The Testaments episode 7 airs shock return scenes for another Handmaid's Tale character

Being a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, it was only a matter of time before The Testaments would introduce more fan-favourite characters from the original show.

But while the focus has mostly been on June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) and Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) up until this point, episode 7 brought us a welcome surprise in the form of Rita Blue, first played in The Handmaid's Tale by Amanda Brugel.

The last we saw of Rita, she played a vital role in the Mayday resistance, helping to save the day alongside June's husband, Luke (O-T Fagbenle). But as The Testaments has made abundantly clear, Gilead still endures years after the end of The Handmaid's Tale, so it makes sense that a key player like Rita would continue to help Mayday in their quest to end Gilead for good.

While Rita doesn't show up in Gilead itself (and never appeared in The Testaments book for that matter either), she does return at last in flashbacks here, where we see her help Daisy (Lucy Halliday) prepare for life as a Pearl.

At first, the plan is to simply smuggle Daisy out of harm's way following her parents' murder. But Daisy is determined to seek vengeance, desperate to join Mayday and fight the good fight. Rita pushes back, knowing firsthand just how dangerous it is to mess with Gilead. But then she recalls June's special plan, which is "just waiting for a kid the right age..."

Yep, this is the moment that Daisy decides to embark on life as a double agent within Gilead, pretending to be a willing convert so she can help Mayday tear it all down from the inside.

Rita eventually gives in, prepping Daisy with everything she needs to make a success of this plan and not get herself killed. Key to that is a tough "pep talk" of sorts that Rita gives when she realises Daisy's too cocky about the plan without fully understanding the magnitude of what she's about to do:

"If you go in there thinking you’re smarter than them, you will die," says Rita. "Do you understand me?"

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If Rita seems harsher here than usual, it's only because she's terrified of what might befall Daisy. Once this young girl goes into Gilead, there's no turning back, and Rita is painfully aware of just how dangerous life is within that fascist regime.

There's always been that steely fire laced into the resolve of everyone's favourite Martha, and seeing it come to the fore here is an instant highlight for The Testaments, bridging the gap between this spin-off and the show that started it.

Such connective tissue comes into play again soon after when Rita reveals that June has a daughter who's still trapped in Gilead. Yep, Daisy knew about this going in before she later met Agnes MacKenzie (Chase Infiniti) in person…

Later in this same episode, it looks like Gilead has figured out that Daisy is a traitor, only for guards to then haul out another Pearl for punishment instead. It's the closest Daisy has got yet to being found out, making Rita's past warning all the more resonant.

Whether Rita returns in future episodes or not, it's still fitting that she would be included here after her character was mostly overlooked towards the end of The Handmaid's Tale. Plus it fits the backstory Brugel developed for Rita too.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter following the final episode of The Handmaid's Tale, Brugel revealed her thoughts on what might happen to Rita following her victory.

"My final backstory for her was that she was going to continue to fight in the Rita way, where she would become either a spy or an intelligence mover of information quietly, as she has done in the whole series," she said. "She will do that until the day she dies."

Brugel has said the writers weren't aware of this idea at the time, but it sure looks like they read that interview as this all lines up nicely with what Rita's return looked like in The Testaments this week.

But wait, there's more.

Brugel reveals: "[Rita] has a nephew – you guys were supposed to know this – and my imagination is that at the end when she dies, her nephew when packing up all of her stuff finds all of this evidence that Rita was able to take out different cells of Gilead and was part of the information transfer in taking out lots of people in Gilead. But no one really knows it until she dies."

Whether this ends up becoming canon on screen won't be clear for quite some time – not until The Testaments eventually comes to a close. But for now, it's extremely gratifying for longtime fans of this franchise to see Rita's impact still felt, marking hopefully the first of many appearances for her moving forward.

Not bad going for a character who was never even mentioned throughout Margaret Atwood's original Testaments book in the first place.

And who knows? Perhaps more key figures from the past will return as well? There are plenty of options to choose from, but at this point, we're holding out for Madeline Brewer to reprise her role as Janine next.

The Testaments continues to air on Disney+ in the UK every Wednesday. Sign-up to Disney+ from £5.99 a month.

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