{"id":2417,"date":"2026-05-27T20:25:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T20:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/05\/27\/the-testaments-creator-bruce-miller-has-a-spoiler-to-share-after-that-finale\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T20:25:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T20:25:00","slug":"the-testaments-creator-bruce-miller-has-a-spoiler-to-share-after-that-finale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/05\/27\/the-testaments-creator-bruce-miller-has-a-spoiler-to-share-after-that-finale\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Testaments\u2019 Creator Bruce Miller Has a Spoiler to Share After That Finale"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\t \t \t\t<\/svg>\t\tLogo text<\/span> \t<\/a> <\/p>\n

\t[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from\u00a0The Testaments<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>season one finale, \u201cSecateurs.\u201d]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tAt its core, The Handmaid\u2019s Tale <\/em>\u2014 and now The Testaments <\/em>\u2014 has always been about a mother fighting to get her stolen daughter back. The flagship Hulu<\/a> series signed off after six seasons last year<\/a> with that mother, June Osborne, played by Elisabeth Moss<\/a>, vowing to never give up that fight until she gets her first daughter, Hannah, out of Gilead, the fictional dystopian nation that toppled America. <\/p>\n

\tNow with the release of the season one finale of The Testaments<\/em> on Wednesday, the sequel series adapted from Margaret Atwood<\/a>\u2018s sequel novel of the same name has accomplished what the flagship did before it. Yes, the franchise is about June and Hannah reuniting. That\u2019s what viewers want \u2014 and that\u2019s what Moss wants, too<\/a>. But it\u2019s also about all of the people who need saving in the world of Gilead, and now June\u2019s daughter, who was renamed Agnes when taken by Gilead, has realized that as well. \t<\/p>\n

\tAgnes, played by Chase Infiniti<\/a>, finally finds out that June is her real mother in the finale<\/a>, \u201cSecateurs,\u201d which was co-written by Miller. But, it\u2019s complicated. In the world of the Plums, who are the girls learning to be Gilead wives at Aunt Lydia\u2019s (Ann Dowd) training school, June is a known terrorist who leads the resistance movement against Gilead. Viewers know she\u2019s the hero, but Agnes and her friends have been told she\u2019s the villain. Season two <\/a>will explore Agnes and her friends\u2019 awakening as they are empowered to fight and pick up June\u2019s mantel, and Miller promises that viewers will, at some point, get what they have been waiting for after six seasons of Handmaid\u2019s<\/em> and now one season of Testaments<\/em>. \t<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI am planning to get June and Hannah\/Agnes together by the end,\u201d he confirms to The Hollywood Reporter<\/em> in our interview below. But their reunion doesn\u2019t have to be the end<\/em> \u2014 it could also be a new beginning, and even a chance to bring back more Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em> characters. <\/p>\n

\t\u201cIt\u2019s not just June and Hannah [reuniting after Gilead] \u2014 and it\u2019s not even just June and Luke [June\u2019s husband, played by O-T Fagbenle] and Agnes, but Nichole [June\u2019s second daughter] is also there. And then there\u2019s also Moira [played by Samira Wiley], who helped raise Hannah. Agnes has a whole community, a whole family outside of Gilead. So there is so much afterwards to tell about how that happens and how Hannah gets integrated,\u201d he shares. \u201cI hope we are making progress towards June and Agnes\/Hannah getting to know each other as people now, so that when we do finally get them together, you feel like you\u2019ve had a long time to understand and think about how that moment is going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tBelow, Miller dives into the season one finale to explain how Agnes will download this new information about her mother being June, how she\u2019ll form a new alliance with Aunt Lydia, what that kiss between Agnes and best friend Becca (Mattea Conforti) means for season two, and what role June will continue to play as the show continues: \u201cShe\u2019s almost the overlord of the whole universe,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\t***<\/p>\n

\tWhere are you now in the process of making season two?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tWe\u2019re very excited and deep into figuring out what to do for season two. The writers room has been working for a while. Our younger actresses are younger. And no matter how much money you put into it, they\u2019re not going to stay younger. Time does go on, and we very much want to stay on track to make this show as regularly as possible. I think our cast is astonishing, and I want to make sure we use them while they fit the part. \t<\/p>\n

