Diksha Sundriyal
Hulu’s ‘The Testaments’ takes the audience back into the world of Gilead, but this time, it follows the perspective of young girls instead of the Handmaids. The primary focus is on Agnes, June’s long lost daughter who has forgotten all about her life before Gilead, and Daisy, a girl born in Gilead but raised outside of it only to be thrown back into it as a Mayday spy. Apart from Agnes and her friends, who deal with the finality of their futures that are already laid out for them, Daisy’s espionage becomes a major plot point. This is where her handler, Garth, comes into the picture. Due to the focus on the girls, Garth’s past has largely remained a secret so far, but a detail about his parentage throws more light on his motivations. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Garth’s Father was a Casualty of the Boston War
Ininitially, Garth remains a secondary figure in ‘The Testaments.’ He is introduced as Agnes’ Guardian on whom she has developed a crush, which she knows she cannot act upon. However, in the fifth episode, the tide seems to shift as it is revealed that Garth is up for a promotion. He will soon become a Commander, and interestingly, he won’t be the first one in his family to do so. It turns out his father was also a Commander in Gilead. According to Commander MacKenzie, Garth’s father was widely respected, but the fact that he is being referred to in the past shows that he is out of the picture. Or at least, he is out of the picture when it comes to working for Gilead. The reason for this is revealed in the eighth episode, when Garth’s family hosts his and Becka’s engagement party.
It turns out that his father is still alive, but the aftermath of the Boston war have left him with a full-body paralysis. He cannot move or speak, and according to Garth, even understand what is going on around him. Even if he can understand, he cannot talk to anyone about it. Garth tells Daisy that his father was poisoned while he was stationed in Boston, which eventually fell out of Gilead’s hands and continues to be the focal point of Mayday’s operations. Looking back at the events of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ Commander Chapin never really came into the picture. This means that while he may have been a Commander, he wasn’t exactly high-ranked enough to be seriously considered by Mayday. Still, the fact that he was poisoned shows that he may have reached a higher rank after the sudden deaths of some major Commanders in the finale.
He was likely sent to the frontlines, precisely because he was the kind of soldier Gilead could afford to lose. This explains why Garth turned against Gilead. When he saw what the system, which his father fought for, did to his father, he couldn’t stay loyal to them any longer. While the details of exactly what happened to Commander Chapin, including who poisnoned him, are yet to come out, it is clear that Garth holds more anger towards Gilead for it, rather than Mayday. It could be because Gilead treated his father like a disposable horse whom they easily discarded when he could no longer fight for them. And now, they are training Garth, and other young men like him, do be the same thing. These feelings would have been amplified by whichever Mayday spy got to him, leading Garth to flip his loyalities and work for Mayday to bring down Gilead once and for all.
Read More: The Testaments: How did Neil and Melanie Die? Who are Daisy’s Real Parents?
You must be logged in to post a comment.