‘The Testaments’ Episode 8 Recap – This Is How Babies Are Made

There’s an ancient Japanese art called kintsugi. It involves repairing broken ceramics with a lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. When the object is reassembled, its repaired cracks are visible and glimmering, lacing its new form with the story of its reconstruction. The idea is to highlight the object’s imperfections as a part of its history, finding beauty in flaws, and celebrating resilience. In the world of The Testaments, a similar process marks an engagement. At the start of Episode 8, fittingly titled “Broken”, Agnes is tasked with repairing a smashed plate before her wedding to Commander Weston.

In Gilead, a world where women are systemically broken and never repaired, there’s weapons-grade irony in this being the way that engagements are celebrated. All the pretty embellishments in the world aren’t going to hold these girls together. As is reiterated elsewhere in the episode, all they need to do is stay meek and deferential to their husbands, and they just might survive. Their wounds will never be considered beautiful, and that’s on the off chance that they’re noticed at all.

It’s Official

As of “Broken”, the girls’ unions are official. To mark the occasion, Agnes is having recurring nightmares about Becka stealing Garth from her, since she has heard it through the grapevine — through Paula, naturally — that the two of them are to be wed, even before it’s later announced by Aunt Lydia. Agnes, meanwhile, is saddled with Commander Weston, who is technically the best match in terms of power, but obviously wasn’t what she wanted when she petitioned Lydia to include Garth in the dating pool.

Later, this recurring dream takes on a slightly more ghoulish contour after Hulda confides in Agnes that she, too, was assaulted by Becka’s father, Doctor Grove, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, as it needs a bit more focus. In the meantime, just know that the marriage announcements have left simmering tension between Agnes and Becka, the latter of whom is kind of unnecessarily gloating about the whole thing, but Weston’s support does at least allow Agnes to rebel against Paula more openly without fear of retaliation.

Sex Education

I’m always very hesitant to call anything that happens in The Testaments a comic relief subplot, but the closest thing that Episode 8 has to that is what’s going on with Daisy and Shunammite. Since they’re not eligible to partake in the “copulation class” — a hilarious but also deeply sinister sex-ed session consisting pretty much entirely of Aunt Vidala telling the girls to follow their husbands’ instructions while occasionally pointing to a vagina drawn on the chalkboard — they’re paired up and sent down the hall together.

Daisy is still curious about what happened to Talia, the Pearl Girl who was taken away by the Eyes, presumably under suspicion of sedition, but her more pressing problem is that she has started her period. This is compounded by the fact that Shunammite finds out immediately, and perhaps can’t be trusted to keep the information to herself. Needless to say, if Daisy’s eligibility is discovered, she’ll be married off, making her secret mission in Gilead distressingly permanent.

Shunammite, meanwhile, is terrified of being barren and letting her parents down, so Daisy does whatever she can to reassure her that a) she probably isn’t and b) — this in a bit of a whisper — she’d probably be better off if she were. Remember, Daisy is the only character who has even seen a world outside Gilead. Hers and Shunammite’s perspectives are fundamentally different, which you can tell when Daisy asks about Talia, and Shunammite hasn’t even considered the possibility that the Eyes would have taken her away if she wasn’t guilty. But this also manifests as a funny moment when Daisy offers to teach Shunammite about sex so she doesn’t feel like she’s missing out, and Shunammite thinks that all the talk about “rods of flesh” and swimming sperm is a practical joke.

Hulda Comes Clean

As mentioned above, one of the key moments of The Testaments Episode 8 is Hulda confessing to Agnes that Becka’s father sexually assaulted her. Naturally, since Hulda is one of the more naive and pious of the girls, she has managed to blame herself for this and believes she’s going to burn in Hell for tempting him. Agnes’s response to this — acknowledged in her own narration, no less — is pretty diabolical, since she pushes Agnes to tell the Aunts, but doesn’t reveal that she, too, experienced the same thing.

Naturally, then, when Agnes and Hulda are called to see Aunt Vidala, her first priority is to cover everything up by convincing Hulda that she made a mistake and by getting Agnes to make sure it isn’t mentioned again, which Agnes, in a rather cowardly way, agrees to. She essentially used Hulda as her canary down the mine to take the temperature of possible rebellion, even the morally righteous kind. And Gilead, true to form, showed its teeth in response. These girls are on their own.

To be fair to Agnes, she does later go to Aunt Lydia about this, reiterating that Hulda is telling the truth and making it clear how she knows without being explicit about it. Lydia gets the picture, but basically tells Agnes that she needs to be patient and secure some power — through marriage, obviously — before she starts rocking the boat. But something tells me that Lydia will make sure something is done about Doctor Grove.

Becka’s Engagement Party

Becka, unusually excited about her upcoming nuptials, throws an engagement party. The home — I never quite caught if it was Becka’s or Garth’s; I think the former — looked rather lovely to me but is nonetheless cattily judged by most of the girls, especially Shunammite, though given her personal anxieties, probably out of spite more than anything else.

There are all sorts of things going on at the party. Penny shows up looking extremely rough, Agnes has to painedly congratulate the happy couple, and there’s an uncomfortable amount of judgment around Garth’s father, who’s in a wheelchair. Later, when Daisy manages to snatch a moment with him outside, he reveals that he’s incapacitated on account of a poisoning attack by Mayday, so rebellion evidently doesn’t run in the family. Garth squares this by reiterating that his dad is the bravest man he has ever known; he was just on the wrong side. Daisy isn’t convinced, but she has other problems, like ensuring that Garth does something to ensure nobody finds out about her period. Since he doesn’t know what tampons are, apparently doesn’t know June, and is adamant that Daisy is going to remain in situ in Gilead until such time as Mayday has won the war, she isn’t going to get a great deal of help.

Agnes, at least, comes through for her. Shunammite mentioned Daisy’s predicament, and Agnes procured her some supplies on the sly, in a rare moment of these girls actually sticking together. Agnes even tells her the truth about Doctor Grove. The only problem is that her narration implies Daisy is about to do something untrustworthy with that information.