How Did Handmaid's Tale Series Finale Set Up Testaments Spinoff?

'The Handmaid's Tale' franchise is expanding with 'The Testaments,' which will feature Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia

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The Handmaid’s Tale is officially over — but its spinoff The Testaments is just beginning.

During the Tuesday, May 27, conclusion to the hit Hulu series, June (Elisabeth Moss) crossed paths with Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) after she was reunited with Janine (Madeline Brewer). The series finale kicked off a search for Janine that ended when she was brought back to the Gilead border.

It was at that exact time that Aunt Lydia — and Naomi (Ever Carradine) — arrived with Janine’s daughter Charlotte. As mom and daughter reconnected, Aunt Lydia asked June to take care of them as they exchanged a shared look of respect.

The final interaction between June and Aunt Lydia showed the development that was building all season. Aunt Lydia’s evolution is meant to set up her story, which will be further explored in Hulu’s upcoming series The Testaments.

Based on Atwood’s novel of the same name, The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in a dystopian future where low fertility rates have resulted in women being forcefully assigned to men for the sole purpose of bearing children. The end of the series showed a revolution resulting in freedom across multiple states — but the fight is not over.

The Testaments, meanwhile, is set 15 years later and is narrated by Aunt Lydia, as viewers are thrust back into the dystopian future with characters such as Agnes from Gilead and Daisy from Canada. Viewers will watch as a new resistance gathers and smuggles incriminating information about Gilead’s regime out of the country. Agnes and Daisy pose as “Pearl Girls” to infiltrate Canada, while Aunt Lydia acts as a covert source within Gilead.

Hulu / Courtesy: Everett Collection

The Handmaid’s Tale coshowrunners Yahlin Chang and Eric Tuchman weighed in on how Aunt Lydia’s arc was preparing her for the spinoff.

“Her decision in episode 8 is really a natural progression from the journey she’s been on from the very beginning of the show. But especially that is heated up with her realizing more and more how horrible these commanders are. So when June says, ‘You’ve learned things you can’t unlearn, you’ve seen things you can’t unsee.’ That’s what she is referring to,” Chang exclusively told Us Weekly in April. “Lydia really believed was a true believer. But she started to understand that these commanders are incredibly toxic — the best examples of toxic male behavior. So that decision to let them go, she’s really just broken down again.”

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Chang added: “So in that moment, she can’t see what to do other than let them go. She does it out of love for Janine. She just goes over to Janine and says, ‘I’m sorry I hurt you.'”

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Tuchman elaborated on how Aunt Lydia’s story is just getting started.

“We’ve chipped away at Lydia’s unbelievable denial about the truth of Gilead and her willful blindness,” he teased. “But moving forward, now we know she’s made that decision to liberate the Handmaids. She’s aligned with them in the eyes of Gilead. She has betrayed her duties to Gilead. … She’s now on a path that she can’t stray from. She’s made a very strong decision that she’ll need to account for.”

The Handmaid’s Tale is currently streaming on Hulu.

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