‘The Testaments’ Episode 7 Recap – Smells Like Teen Spirit

Another day, another Daisy episode of The Testaments. Not for the first time, “Commitment” is framed around the narration and Canadian flashbacks of our favourite Pearl Girl, but I’d argue that it’s Agnes who really defines Episode 7. There’s a rather rebellious feeling in the air, especially since teenage girls aren’t exactly famous for being reasonable when they don’t get their own way, and the thing about Gilead as a conception is that it’s not really inclined to ever give girls their own way.

This manifests in multiple ways here, but largely through Agnes being faced with the very real possibility that it might be Becka, not her, who ends up being matched with the love of her life, Garth. When she pushed Aunt Lydia to include the young Guardian in the dating pool, she assumed that it would be to match with her. But no such luck. Gilead’s leadership has grander ambitions for Agnes, and she isn’t getting a great deal of say in the matter.

Devising Miss Daisy

The flashbacks in “Commitment” pick up more or less where we left past-life Daisy, with her sitting in a diner after her meeting with June, waiting to be contacted by a Mayday representative. She waited and waited, but nobody came. Naturally, though, someone was already there. The proprietor of the diner turned out to be the contact she was looking for; her being left to wait was to test her commitment to the cause.

This is a weird thing to do, since Mayday’s immediate move after this is to relocate Daisy to Colombia to hide. As a former child of Gilead, she’ll never be safe in Canada, so an extended holiday is the only option. But Daisy isn’t having it. She’s still seething — understandably — about the murder of her adoptive parents and wants some revenge. And that means tackling Gilead head-on. Luckily, just such an undercover scheme was devised by June herself, needing only a girl of a certain age and disposition to be viable.

This is how Daisy was prepared for her undercover assignment. She was given a tattoo — that we later see her having lasered off alongside another Pearl Girl — and a fake backstory and a mandate to learn as much as she could from within Aunt Lydia’s school. She was sent to be recruited by the Pearl Girls, but to play hard to get, and she was handed off to the Guardians, including Garth, without any idea that he was even her handler. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end!

Too Close For Comfort

In the present day, Daisy is in pretty dire circumstances, since the Eyes, led by Commander Weston, have received new evidence that one of the Pearl Girls might have been involved in the school bus attack. Daisy is one of several who’re interrogated, though she’s not the one who is ultimately taken away kicking and screaming in a moment that gives even Aunt Vidala pause.

The stress of the situation hangs pretty heavy on Daisy, which doesn’t go unnoticed by Agnes, who invites her to her home in what is assumed to be a sympathetic gesture but ends up being a bit more like a cry for help. There’s a gigantic class and experiential divide between these two, but they’re both united in an innate desire for disobedience, for teasing the boundaries of the system. Agnes reveals a small collection of items she has found in the grounds and on the beach, little artifacts from the world outside Gilead, pens and dice and trinkets. She wants Daisy to explain what they are, but Daisy can’t bring herself to ruin Agnes’s romantic illusions with cold reality. Agnes takes that as a lack of trust.

There’s an argument to be made that The Testaments Episode 7 skews too childlike here, depicting Agnes as a bit painfully naive. But the underlying point is worthwhile. Agnes is curious about the outside world. She’s beginning to feel its pull more strongly. And Daisy might be her primary means of understanding and perhaps even experiencing it.

Perfect Match

Agnes’s most significant act of rebellion comes during the matching process. She has three potential suitors, all powerful senior commanders. But the most notable is Commander Weston himself. Garth isn’t among them, though he has been matched with Becka, something that she’s initially apologetic about, still feeling frustrated that none of her decisions are her own, while Agnes pretends not to be upset but clearly is.

To show this frustration, Agnes sabotages her meeting with Weston by mentioning his previous wife, who died during childbirth. Paula is simmering with rage about this. It’s the most overt act of rebellion that we’ve seen from Agnes, and tellingly, it feels like the start of more, not a one-off. Later, Agnes storms off and catches Garth smoking outside. She confronts him about his meeting with Becka, which actually went rather well, and pockets his cigarette stub, which she adds to her little collection of trinkets.

You can definitely feel some of June beginning to come through in Agnes now. Perhaps rebellion is hereditary.