‘The Testaments’: Does Garth Have Feelings for Agnes? Brad Alexander Weighs In
What To Know
- Agnes is in love with her guardian, Garth, in The Testaments, and hopes to marry him now that he’s being promoted to commander.
- Here, actor Brad Alexander unpacks how Gilead’s youth views romance.
Agnes MacKenzie (Chase Infiniti) is convinced she’s in love with her guardian, Garth Chapin (Brad Alexander), in The Testaments, but can he sense her feelings for him when they’ve both been raised under the crushing weight of Gilead propaganda in The Handmaid’s Tale spinoff? Here, Alexander opens up about Garth’s feelings for Agnes and what he can sense from her. Warning: The Testaments Season 1 Episode 5 spoilers ahead.
Handmaid’s Tale fans know that Agnes is really Hannah Bankole, the daughter of June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) and Luke Bankole (O-T Fagbenle) who was kidnapped by Gilead as a young girl in The Handmaid’s Tale. In The Testaments, she has no memory of her life before becoming Agnes MacKenzie, and her powerful father, Commander MacKenzie (Nate Corddry), makes her one of Gilead’s most eligible girls. In The Testaments Episode 5, Agnes and her fellow eligible classmates partook in a debutante ball that introduced them to the older men who want to marry them. At the end of the episode, Agnes learned from her father that Garth was being promoted to commander, giving her hope that they could get married.
Alexander told our sibling publication, TV Insider, that the show’s version of Garth was raised in Gilead and doesn’t remember life before the regime. It’s impressive that he became a rebel for Mayday, given that he was raised by the oppressive regime and its propaganda for all of his life. Garth was radicalized by witnessing how girls in Gilead are basically sold off to older men in Gilead to raise their social standing.
“Ultimately, he’s just had a moral realization about the truth of what’s happening to these girls, and that’s the central push for him,” Alexander explained.
It’s highly dangerous for anyone to show lust and attraction or even basic interest in anyone else in this religious extremist regime, so feelings for girls never really crossed Garth’s mind, according to Alexander. (Things are even more dangerous for Mattea Conforti‘s Becka, who is queer and in love with Agnes, making her a “gender traitor.”) He can tell, however, that Agnes has feelings for him, even if he’s not capable of recognizing it as love.
“It’s really interesting, and I go back and forth on this. It does appear to be a puppy crush. It seems an infatuation, and I think he’s defensive against it, but they’re both in a situation with a lot of pressure and they’ve been excluded from each other’s gender for their entire lives,” Alexander explained. “It’s interesting and it’s probably biologically very intense and the feelings aren’t there, but it’s not something that he recognizes as love because that conception to him doesn’t really exist in the romantic sense.”
“He’s recognizing that there’s interest on her behalf for Garth, but I don’t know if he wants to confront it and complicate things,” Alexander continued. “It’s a risk being in his position. He’s taking a risk every single day just by being with Mayday, and here he is with the most valuable, the most prized possession in Gilead, and she’s suddenly affecting for him. It’s as scary as it is complimentary, I would say, for Garth.”
Garth doesn’t think of the possibility of marrying Agnes when he’s promoted to commander. Alexander said: “His conception of romantic love is almost nonexistent. It’s a dynastic partnership. Every single marriage in Gilead is dynastic. It’s about economics and who can raise your profile more, so I’m not sure that he has a real conception of romantic love, but he knows that he’s feeling something and he definitely can verify and see that she’s feeling something too.”
Will Garth reciprocate Agnes’s feelings eventually, or will he avoid any connection to protect his efforts with Mayday?
The Testaments, Wednesdays, Hulu