\tAre you toying with picking up right where you left off, or jumping ahead?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tI always have plans to jump far ahead, and then I never do. And I think it\u2019s because I\u2019m always wondering, \u201cWell, what happened in the interim time?\u201d With The Handmaid\u2019s Tale,<\/em> you wanted to see every single thing June saw, so it didn\u2019t ever work to jump ahead. But I have designs and desires to jump ahead a little bit, maybe some day, some season I will be able to. But 30 seconds later has been my usual. I\u2019ve started with designs of 30 years later, and then it\u2019s been 30 seconds.<\/p>\n

\tYou really set up a second season and beyond with this finale. Of course, you can never know for sure if you\u2019re getting picked up<\/a>. But how confident were you when writing this sequel series that you would get renewed, and do you have a multi-season plan you\u2019re willing to share?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tWell, you know how TV works. They decide on the number, but I have to plan out. I don\u2019t think this particular story would be satisfying if it just faded away like other shows that get canceled in the off season. <\/p>\n

\tBut I do have a tidbit to tell you, which is that I am planning to get June and Hannah\/Agnes together by the end.<\/p>\n

\tSo, if you think about that, I have a three or four season sense. But I know that if things go well and we have story to tell, I certainly can move that [reunion] forward. You never want to tread water, but in Gilead, there\u2019s so much going on and it\u2019s so complicated \u2014 and these actors are so good \u2014 that it really does not feel like the difference between three and four seasons would be that difficult for us to put our heads around. As long as Disney and Hulu and MGM and Amazon and everybody is willing to make the show, I\u2019m thrilled. It\u2019s exactly what I want to be doing. It\u2019s beautiful, it\u2019s meaningful. \t<\/p>\n

\tCan\u2019t the show also keep going even after<\/em> you finally reunite June and Hannah?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tOh, absolutely. My daughter hates movies and books that end with people kissing. You\u2019re like, \u201cI waited the whole time to see what they were like together as a couple, and all I saw was one kiss and it ended.\u201d So even if you get just a little sense of how June and Hannah would be, think about all these women who are going be together then. It\u2019s not just June and Hannah. It\u2019s not even just June and Luke [June\u2019s husband, played by O-T Fagbenle] and Agnes, but Nichole [June\u2019s second daughter] is also there. Nichole has a new big sister she\u2019s never met, and Agnes has a little sister. And then there\u2019s Moira [played by Samira Wiley], who helped raise Hannah. Agnes has a whole community, a whole family outside of Gilead. So there is so much afterwards to tell about how that happens and how Hannah gets integrated.<\/p>\n

\tIn some ways, the show is a refugee show. The people we\u2019re seeing are either pre-refugees or refugees. The [Testaments<\/em> girls] are now pre-refugees, but once they become post-war and are trying to rebuild America after Gilead, that\u2019s interesting stuff. I don\u2019t think I would have trouble coming up with stories about that.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tJune (Elisabeth Moss), at the end of season one of The Testaments<\/em>, receives a note from Daisy (Lucy Halliday<\/a>) about the resistance against Gilead to usher in season two.<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDisney\/Steve Wilkie<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tI just spoke with Elisabeth Moss<\/a>, and she said you are now figuring out what her role will look like for season two, and if we will see her similarly to how we saw her in season one. What are your plans for how June will factor into season two?<\/strong> \t<\/p>\n

\tWell, you know how I feel about Lizzie. I would have her just be there all the time if I could manage it. I love to have her in the show, and what we tried to do was to be practical and flexible in terms of her time. She\u2019s a very busy woman, and there\u2019s a lot of practicality in terms of schedule. But she is such a huge part of the show and the book. She\u2019s this force operating outside. She\u2019s almost the overlord of the whole universe. <\/strong>She is so much of the story. How much we see her is a question of how much we can get her, but how much is she involved in the story and how much is she out there influencing Agnes\u2019 life? She\u2019s the lever-puller in this particular story.<\/p>\n

