Margaret Atwood's Cameo In The Testaments Season 1 Finale, Explained

Don't make any last-minute confessions if you haven't watched "Secateurs," the Season 1 finale of "The Testaments." Major spoilers follow!

Note: This article contains discussions of child abuse and sexual assault.

"The Testaments," a televised spin-off of "The Handmaid's Tale" based on Canadian author Margaret Atwood's literary sequel released in 2019, just wrapped up its debut season. Naturally, Atwood herself showed up in a small cameo role ... so, who does she play?

Atwood appears very briefly in "Secateurs," the 10th and final episode of this show's first season, as a prison matron who guides Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd, reprising her "Handmaid's Tale" role) to a particular cell in a detention center. Lydia is there to see Becka Grove ("Matilda: The Musical" alum Mattea Conforti), who was arrested at the end of the season's penultimate episode, "Marat Sade," for killing her father Dr. Grove (Randal Edwards) in cold blood. During "Marat Sade," Becka realizes that two of her friends — the show's protagonist Agnes MacKenzie (Chase Infiniti) and Hulda Marie Edwardson (Isolde Ardies) — were assaulted by her father, who works as a dentist in the totalitarian religious realm of Gilead. Using a pair of her mother's gardening shears, which are also called "secateurs," Becca confronts her father in the bath and stabs him to death before she's hauled away by the Gilead police force known as the Eyes.

We knew that Atwood, a professed fan of "The Testaments" who works with showrunner Bruce Miller to bring the story to life, would appear on the series ... but we didn't know how. Yes, Atwood's appearance is very quick, but she's not the only major player to return in the Season 1 finale of "The Testaments." 

Elisabeth Moss actually kicked off the first season of "The Testaments" and appeared in the show's pilot, reprising her role as Handmaid turned revolutionary June Osborne from "The Handmaid's Tale" ... and that alone made it clear that June will continue to play a role in the narrative. What the audience knows — and what June and Agnes don't know until the Season 1 finale — is that Agnes, originally named Hannah, is June's long-lost daughter who was torn away from her in Gilead and given to Commander MacKenzie (Nate Corddry). Not only that, but June is the main point of contact for Daisy (Lucy Halliday), a teen girl from the free territory of Canada who infiltrates Gilead as a "Pearl Girl," or a willing convert, in order to try to bring down the entire operation from the inside as a budding revolutionary in her own right.

To be clear, "The Testaments" is set in the same world as "The Handmaid's Tale" — the TV show based on Margaret Atwood's beloved 1985 sci-fi book — and yet, it still manages to stand on its own. Thanks to utterly compelling performances from Chase Infiniti, Ann Dowd, Halliday, Mattea Conforti, and Rowan Blanchard (the last of whom plays the bossy but overconfident teen Shunammite Hayes), "The Testaments" is a great new story that takes place in Gilead. What I mean by this, though, is that Moss's involvement and her cameos throughout Season 1 just add to the story instead of making the whole enterprise feel like a cheap ploy to cash in on the success of "The Handmaid's Tale." So, what might we be able to expect from the show's second season, which has already been confirmed by Hulu?

In the aftermath of Becka's spontaneous but wholly understandable actions in "Marat Sade," Agnes, who knows precisely why her best friend murdered her own father, tries to rally the troops (so to speak) to help Becka return from her prison sentence. In the process, though, Agnes makes a potentially fatal mistake as far as her future in Gilead is concerned; she tells her much-older arranged fiancé, Commander Weston (Reed Diamond), that Dr. Grove assaulted her. Knowing she's no longer fully "pure" (as far as his own litmus tests go), Weston breaks off the engagement, putting Agnes' future at risk and infuriating her cruel stepmother Paula (Amy Seimetz). 

Things might be about to turn around for Agnes in Season 2 of "The Testaments," though ... thanks to both Daisy and Agnes' long-lost mother June. In the episode's final moments, Daisy, who pleaded with June to let her stay in Gilead and fight, does two vital things. First, she reveals to Agnes that her real name is Hannah and her mother is the so-called terrorist June Osborne. Second, she leaves a note for June at her home in Canada, telling the story's original revolutionary that she, Daisy, intends to form an army of teenage girls that includes Agnes and bring Gilead down once and for all. 

Until Season 2 premieres, you can watch Season 1 of "The Testaments" on Hulu right now.

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