‘The Testaments’ Stars Chase Infiniti, Mattea Conforti on What That Private Finale Moment Means for Agnes and Becka: ‘That’s Her Person in Life’

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Secateurs,” the Season 1 finale of “The Handmaid’s Tale” sequel series, “The Testaments,” now streaming on Hulu.

Hulu’s “The Testaments” ended its first season with many upsetting and shocking moments — nothing less than fans would expect from a sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale.” But amid the darkness, there was one particular scene full of light and love: a kiss between Agnes (Chase Infiniti) and her best friend Becka (Mattea Conforti).

But what this act meant between the two is up for interpretation, as the kiss was shared when Agnes was comforting Becka in the moments before Becka’s wedding to Agnes’ crush, Garth (Brad Alexander). And though Becka has expressed her romantic feelings for her best friend in multiple explicit ways now, Agnes has not acknowledged them and continues instead to focus on supporting Becka through a deeply difficult situation for both of them.

“I wouldn’t say Agnes is necessarily ignoring [Becka’s feelings],” “The Testaments” star Infiniti tells Variety. “I think Agnes really just doesn’t understand what it looks like. She knows that a ‘gender traitor’ in Gilead is bad, but just like how nobody in Gilead teaches these girls anything, she doesn’t really know what that means. I think her interactions with Becka and the emotions that Becka is feeling for Agnes, I think Agnes just views it as Becka loves her, just like Agnes loves her. And whether or not it’s in the same way, she just knows that that’s her person in life.”

Agnes had been deeply hurt when it was determined by the Aunts that Becka was to marry Guardian-turned-Commander Garth and Agnes would instead marry the much older Commander Weston (Reed Diamond). But once Becka’s fate was put into question after she killed her sexual predator father Dr. Grove (Randal Edwards), Agnes sprung into action to get Garth to go through with the wedding to Becka to save her from potential ruin.

“We can all see that Becka’s entire world has changed so drastically and so quickly in such a short amount of time, and everything that she has known and loved has really just flipped on itself, and is so different now,” Conforti says. “We see her in such a lonely physical state at the end of Season 1. So it really makes me wonder, is she going to develop her relationship with Garth? I want her to be able to have more honest conversations about who she is and her identity, like she did with Daisy previously, in Episode 5.”

Becka had chosen Garth out of her potential suitors proposed to her parents by the Aunts, determining he was the safest possible option. But Becka had confessed to her friends she did not want to get married or have children at all, and instead liked to daydream about running away from Gilead. Now, she is in the marriage with Garth, but doesn’t realize she is in the best possible situation at this point, as Garth is a rebel operative for the Mayday resistance in Canada.

“It’s quite complicated, the relationship that she has with him, especially because she doesn’t know that Garth is a part of Mayday,” Conforti says. “She doesn’t know that she could really find some support within her own hesitations about Gilead within Garth. But I think the reason why she is so much more attracted to the option of choosing Garth over a different commander is that he’s willing to relocate so that she can be close to her friends and he’s willing to support her in that way and really give her the future that she actually wants, which is not being a wife and not becoming a mother.”

Conforti adds: “She can kind of understand, oh, there’s this partnership here; we can have a mutual sense of trust and understanding. She also knows that Agnes is in love with him, so I think in some capacity being involved in their relationship is allowing her to remain close to Agnes, too. But she’s willing to marry Garth because there’s no expectations of anything romantic or of her being a wife or a mother in any way.”

In saving Becka, Agnes sacrificed herself by pulling strings with her own fiancé. She told Commander Weston about how Becka’s father molested her, revealing that Becka killed him to protect Agnes. It worked, in that Weston saved Becka from the Eyes and facilitated her marriage to Garth. But the confession that Agnes had been defiled by Dr. Grove led to Commander Weston breaking off their engagement

“I think that she’s made peace with the fact that her life will not look how she originally planned it to be,” Infiniti says. “In the scene where you see all of the girls find out that Dr. Grove has passed away, as they said, even though Agnes knows what the truth is — it’s moments like that, and moments with Weston, where she is utilizing the last bit of her power. Or she realizes that the system is never going to work for her in that way. That’s when she starts to do the things like begging Garth to marry Becka, because she knows that that will save Becka. And she can also be a protector, in a way, because she knows that if Garth is there, Becka is safe, and she can also be close to the two of them and know that they’re both safe.”

Now, Agnes is back at Aunt Lydia’s (Ann Dowd) wife school, marking the first time a “green” plum has ever come back after being engaged and so close to the altar.

“I don’t think that she has really any idea of what to expect, because this is the first time that this has happened,” Infiniti says. “Agnes is the first plum to go back to school, and so she knows that her life is not going to look at all like how she planned it to be, or at all like any of her friends. It’s something that she needs to adjust to. But she has her friends. She has Daisy [Lucy Halliday], she has Shu [Rowan Blanchard], who are there too to walk that line with her.”