are never in the story together.

Hulu officially renewed ‘The Testaments’ for a second season ahead of the finale’s release, with Miller and his writing team already deep in the room shaping what comes next. Miller, speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, acknowledged he is still figuring out the exact shape of June’s role in Season 2 but made clear the franchise’s long-promised north star, a reunion between June and her daughter Hannah, remains very much on the horizon.

With Agnes now carrying the knowledge of who her mother is and a rebellion quietly taking root, the only debate worth having right now is whether it is Agnes’s eventual reaction to meeting June, or June’s, that you are more desperate to see play out on screen.