I remember the exact moment that The Handmaid’s Tale lost me. In Season 2, June (Elisabeth Moss) works tirelessly to get herself and her newborn daughter out of the repressive religious dystopia known as Gilead. It takes a lot of trials and some truly shocking scenes to get there, but in the finale, it seemed like everything was finally going to come together: June had arranged safe passage to Canada and even managed to include her friend Emily (Alexis Bledel). But in the final moments, June realizes she can’t leave her older daughter, Hannah, in Gilead, so she hands over the baby and lets Emily escape without her. It’s in that moment that I realized this series would continue to put June through hell until it ended. Luckily, it did, and another series took its place: The Testaments, a sequel series following Hannah (Chase Infiniti), now known as Agnes, as she comes of age in Gilead and becomes a wife. As the show began, I was so worried it would become yet another gauntlet of terrors — but The Testaments didn’t just shift the perspective, it made me look at the entire franchise differently. June may have escaped Gilead by the end of The Handmaid’s Tale and appeared triumphant in The Testaments, but Gilead still stands. | HuluI’m not alone in my realizations about The Handmaid’s Tale. Across six seasons and eight years, critics have reported suffering anxiety attacks and admitted to fast-forwarding through scenes, and I was among them — I had to stop covering Season 4 because watching the show was simply too mentally exhausting. But The Testaments eschewed all of this by showing something completely different: girlhood joy. The Plums — Agnes, Becka, Shunammite, and Hulda — are perfectly content in their lives, waiting for their periods to start so they can become Greens, eligible for marriage. On the surface, there’s almost a Bridgerton-like quality to it of women trying to stay happy in a regimented, opulent social structure.There’s still rebellion, though. “Pearl Girl” Daisy (Lucy Halliday) presents herself as a convert found on the streets of Toronto, but she’s actually a Mayday spy planted by June. She can’t make any big moves, so her main mission is to make friends and observe movements of higher-ups. The issues the Plums face aren’t the outright torture (not an exaggeration) that June and the other handmaids had to go through. Instead, they deal with issues that are completely normal for girls their age, just in a much more restrictive environment. Agnes is plagued by a crush and suspects an older man may have assaulted her. Becka isn’t sure if she wants to get married at all. Shunammite is frustrated that she’s not a Green yet, like the rest of her friends. It’s impossible not to empathize with them — even the prequel episode, “Stadium,” made me feel for Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd), a well-meaning teacher just trying to make the best of a fascist uprising. The next generation of Gilead doesn’t know any different, but that doesn’t stop them from fighting in their own way. | HuluAt its core, The Handmaid’s Tale was the story of an unhappy woman trying to escape Gilead over and over. But she was doomed by the narrative: if she escaped, the show would have to end. So instead, the story found a way to keep her in her personal hell, over and over again. The Testaments fixes this with one simple change: Agnes isn’t unhappy in her life. Instead, her story is one of a young woman realizing she is cut out for more than just life in Gilead. She’s the daughter of June Osbourne and thus destined for greatness, but first she has to accept that keeping sweet and smiling through ceremonies and prayers isn’t the path to fulfillment. With that in mind, I no longer look at The Handmaid’s Tale as a show full of gratuitous assaults against women airing at a time when women’s rights were incredibly at risk. Now, I see it as a prologue for the story of the next generation, those who don’t remember a time before Gilead but fight against it because they deserve better; inventing hope from first principles. Now that The Testaments is renewed for Season 2, I’m considering rewatching The Handmaid’s Tale once again. I’m still going to fast forward through all those scenes — there’s a moment with a fingernail in Season 2 that to this day pops up in my nightmares — but I think June’s story will carry a new weight knowing that even without any instruction or context, her daughter will still refuse to let the bastards grind her down. The Testaments Season 1 is now streaming on Hulu.