Diksha Sundriyal
In Hulu’s ‘The Testaments,’ a different side of Gilead is presented as young girls become the focus of the story. In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ June and other Handmaids remained at the center, while her daughter, Hannah, whom she was separated from at the beginning of the show, is sent to live with a different family. Four years after the events of the parent show’s sixth season, ‘The Testaments’ brings back Hannah, now known as Agnes, on the verge of womanhood. Her family remains an important plot device, as the relationship with her parents drives the story forward. A key difference is that the woman who took her in after she was separated from her birth mother is no longer around. BOOK SPOILERS AHEAD.
Tabitha’s Death Leads to a Major Change in the MacKenzie Household
When Hannah was taken away from June, she was handed to Commander MacKenzie and his wife, Tabitha. They move to Maryland after the events of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Season 6 finale, where Boston falls to Mayday and is no longer a part of Gilead. Because Hannah was taken away at such a small age, the memory of her birth mother slowly disappears from her mind, and to her, Tabitha becomes her real mother. To her credit, Tabitha adores Hannah, who is renamed Agnes, and loves her just as she would love her biological daughter. Later, Tabitha’s memories stay with Agnes, and she remembers them fondly. Somewhere in the four years between ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and ‘The Testaments,’ Tabitha falls sick.
Agnes mentions that Rosa and the other servants of the house cared for her in her final days. This suggests that Tabitha was diagnosed with an incurable disease, most likely cancer, and died after a short but brutal battle with the illness. Following her death, Commander MacKenzie married Paula, who took over the household, but didn’t hold the same adoration for Agnes. One would think that this was the end of the story and that there was nothing that could have been done about Tabitha and her tragic death. Agnes loved her and would have preferred to have her by her side, especially when she got her period and became eligible to get married and start a new phase of her life, something she was being prepared for at the Aunt Lydia school with the rest of the girls.
Tabitha’s Death May Have Included Foul Play
According to the book by Margaret Atwood, on which the show is based, it eventually turns out that there may have been more to Tabitha’s death. Daisy’s arrival and Aunt Lydia’s shifting loyalties rope Agnes into the path of exposing Gilead for all its lies and hypocricies and bringing it down once and for all. However, the work of dismantling the system begins at home, and Agnes discovers that the house she grew up in is not averse to it either. It turns out that several high-ranking people in Gilead wanted out of their marriages, but couldn’t do it because divorce was not allowed. This meant that they had to resort to more unconventional ways to get rid of their spouses. Agnes’ stepmother is found guilty of the same, and so is her father, Commander MacKenzie.
It turns out that Paula and Commander MacKenzie wanted to marry one another, but the problem was that they were already married to different people. Later, speculation leads the story to develop such that the couple decided to off their partners in a way that it would look like a natural death. This means that Commander MacKenzie may have slowly poisoned his wife to make it look like she was dying of natural causes. Being a high-ranking commander, he wouldn’t have had too much difficulty in getting the doctor to his bidding and declaring his wife to be in the grip of an incurable disease.
Another possibility is that perhaps he got lucky. Perhaps Tabitha did, in fact, get cancer, and once it was confirmed that she was going to die, Commander MacKenzie started to look into other options, which is when he came across Paula. While his wife was going to die soon, Paula needed to make sure that her husband got out of the way as soon as possible, which meant at least one murder was involved in bringing her together with Commander MacKenzie. It turns out that the couple is not the only ones who have been getting rid of their unwanted partners this way, proving that Gilead is not the perfect place it makes itself out to be in front of the world.
Read More: The Testaments: Are Agnes and Daisy June’s Daughters?
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