\tA big question I asked you in the beginning<\/a> was if June knew she was sending Daisy (Lucy Halliday) to Aunt Lydia\u2019s school where Agnes is, and we got that answer in the finale that June did not know Daisy was with Agnes\/Hannah. You spoken about how, with these sorts of resistance movements, you don\u2019t always know who\u2019s on the other end of the line. Can you talk about why you wanted to keep that mysterious until now? And what does that mean about what June knows about Lydia?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tWell, we did a lot of research on what these rebellion movements are actually like. We\u2019re trying to stick to that scale where some people don\u2019t know anything, and some people know a ton of stuff. June, ever since we\u2019ve known her, and ever since she\u2019s been outside of Gilead, has been throwing fish bait and trying to get some nibble on Hannah \u2014 and she\u2019s gotten a bunch. They\u2019ve tried all these things. Now she\u2019s in contact with a group. She doesn\u2019t know who they are, but they\u2019ve been passing her information about the Plums, and they said, \u201cCan we get someone in with that group?\u201d And they did with Daisy. \t<\/p>\n

\tLydia knows who all those girls are, and I think she put them all together. She wants to protect them. But June has done this a lot of times hoping someone would end up next to Agnes, and they never, ever have. So of course, she hoped it every time, but she didn\u2019t quite know where Daisy went. Pearl Girls didn\u2019t exist when June was in Gilead. She had no idea what they were going to do. So I think this was Lydia and June not knowing, but working in concert.<\/p>\n

\tIt seemed in their final moment between Agnes and Lydia that there\u2019s this unspoken alliance forming. Can you tease what that might look like in season two?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tI think it\u2019s the alliance that is unspoken in season one that becomes a little more spoken in season two. For Lydia, every time Agnes solves the problem or shows you how tough she is, Lydia is saying, \u201cOh, what a resource she would be.\u201d Already, they\u2019re starting to join together in making little changes in Gilead and not letting people like Dr. Grove [Becca\u2019s father] get away with things<\/a>. Lydia is starting to stop seeing Agnes as a child. She\u2019s starting to see her as a woman with agency. <\/p>\n

\tJune still sees Agnes as a child \u2014 because it\u2019s her child. As we move through the show, June is going to move to understanding her daughter better, and what she\u2019s become, before she meets her. June should have expected her daughter to be exactly like Agnes is; she shouldn\u2019t be surprised. But there\u2019s a very interesting aspect to someone like Lydia, especially someone who\u2019s been a teacher and an educator, to be able to deal with someone as a child moving into being an adult. I think she\u2019s seeing the change, so she\u2019s a little ahead of June in terms of the capacity. \t<\/p>\n

\tYou already said you will get June and Hannah together at some point in The Testaments<\/em>. What do you say now to viewers who wanted that reunion by finale?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tThat\u2019s the point. You want to see them together. That\u2019s what makes you watch the next one.<\/p>\n

\tBut you did give us this great callback of Agnes writing her name, Hannah. How does this speak to the awakening Agnes is about to have now that she knows who her mother really is?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tThere are two awakenings. One is, \u201cI know a lot more about this woman than I thought. Because I\u2019ve been told a lot but in ways that aren\u2019t really true. But I\u2019m starting to tease them apart.\u201d So the very practical \u201cI remember my mother more than I think\u201d is the first part. <\/p>\n

\tThe other part is that when Agnes learns about her mother, she learns things from her file; she learns what June was like in Gilead and what Gilead thought of her. She starts to get the nature of her mother, and connect with the nature of her mother. Also, the idea of seeing a picture of her mother. I don\u2019t think she\u2019s ever seen what her mother looks like. So all of that is just heartbreaking and wonderful, if you know that they got torn apart. <\/p>\n

