Do you have to watch The Handmaid’s Tale before The Testaments?

Not quite a year after Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale wrapped its six-season run, the sequel series, The Testaments, kicked off with a bang, dropping its first three episodes on Hulu this week. Based on Margaret Atwood’s books The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, these TV shows are steeped in their own lore. So you may be wondering whether you need to have watched all six seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale to understand what’s happening in The Testaments — especially if you started watching the original show, but fell off at some point.