The Testaments is already making some significant changes to Margaret Atwood’s book, and perhaps none are bigger than what it’s doing with Daisy. Hulu’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale picks up roughly four years after that series came to an end, a finale that saw the liberation of Boston thanks to the efforts of June Osborne and many other Handmaids. The new show moves on to the younger generation, with its focus on Agnes, a girl who has been raised in Gilead to be a Commander’s wife, and Daisy, a newcomer from Canada who has supposedly arrived for a better life. Warning: SPOILERS ahead for The Testaments Episodes 1-3, as well as the book.
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The real reason that Daisy is in Gilead is not to be a Pearl Girl, but to get information for Mayday. It’s gradually revealed that Daisy was born in Gilead, but her birth parents were able to get her out as a baby. After that, she was raised by Neil and Melanie as if she were their own… until Gilead attacked their shop and killed them both. Having had the truth explained to her by June (with Elisabeth Moss making a cameo), she’s now out for revenge, but the big question unanswered so far is who her real parents are.
June & Nick Are Not Daisy’s Parents In The Testaments (She Isn’t Baby Nichole)
In The Testaments book, it’s eventually revealed that Daisy is actually the daughter of June and Nick (or rather, the daughter of the Handmaid Offred, since her real name technically isn’t used in the novels). That version of Daisy has a similar backstory and broad function in the narrative to the TV one, but there’s an age gap of several years between her and Agnes, and she doesn’t come into the story until later on, after several more years have passed. The adaptation instead makes them around the same age, with a year or two at most between them. It’s also worth noting that the book is set 15 years after The Handmaid’s Tale novel, which ends where Season 1 of the show does.
In an interview with Deadline, showrunner Bruce Miller confirmed that Daisy is not Nichole, aka Holly, in the Hulu show, but the timeline and age issues had already made that apparent. Hannah was around 8-years-old in Season 1 of The Handmaid’s Tale, and that was before Holly/Nichole was conceived. The show was never fully clear with its timeline, especially with Hannah seemingly ageing faster than Nichole did as the years went on. Still, there are around 9-10 years between them, with the latter still a toddler at the end of the show, so it would’ve been impossible to make her a teenager now.
Despite this, there is some connection between June and Daisy. June has seemingly been aware of her for a long time, knew Neil and Melanie, and knows about her history, which suggests there might be a deeper link there, even if she’s not her daughter. The change makes sense for the timeline, but the casting does make it ironic: Lucy Halliday’s Daisy looks exactly like you’d expect June’s teenage daughter to look, and even has a lot of the same facial expressions. It’s also a major change to Daisy and Agnes’ relationship, especially as they now won’t bond over learning they have the same mother.
Whose Daughter Could Daisy Be Instead?
If not June’s daughter, then who could Daisy be? That’s not an easy question to answer, because the other options aren’t clean fits. One that fans have speculated is that she’s Charlotte, aka Angela, the daughter of June’s fellow Handmaid, Janine, who was taken and raised by the Putnams. However, that doesn’t line up with the age either, as she’d only be around one year older than Nichole, nor does it fit with the story of her being taken out of Gilead as a baby.
Another option is that she’s from Angel’s Flight, where 86 children were rescued from Gilead and flown into Canada. While most were united with relatives, it’s possible that at least one of them didn’t have somebody waiting for them and was instead adopted. That would be a neat idea and be a good way of connecting back to the show and June’s story, though again, it doesn’t align with her being a “baby,” given that those events happened in Season 3.
It is plausible that she’ll be revealed as the daughter of another Handmaid, perhaps one we didn’t get to know on the show, which would give her a link to June but without as many timeline inconsistencies. The fact that it’s seemingly being set up for a big reveal, though, suggests that she will be the daughter of someone we know, and while it depends on how it handles that, it does threaten to break the timeline even further.
New episodes of The Testaments release on Wednesdays on Hulu.
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