\tI hope we are making progress towards them getting to know each other as people now, so that when we do finally get them together, you feel like you\u2019ve had a long time to understand and think about how that moment is going to be. Because the great thing in Handmaid\u2019s<\/em> was that everybody was waiting for June to get out of Gilead. She got out of Gilead in the middle of that season \u2014 and that wasn\u2019t the end of anything. It\u2019s never the end of anything. If you just had June and Agnes trying to figure out their life, what they\u2019re going to do together and how they\u2019re going to live, it\u2019s not the end. You really want to have good stories when they end that create a new story. \t<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale <\/em>and The Testaments<\/em> author Margaret Atwood made a cameo in the season one finale with Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd).<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDisney\/Steve Wilkie<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tThe final scene of the finale was everything you\u2019ve been saying since you started promoting the show<\/a>:\u00a0There\u2019s nothing more powerful than a 14-year-old-girl. It was fist-raising and empowering to see Agnes, Daisy and Shu (Rowan Blanchard) walking away with a smirk echoing June. How much fun was it to nail that ending moment?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tIt was so much fun. These women \u2014 Chase, Rowan and Lucy \u2014 had been working together for so long that it\u2019s the way they look at each other. They can act very silently but in a complex way going down that hallway. Shu was a little bit on another side of things, but showed how strong a friend she is. And Daisy was reviled by both of them in the beginning. Chase and Lucy have said in interviews: I don\u2019t know what the show was about at the beginning, but now it\u2019s about sisterhood. And the power of sisterhood and the power of friendship, and how friendship can bring down governments.<\/em><\/p>\n

\tSo when you get to this moment, I\u2019m just trying to make sure it work in a simple way. As you said, look at them. They do not look like they\u2019re going to be knocked down. I found it incredibly moving and exhilarating. These actors are breezy and funny, so as soon as they get past camera, they\u2019re tickling each other and swearing in Scottish. They\u2019re very much like Lizzie, where they turn it on and then they turn it off, and they\u2019re just pretending to cry, they\u2019re not really sad. \t<\/p>\n

\tThose three are now in a very different position than Becca (Mattea Conforti).<\/a> What can you tease about Becca\u2019s storyline and how she opens you up to explore the life of a Gilead wife in season two?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tThe thing you have to see in this show is: What is the world of wives? And not for the Serenas, who chose to be a wife, but the Beccas and the people who are pushed into it. Becca\u2019s is a bad situation that gets her into the marriage [after murdering her father and her mother taking the blame]. <\/p>\n

\tWasn\u2019t that such a good scene with the Becca and Agnes? The kissing scene is so wonderful. They\u2019re so terrific. Getting a view into the worlds of wives is showing how they\u2019re selling them a bill of goods. They\u2019re telling them, \u201cwhen you\u2019re wives, you\u2019ll be able to do X, Y, and Z.\u201d But they aren\u2019t wrong. When you are a wife, you do have power, and that\u2019s what they all start to realize.<\/p>\n

\tThere is a scene very early on where one of the married girls tells Lydia, \u201cYou should probably leave now.\u201d Because she\u2019s a wife, and Lydia is an Aunt, and that\u2019s the hierarchy. You see how quickly it shifts, and some of the girls love it. You get drunk with power immediately.<\/p>\n

\tMattea told me her interpretation of Becca and Agnes\u2019 kiss in the finale. I\u2019d like to hear yours. Was it a goodbye to an era they know they\u2019ll never have again? Was it exploring deeper feelings they\u2019d never acknowledged? How will it change their relationship for season two?<\/strong> [Stay tuned for that interview on Thursday<\/em>.]<\/strong> \t<\/p>\n

\tI don\u2019t know that it\u2019ll change their relationship. It\u2019s more of a recognition and an honesty between two friends about where they are. I think it was Agnes being kind to her sad friend Becca. She was being comforting and lovely. There\u2019s a lot of meaning in that kiss: Who leans in, who holds it, who smiles afterwards? How do they smile? I think they did it beautifully. I don\u2019t want to tell people what I felt it was, but I think you could follow their thinking through with both of these characters, and it\u2019s so wonderfully complicated because in Gilead, their friendship is so strong. It probably feels much stronger than romantic love. The men around them, they barely talk to. But all of these women are so close that you can understand why, when Becca imagines being married, she can\u2019t imagine spending that much time with a man. She doesn\u2019t have the experience, but she can\u2019t even imagine spending the time.<\/p>\n

