Daisy (Nicole) escapes with Ada and learns her true identity

Daisy's sixteenth birthday is the day her world ends. After sneaking onto a protest march against Gilead, she returns home to find her adoptive parents, Neil and Melanie, increasingly anxious. Days later, a car bomb outside their store, The Clothes Hound, kills them both. Ada, a leather-jacketed family friend who had been picking up clothes for charity, appears at Daisy's school and drives her away, destroying her own phone and warning that the same people who set the bomb may be looking for her. Daisy is in shock, but she follows Ada's instructions.

Flight and Shelter

Ada takes Daisy first to a Quaker meeting house that houses SanctuCare, a Gilead refugee organization. There, Daisy sees women who have just escaped Gilead, crying with relief, and hears snatches of their stories. Ada changes Daisy's clothes to make her look like a different person—a black T-shirt with a skull, leggings, and orange mirror sunglasses—and then drives her to a decaying brownstone mansion in Parkdale called Carnarvon. Inside a furnished apartment, Daisy watches the news coverage of the bombing: the wreckage of The Clothes Hound, the shell of Melanie's car. She turns off the sound, feels sick, and falls asleep on the sofa.

The Revelation

The next morning, Ada and Elijah, a friend of Neil's from SanctuCare, tell Daisy the truth. Her birthday was not her real birthday; she is about four months younger. Neil and Melanie were not her parents. They were Mayday operatives who had been hiding her since she was a baby. Daisy is Baby Nicole, the infant smuggled out of Gilead by her mother and Mayday, whose return Gilead has demanded for years. Daisy is stunned: "I don't like this," she says. Elijah explains that Gilead has never stopped looking for her, that Mayday cannot protect her openly because it is classed as a terrorist organization, and that her adoptive parents were killed because Gilead suspected they were Mayday. Daisy feels guilty, believing her own disobedience—going to the protest march—led to their deaths, but Ada and Elijah insist the bombing was independent of her actions.

The Source and the Mission

Elijah reveals that Mayday has had a source inside Gilead who has been passing information via microdots hidden on Pearl Girls brochures. The source used Neil's microdot camera to send messages, and Melanie returned the brochures to the Pearl Girls. But after the bombing, the link is broken. The source has a fallback plan: a young woman claiming to have been converted by the Pearl Girls must enter Gilead to retrieve a document cache that could destroy the regime. The source insists that the only acceptable courier is Baby Nicole herself. Daisy protests that she cannot destroy Gilead alone, but Elijah says she would be transporting the ammunition, not fighting alone. Ada adds that if she is caught, Gilead will not dare kill her because she is too valuable an icon. Daisy agrees to go, feeling she owes it to Neil, Melanie, and the other dead.

Training and Preparation

Ada and Elijah set up a training regimen. Garth, a young Texan volunteer with the Mayday Lincoln Brigade, teaches Daisy self-defense: skipping, punching, kneeing, and a heartstopper punch. He also tries to teach her to poke out eyes, which she finds disgusting. Ada tries to teach her to pray, but Daisy struggles with the hypocrisy. They give her a tattoo on her left forearm—the word GOD crossed with LOVE—as a scarification that the source has demanded for identification. Daisy worries that the whole story might be a trap, but Ada says, "It's a gamble every time you get up in the morning." Garth tells her, "I'm betting on you. It'll be so amazing if you win."

The Street Phase

Daisy, now calling herself Jade, dresses as a street person and panhandles with Garth on a corner where the Pearl Girls are known to walk. When the Pearl Girls approach, Garth acts possessive and hostile, and Daisy plays the part of a traumatized, abused girl. The Pearl Girls give her a brochure and leave. After several days of sleeping under bridges, in a church, and in a cemetery, the Pearl Girls return. Garth sells her to them for half the asking price, and Daisy goes with them, crying as she leaves Garth behind. The Pearl Girls take her to their condo, clean her up, and prepare false papers identifying her as Aunt Dove. They fly her to Gilead on a private jet, where she is greeted by a double line of saluting men in black uniforms and taken to Ardua Hall for the Thanks Giving ceremony.

Daisy's storyline in the television adaptation of The Testaments has been closely tied to the development of the series. Atwood coordinated with the producers of The Handmaid's Tale to ensure that the sequel's narrative would not be compromised by the show's timeline. In March 2023, Bruce Miller stepped down as showrunner of The Handmaid's Tale to concentrate on adapting The Testaments. By March 2025, Lucy Halliday was announced as the co-lead playing Daisy, joining Chase Infiniti as Agnes and Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia. The series was officially ordered by Hulu in April 2025, with Miller and Warren Littlefield executive producing, alongside Elisabeth Moss and others. Mike Barker was set to direct the first three episodes, and the cast also included Rowan Blanchard as Shunammite and Mattea Conforti as Becka.