Spoilers ahead from The Testaments through the Season 1 finale ("Secateurs")! If you're not caught up, you can catch the latest episode with a Hulu subscription. 🛑
As season finales go, The Testaments had a little bit of everything we could hope for in a big episode, including a wedding (albeit a sad one), a kiss, a tragic end for one character, and a lot of uncertainty about quite a few things to leave us waiting for Season 2. To say that I have a lot of feelings after the episode arrived on the 2026 TV schedule would be an understatement. However, the thing I want to talk about right now is Daisy's relationship with June.
The Scene That Got Me Emotional
In the Season 1 finale of The Testaments, there's a scene where Daisy (Lucy Halliday) reunites with June to petition her help to get Becka out of Gilead so she isn't executed for killing her father. June, however, is there to retrieve Daisy and pull her out of this situation, deciding that it's too dangerous for her. And then she finds out that Agnes -- her daughter Hannah -- is one of the girls Daisy is close to. This throws June for a loop and also leaves her torn about what to do, because Daisy is clearly treading on thin ice working undercover for May Day, and proving to be a bit unpredictable. Yet Daisy stands her ground, even saying:
It's my turn now. I might fail, and I might even die, but it's my choice.
It seems to go against June's protective instincts, but she lets Daisy return to Gilead, after a hug, a kiss and a desperate plea to stay safe. It's impossible not to see so much June in the way Daisy stands her ground and wants to protect the girls she's becoming close to. It's impossible for me not to wish that June was actually Daisy's mother, but she really isn't, as much as I wish she was, and this scene totally messed with my heart!
Daisy Is Not June's Biological Daughter (In The Show, Anyway)
If you've read Margaret Atwood's 2019 book, The Testaments, on which this new sequel series is based, you're aware that Daisy is actually Nichole in the novel. However, The Testaments showrunner made it clear in an interview with THR in April that Daisy is not Nichole in the TV show:
I didn’t want to make any changes at all, but I felt like I wanted to have Daisy and Agnes physically together, and not tell their stories 15 years apart like they do in the book. So it was very hard and I didn’t want to do it, but Daisy is not Nichole/Holly. Holly exists in the series and she’s a child — you see her boots in one scene and there are little hints that she’s out there.
From what Miller went on to say, the goal was very much to make June a mother-figure (albeit an "absent mother figure") to Daisy. This big change for the book-to-screen adaptation makes sense, from a timeline perspective, considering the TV show takes place four years after the finale of The Handmaid's Tale, while the book had a 15-year jump forward.
June and Nick's daughter, Nichole/Holly, was just a baby at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, and significantly younger than her half-sister Agnes/Hannah, June's daughter with Luke. For the story we're seeing in this series, where Daisy and Agnes are around the same age, they would've needed to ignore the timeline from the original series in order to age-up Nichole.
Maybe a part of me is still holding onto what I know from the book when I see June and Daisy together, but I think that wish that they were actually mother and daughter also stems from seeing how June is with Daisy on screen. And, let's face it, Daisy looks like she could be June's daughter.
In an interview with People that ran today, following the finale, Miller addressed their resemblance while also describing his intention for the dynamic between Daisy and June, saying,
I wanted, at least, a surrogate mother feeling. I did that as much as I could, and honestly cast two people who looked quite a bit alike for no good reason.
I love the relationship we're seeing between June and Daisy on screen. Still, I can't help but feel a bit of loss, not only for the mother-daughter connection June and Daisy had in the book, but also for the connection Daisy and Agnes had, being half-sisters. At the same time, I can't deny the sense of sisterhood we're seeing develop between Daisy and Agnes. There's no doubt that that matters, especially in a show where bonds among women -- by blood or not -- are everything. So I guess I'm not really complaining, just in my feelings a bit and sad the season is over.
As I said, I have a lot of other big feelings about the finale (and the series in general!). It's had me on the edge of my seat all season, and I can't wait for Season 2. Beyond Daisy's plans to unite some of the young women she's close with against Gilead, there's also the question of what will happen for Becka now that she's married to Garth, grief-stricken over losing her mom, and maybe emotional after the kiss she shared with Agnes (does Agnes now have an idea of how Becka feels about her?).
Speaking of Agnes' fate, now that she's no longer engaged, and how she'll deal moving forward knowing June is her mother. It's a lot to wonder about, but Season 2 is confirmed, so we'll just have to wait and see!