\tWith the kiss, Mike Barker was directing the finale, but those two women, the actors, worked it out themselves. I wouldn\u2019t have shown it unless it really said something about their characters and what kind of love they have for each other, which is enormous. At the beginning of the season, you don\u2019t know that Mattea and Chase are going to be Mattea and Chase. And then you get to the end, and you can write stuff like that. They just eat it up with a spoon. They trust each other so much. <\/p>\n

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\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tBecca (Mattea Conforti) with Agnes (Infiniti) in the season one finale of The Testaments.<\/em><\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDisney\/Russ Martin<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tIt\u2019s also exciting to think about Becca finding out about June, and her going headfirst into the cause. <\/strong> \t<\/p>\n

\tAll the girls are confused, because Agnes just found out that her mother is essentially Osama bin Laden. No one likes that person [since June is a known terrorist to Gilead]. But Becca, being queer in this universe, eventually realizes there\u2019s no place for her. What do you do when there\u2019s no place? You look at someone who was also in that situation, like June. June couldn\u2019t exist in Gilead, so what did she do? She fought and she got out. That\u2019s what Becca starts to feel like, and that\u2019s the hard thing. She can\u2019t exist here, yet all the loves of her life are here. Her whole life is here. I can\u2019t imagine if someone plucked her out. She would be rescued, but so miserable.<\/p>\n

\tWe saw Handmaid\u2019s<\/em> character Rita (Amanda Brugel) return earlier in the season. Are you open to bringing back more Handmaid\u2019s Tale <\/em>characters<\/a> for season two?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tOf course. Having Amanda was so great, and we would bring back [all of them]. They all have such interesting bits of their story. All that stuff we found out about Rita, you similarly saw in the finale with June, where you also realize a lot of things about her life. She has a little townhouse and if you look really carefully, there\u2019s a pair of little boots by the door \u2014\u00a0Nichole\u2019s boots. I just love finding out that Rita and June have been on the road to being more and more okay. As an audience member, especially for someone like Rita, you think that\u2019s a real victory. That\u2019s a woman who had no life, who really does now have a life in the future. \t<\/p>\n

\tAre you enjoying the response from fans after Testaments<\/em> season one?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tI\u2019m thrilled and surprised. I\u2019m so glad there\u2019s this group of people who read the books in high school, but were too young to watch the show. Their parents didn\u2019t let them watch the show, and they are now are watching Testaments<\/em> and around that age. So it\u2019s just wonderful. Lucy Halliday remembers the day that her friend brought The Testaments<\/em> to school, and they were giving it back and forth and reading it, and now she\u2019s Daisy. That\u2019s insane.<\/p>\n

\t***<\/p>\n

\tThe Testaments\u00a0is now streaming all of season one on Hulu, and will return for season two. Read\u00a0<\/em>THR<\/a>\u2018s show coverage here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Logo text [This story contains MAJOR spoilers from\u00a0The Testaments\u00a0season one finale, \u201cSecateurs.\u201d] At its core, The Handmaid\u2019s Tale \u2014 and now The Testaments \u2014 has always been about a mother fighting to get her stolen daughter back. The flagship Hulu series signed off after six seasons last year with that mother, June Osborne, played by Elisabeth Moss, vowing to never give up that fight until she gets her first daughter, Hannah, out of Gilead, the fictional dystopian nation that toppled America. Now with the release of the season one finale of The Testaments on Wednesday, the sequel series adapted from Margaret Atwood\u2018s sequel novel of the same name has accomplished […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1477,1478,1479,2,598,1480,1481,1482,1483,85,335],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bruce-miller","category-chase-infiniti","category-elisabeth-moss","category-hollywood","category-hulu","category-lucy-halliday","category-margaret-atwood","category-the-handmaid039s-tale","category-the-testaments","category-tv","category-tv-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}