Is Daisy Actually [Spoiler] in The Handmaid’s Tale? The Spinoff’s Twist Spoiled by the Book
Jason Pham
Warning: The Testaments spoilers ahead. The Testaments may be led by Agnes (also known as Hannah), the grown-up daughter of June Osborne and Luke Bankole from The Handmaid’s Tale, but it’s June’s other daughter, Nichole, that may be the real focus of the series.
The Testaments, based on Margaret Atwood’s 2019 novel of the same name, picks up 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, as Agnes MacKenzie (formerly known as Hannah Bankole), starts to discover her true identity in Gilead society. The series also follows Daisy, a Canadian teen, who arrives in Gilead with a family secret linking her to both Agnes and the past.
“Agnes, who gets her period and that whole story starts — and there’s someone watching Daisy, and we find out later who that is. We really wanted to keep it a surprise and make the reveal the only interesting part. Audiences are so savvy, it’s worth it to try to keep that fun alive,” The Testaments creator Bruce Miller told The Hollywood Reporter.
Is Daisy Nichole in The Testaments?
In Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments book, Daisy is the adult daughter of June “Offred” Osborne and her former handmaid household’s guardian, Nick. June became pregnant with Daisy, whom she named Nicole, while on an assignment at the Waterford household, where she met Nick. After giving birth, June went underground to smuggle Daisy out of Gilead at the Canadian border, where she handed her baby to trusted members of the resistance group, Mayday.
Once she reached Canada, Nichole was renamed Daisy to protect her identity while she was raised by foster parents, Neil and Melanie, who led her to believe they were her biological parents for her own safety. As Daisy, who’s unaware of her real identity, grows up, she’s told the cautionary tale of “Baby Nichole,” an infamous story about a Handmaid mother who took her Gilead to Canada. The story is spread by the Aunts, who pray for her return, as well as missionaries from Gilead who hand out flyers demanding Nichole’s return.
While in school, Daisy once wrote an essay about “Baby Nichole,” unaware she was writing about herself, in which she made pro-Gilead arguments and contended that the utilitarian thing to do would be to hand Nichole back to Gilead.
How did Daisy learn she was Nichole in The Testaments?
While Daisy was always suspicious that Melanie wasn’t her real mother, because she seemed too overprotective and smelled like a stranger, she didn’t learn her true identity until her parents were killed in a car bombing by Gilead agents, and she was picked up from school by her mother’s friend, Ada. Ada then took Daisy to a safe house, where she met Mayday activist, Elijah, who informed her that she was Baby Nichole.
