A pickled fairy tale brined in the tears of teenage girls, The Testaments is different enough from The Handmaid’s Tale to be engaging, yet too exhaustingly connected to that series to stand as something truly distinctive and provocative.
I don’t think The Testaments is even watchable without having seen at least some of Handmaid’s, because despite extensive introductory text — “This story takes place in Gilead, a totalitarian regime that controlled most of the United States for a time” — and an entire pilot full of exposition, its stakes are completely tied to the Emmy-winning original. Meanwhile, for viewers who finished that Margaret Atwood-inspired drama last May, these 10 episodes are likely to generate responses ranging from “Wait, why are we still doing this exact same thing over again?” to “Well, at least this is brighter than the original.”
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