The Testaments dropped Episode 8 on Hulu on May 13, 2026, and the hour quietly turned into the most loaded one of the season. The Dr. Grove storyline has been brewing for weeks, and the new chapter finally pulls Daisy, Agnes and Becka into the same crisis. With this, The Testaments confirms Becka is going to marry Garth.
The episode also lands Agnes face to face with Aunt Lydia. By the end, Daisy is forced into a corner she did not see coming. The setup points toward a heavy back half of the season for The Testaments, with the Pearl Girls arc, the Mayday plot, and the Dr. Grove problem all converging at once.
What happens to Becka, and why does she choose Garth in The Testaments Episode 8?
Becka announces in The Testaments Episode 8 that she will marry Garth, and the choice lands as a safe play rather than a love story. The creepy old Commander, the one who tried to get her drunk in earlier episodes, is off the table. Garth is not a Commander yet, but he is steady, and he is not going to hurt her. That is the bar inside Gilead. Becka picks her own safety over the friendship math with Agnes. The colonies are real. Staying close to her people is real.
In the book by Margaret Atwood, Becka is a victim of her own father, Dr. Grove. The show has not confirmed that on screen. Becka still seems to trust her father, which makes the reveal a separate question for the back half of the season. If Becka is in the dark about what Dr. Grove did to Agnes and Huldah, the moment she finds out will reshape her arc. Garth is also working for Mayday, and Becka has no clue. That bomb is the third thread The Testaments Episode 8 leaves armed.
Will Aunt Lydia move on Dr. Grove after Agnes confides in her in The Testaments Episode 8?
This is the question The Testaments Episode 8 puts on the table and refuses to fully answer. Agnes finally pushes herself to talk to Aunt Lydia about Dr. Grove during the engagement party for Becka. By that point, Aunt Vidala has already shut down the account by Huldah of the same abuse. Vidala, going by what the episode shows, told Huldah she imagined it and warned her to never speak of it again. Agnes almost loses the courage. Aunt Lydia reads her face and figures out the rest.
Lydia does not respond as a regular adult would. She speaks in scripture. The line she gives Agnes lands as:
“The wicked and enemies of the Lord will perish, like smoke they will drift away.”
Agnes reads it as another adult telling her to leave it alone. The audience is meant to read it differently. Aunt Lydia is signaling, in the only language the regime allows, that Dr. Grove is going to be handled.
Where Daisy lands by the closing minutes
Daisy lands inside this same plot in a separate way. Episode 8 also reveals she has started menstruating, and she is hiding it because the Aunts will marry her off the moment they find out. Shunammite stumbles onto the secret. The two of them, who were never close, end up in a quiet scene of mutual honesty. Garth helps Daisy with supplies. Agnes hands her napkins in secrecy too, and that is how the talk between Daisy and Agnes about Dr. Grove finally happens. Daisy is the only person Agnes feels safe enough to tell.
The closing beat of Episode 8 hints at where Daisy is going to take this. Penny is shown frail after her miscarriage. She is the wife of Commander Judd, and Aunt Lydia has already passed the idea of a Handmaid for that household. Commander MacKenzie tells Agnes he is also weighing taking a Handmaid. Either path lands Daisy closer to the most powerful men in Gilead, with all the access and all the danger that comes with it. Going by the source novel, that proximity is exactly the lever Mayday needs.
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Edited by Parishmita Baruah