Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 6, Episodes 1-2.
High Commander Wharton (Josh Charles) has finally come to Gilead, but just who is the top-level Gilead official and why is showing up now? Plus, let’s dig into the return of June’s mother Holly.
Throughout the past five seasons of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” there have only been conversations about Commander Wharton. But in the first episode of Season 6, “Train,” he makes a grand, GQ-style entrance just as Nick (Max Minghella) returns home to his wife Rose Blaine (Carey Cox) after being apprehended for punching Commander Joseph Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) over the attack on June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss).
Prior to this point, we’ve only known that he’s Nick’s father-in-law — but as a Gilead official, he appears sincere and level-headed but Moss says he’s the absolute “worst.”
The star and executive producer, who previously worked with Charles on the FX thriller “The Veil,” said she knew he was the perfect fit to play the crucial role.
[Commander Wharton] is the worst person in Gilead in a way, and you need a really good actor to handle that,” Moss told TheWrap. “I also know him personally from working with him on ‘The Veil’ and I knew he would really fit within the family … So when this character came up, I was like, ‘Yes, what about Josh Charles?’ We talked for a couple of hours about the character, him and I, and really talked through what he could be and and thank God he said yes.”His first words on screen, “Blessed day,” jumpstart the beginning of a new day in Gilead. He’s come back in town seemingly to straighten things out in the rebellion-stricken nation, as more and more uprisings spark. But by the end of the first two episodes, Wharton says he won’t be making his return to Washington, D.C., his priority is to be near his daughter “for a while” and he advises that it’s time someone looked into Serena’s whereabouts so that she can be the face of New Bethlehem.
Another, more pleasant, surprise was the return of June’s mother Holly (Cherry Jones), who from the last viewers saw was stuck in the wastelands called the Colonies, radioactive areas Gilead’s worst lawbreakers are sent to clean up. June and Holly reunite at the end of Episode 1, where June finds her volunteering at a refugee site in Alaska. This reunion was somewhat foreshadowed earlier in the episode when June whispers to Serena’s baby boy Noah that “mommies always come back.”
“I think in the story of June in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” literally in the definition of the title, it’s her story of her as a mother. In order to really, fully explore that story and the complexity of it and the arc of it that happens,” Moss explains. “As a child your relationship changes with your parents as you get older that dynamic shifts a bit as you both change. So I feel like in order to fully explore that story for June, her mother has be a part of it. Her mother has taught her how to fight, her mother taught her to be the person that she is, her mother gave her the strength that she has to go and fight for her own daughters. I don’t know how you tell June’s story without Holly.”
In Episode 2: “Exile,” Holly doesn’t quite provide details about how she escaped the colonies, and initially instead of supporting June’s continued fight against Gilead, Holly insists that she start a new life mothering Nicole and warns her Nick may be untrustworthy as a Gilead eye. Showrunner and executive producer Eric Tuchman says it was essential that Holly make her comeback in June’s life right when she needs her the most.
“It was important in the first episode because June goes through this really challenging, harrowing experience on the train, and we didn’t want to leave her at the end of the episode in such a dark, disturbed place,” Tuchman. “We wanted the end of the first episode to have a feeling of uplift and hopefulness, and that came in the form of this reunion that she has with her mom that she thought was dead.”
He continued: “And June, through her experience, has now become more like her mother. She was taught to fight, she was taught to be resilient. She was taught to be concerned and empathetic with about other people. So the two of them really kind of have kind of this kind of give and take that by the end of the second episode, they find this balance with each other — this beautiful balance and appreciation for each other.”
“The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 6 releases new episodes Tuesdays on Hulu.
The post ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Star Elisabeth Moss Unpacks That Surprise Return, and Why Commander Wharton Is ‘the Worse Person in Gilead’ appeared first on TheWrap.