It was previously revealed that after The Handmaid’s Tale TV series wrapped up at Hulu that an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s follow-up novel The Testaments would arrive afterward. Now that Hulu and MGM have confirmed that The Handmaid’s Tale has been renewed for a sixth and final season, series creator, showrunner and executive producer Bruce Miller has confirmed that talk of what comes next is well underway. Speaking in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Miller offered an update on the follow-up series. In the pages of Atwood’s sequel novel, things pick up 15 years later from the ending of The Handmaid’s Tale, but details for the live-action The Testaments are still being hammered out.
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“The Testaments was an independent curveball created by Margaret Atwood for the series I was working on. I think she had had it in her head for a while. I tried as much as possible, and I’m still trying, to not really make The Handmaid’s Tale about The Testaments,” Miller shared about the new series. “The Handmaid’s Tale should be good on its own and when it’s done, it should be a nice little TV set that you put on the shelf next to the novel, and it hopefully adds to your enjoyment of it, and then you can move onto The Testaments.”
He adds, “The way Margaret did it, which is wonderful, is that you close one and you say, ‘I don’t have to open that. But let’s open the next one and see what’s in there. It could be anything.’ It is a continuation, but it’s more like a separate chapter. The horizons are more limitless.”
Miller added some other news about working on The Testaments, specifically making sure that he gets details like characters ages and world building correct. He adds, “Because the worlds are slightly different with timing, and all the things that are different between a television show and a novel, I have to figure out all of those little things. I’m trying to lay the groundwork.”
The fifth season of The Handmaid’s Tale premieres on Hulu September 14th with the sixth season seemingly arriving either in 2023 or later. The Testaments may not arrive on the streamer until even later.
