Daisy’s Secret in The Testaments Rewrites a Handmaid’s Tale Twist

Hulu’s The Testaments ends its first episode with a major reveal: Daisy, the new student and covert Mayday operative, isn’t fully loyal to Gilead and has a backstory tied to June’s resistance. In episode 3, Daisy is shown to have grown up in Toronto after her parents were killed, but June explains she was actually born in Gilead and smuggled to Canada. This marks a key book-to-TV divergence: in Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments novel, Daisy is Nichole (aka Holly) and does not appear in the TV show. Series creator Bruce Miller says they aimed to follow the book’s arc while reworking Daisy’s age and role to fit the TV timeline, with the result that Holly remains safely growing up in Toronto for now.