The Testaments Renewed for Season 2 at Hulu

Gilead isn’t done with us yet. Hulu has officially renewed The Testaments for a second season, the streamer confirmed Wednesday — and the timing couldn’t be more dramatic. The pickup lands just one week before the Season 1 finale drops on May 27, and just hours after the season’s penultimate episode became available to stream.

“A secret we couldn’t keep any longer,” read the caption on the show’s Instagram reveal. “‘The Testaments’ will be back for Season 2 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.”

The news shouldn’t come as a total shock. According to Deadline, the show has been on a genuine growth trajectory — not just holding steady, but actually building. Episode 4 saw a 20% viewership bump over the premiere after just one day of streaming. By episode 8, that number had climbed to 76% above where the show started. The series has now accumulated over 45 million hours streamed globally across Hulu and Disney+, and the season isn’t even finished yet. It’s also sitting at a Certified Fresh 88% on Rotten Tomatoes.

What The Testaments Is — and Why It’s Clicking

The Testaments, which debuted April 8 with three episodes, is based on Margaret Atwood’s Booker Prize-winning 2019 novel and serves as a sequel to the Emmy-winning The Handmaid’s Tale. Where that series centered on Elisabeth Moss’s June Osborn and her harrowing existence as a handmaid, this one shifts the lens to the next generation — specifically two teenage girls navigating life inside Gilead’s gilded cage.

Chase Infiniti plays Agnes, a young woman raised entirely within the regime, dutiful and pious and dressed in the purple robes of a future Commander’s wife. Lucy Halliday plays Daisy, an American who crosses into Gilead as a spy and must take on the white robes of a Pearl Girl — an outsider convert. As they move through Aunt Lydia’s elite preparatory school for future wives, where obedience is enforced with brutal divine justification, their bond quietly becomes something that could shake Gilead to its foundation.

Ann Dowd is back as Aunt Lydia, the morally complex enforcer who has become one of the most fascinating characters in this entire universe. And in what turned out to be a genuine surprise for viewers, Elisabeth Moss returned for a guest appearance, reprising her role as June Osborn — a moment that connected the two series in exactly the way fans were hoping for.

The show’s pacing has been deliberately measured. As MovieWeb’s Christine Persaud noted in her Season 1 review, “There are shocking moments that reinforce the same horrors we saw in The Handmaid’s Tale. But this is mostly traded for backstory context, restrained nuance, and setup for action that is sure to come with a second season.” That’s not a criticism so much as a description of the show’s strategy — it’s building something, and the audience has been patient enough to follow.

Part of what makes the storytelling feel so different from its predecessor is the perspective. Agnes has grown up inside Gilead. She doesn’t experience it as a horror — it’s simply the world she knows. That gap between what the audience understands and what Agnes herself understands creates a particular kind of tension, one that’s quieter than June’s fury but no less unsettling.

The Star Power Behind the Show’s Breakout Moment

Chase Infiniti’s casting brought with it an unexpected wave of attention. The show premiered on April 8, just a couple of weeks after the end of an awards season in which Infiniti went from a relative unknown to an award-winning movie star for her work in One Battle After Another. That kind of momentum is rare, and Hulu clearly benefited from the timing.

Behind the camera, The Testaments is in familiar hands. Bruce Miller, who created The Handmaid’s Tale for television, adapted Atwood’s novel and serves as showrunner. Elisabeth Moss is among the executive producers alongside Warren Littlefield, Steve Stark, Shana Stein, Maya Goldsmith, John Weber, Sheila Hockin, Daniel Wilson, Fran Sears, and Mike Barker, who directed the first three episodes and the finale. The series is produced by MGM Television and 20th Television.

The full ensemble also includes Mabel Li, Amy Seimetz, Brad Alexander, Rowan Blanchard, Mattea Conforti, Zarrin Darnell-Martin, Eva Foote, Isolde Ardies, Shechinah Mpumlwana, Birva Pandya, and Kira Guloien.

No premiere date for Season 2 has been set, and production timing hasn’t been announced. The Season 1 finale streams May 27 on Hulu and Disney+ — and based on the way this show has been building, it sounds like it’s going to leave plenty to look forward to.