Along with the rest of its dedicated audience, we can't stop talking about The Handmaid's Tale season 6. The show's final season is turning out some excellent plot points and tying up some loose ends along the way.
We're not expecting the entire show to be neatly tied up with a bow though, it's never been its style and we have the upcoming The Testaments for that. While we wait for the spin-off, we'll be avidly discussing when we'll see June get Hannah back, and how we can visit the real New Bethlehem filming location.
The theme of mothers and motherhood has also made us wonder how June must feel to bring another child into the world and suffer huge amounts of trauma without her own mother, who hasn't been seen since season 1. While ruminating on this, watching the show, we kept asking ourselves what happened to Holly, and did she die?
The following content contains major spoilers for The Handmaid's Tale season 6.
What happened to June's mother in The Handmaid's Tale?
While she was undergoing Handmaid training at the Rachel and Leah Centre in season 1 of the show, June and her cohort were shown slides of what life looks like in the Colonies - the place anyone who opposes the regime is sent to undertake hard labour until their death.
On one of the slides is June's mother, Holly Maddox. A feminist, women's rights activist, and doctor who performed abortions and vasectomies after they'd been made illegal, Holly would've been a prime target to be silenced or killed by Gilead.
Those sentenced to live in the Colonies worked in appalling conditions, moving heavy radioactive waste with no protective clothing or masks. Although when June sees the picture of Holly she asserts, "she'll fight like hell," being sent there equated to certain death from radiation poisoning, and June would likely assume her mother had died - even if she didn't go down easily.
June had a difficult relationship with Holly, who had seen the Gilead ideals slowly creeping across America along with the erosion of women's rights. She wanted June to be out protesting with her, not 'settling' as she believed her daughter was doing.
Holly disapproved of June's job as a book editor, believing it stifled her own creativity. Although she liked Luke, she couldn't have made it more clear that marrying and having children in the current climate was a bad decision.
Irked by her mother's opinions of her life choices and how vocal she was about how much she'd given up for June, who appeared to be a disappointment, an understandable rift grew between them.
It's not until she's trapped in Gilead as a Handmaid that June realises her mother was right about what was about to happen to their country all along. She also channels Holly's strength to fight back and be the woman her mother wanted to raise, becoming an icon for oppressed women everywhere.
However, it turns out Holly did have enough fight in her to survive, and she did indeed escape The Colonies. When June arrives at the refugee camp in Alaska in the first episode of season 1, her mother is working there as the camp's doctor.
We simply won't believe anyone who says they didn't shed a tear when Holly spots her daughter and calls, "June Osborne? Sweetheart?" and the pair fall into each others arms, reunited after so many years and so much trauma.
And just as we predicted, Holly's return was a creative decision based on the show's running motherhood theme. Speaking to TV Line, Elisabeth Moss explained, "The whole show is so much about June’s motherhood and June’s role as mother. But I feel like, in order to really, fully tell that story, you’ve got to bring her own mum into it."
The Handmaid's Tale hasn't given us many happy moments, and there's every chance it won't end on a high note, but we're grateful for this moment of joy for June and Holly.
