Her Mother's Daughter: June in The Handmaid's Tale Season 2 Finale

Here be spoilers for the Season Two finale

Reading online reviews and scrolling through Twitter last night (the end of the day on which the Season Two finale of The Handmaid’s Talewas released), I realized that I apparently am in the small minority of viewers who actually like how the season ended and appreciate June’s choice in the final seconds of the episode. Some complained that her decision to leave baby Holly with the escaping Emily and stay in Gilead, “burning down the house” --as the Talking Heads sang behind her seething, hooded glare--was just showrunner Bruce Miller’s nonsense plot point to facilitate a third season in Gilead. Others could understand her desire to save Hannah, but thought that could more effectively be done from Canada, not considering the fact that Luke and Moira have been in Canada for awhile, and haven’t been able to get to the girl. The choice was completely out of character to many who took the time to comment. Why wouldn’t she take this third chance to get out? To me the decision was not out of character for the June who’d evolved over the course of this season, and I’d say that it’s because she has become her mother’s daughter. I see her committing not only to her long-standing focus on her own children and her promise to Holly that she WILL meet her sister someday, but—like Holly, Sr.—dedicating herself to a wider community of women and their needs for rescue and safety. Just like the wider community of Marthas dedicated itself to her in the episode.

The Offred of Atwood’s novel and of the first season of the show acknowledged that she was basically asleep to what was going on in her world as the U.S. was slouching toward Gilead. Even after being ripped from her family and forced into sexual servitude, she was loath to get involved with Mayday and make a fuss. But, toward the end of last season, she started to change, and she led the refusal to stone Janine—something that didn’t come from the book.

Over the course of the second season, she experiences so much that leads her to reflect on what it means to be a mother, particularly a mother in an extremely misogynist country like Gilead. When a mother like her is not allowed to raise her own children, what can she do to protect those children? She needs to rely on others: she asks Rita to serve as a type of godmother to the baby. She even asks Aunt Lydia for her commitment to protect the child from the Commander’s violence. Her focus in the time before on just her own small family and Moira, what we see in the precious flashbacks to moments with Luke and Hannah, won’t work anymore.

In the process of contending with these new constraints on motherhood, she also wrestles with her own fraught memories of her mother, the ardent feminist activist who June felt prioritized the women’s movement over her. Holly missed important events in her daughter’s life. She pushed June to take on the patriarchy, too, but when June became a mother herself, she wanted to be different. She focused primarily on her own nuclear family, figuring her mother’s generation had done enough to ensure that she could marry and keep her own last name, have the profession she wanted while raising a child, and not have to work to maintain the social setting that allowed that. Yet around her, everything was going to despotism.

In flashbacks during the episode in which she almost escaped in the Econowife’s clothes, she reflects on the fact that she’s leaving Hannah in Gilead, just like her mother often left her. Another time, she lets us know how it felt to see her mother in a newsreel about the Colonies. She remembers telling Moira that she now recognizes that her mother was right. As she is getting ready to deliver her second child, she recalls her time with her first: her mixed feelings about leaving her in childcare, her labor that her mother missed. Her and her mother's relationship was tense, but after delivering her baby daughter by herself, on the floor of the abandoned Commander’s house, she remembers introducing the newborn Hannah to her mother—Holly. And, she tells her second newborn that her name is Holly. She’s lived in this evil and extreme patriarchal culture for too long, has seen what it has done to other women like her, what it has done even to women like Serena. She is ready to honor her mother, and is ready for the world to have another Holly.

And, after encountering Martha after Martha after Martha helping her and the baby get to a safe space, I think she realizes that Gilead needs more of those activists to help more women like her. She recognizes that life shouldn’t just be about getting oneself to safety, but about helping others get there as well. She and Rita had realized and regretted that they didn’t do enough to help Eden. That is part of what prompted Rita to help get June and the new Holly out. And, I think it’s part of what got June to realize that she needs to be a part of this resistance, too. She needs now to be a Holly. So, she hands the baby to her friend, tells her to call her ‘Nicole’ (I did kind of cringe at that part. Really? For Serena?), and decides to be the Holly herself.

I like that. I think it fits with where the season has been taking the character, and I think it fits well with ways the show has been drawing connections to our own world. I wrote an earlier post about the continual focus on the government of Gilead stealing babies in the context of our own U.S. government separating children from parents at the southern border. While many Americans have been loudly protesting this policy, donating money to agencies that work with border crossers in detention, and volunteering their services where needed, far too many Americans who aren’t affected personally see no problem with how our government treats those seeking asylum. At one point in her past, June would have been one of those unconcerned Americans. Now she’s woke. And ready to resist. I look forward to what the writers have in store for her next season.