When June arrived in Gilead, she thought her husband Luke was dead. Among the misery of life as a Handmaid, finding a real connection and genuine tenderness with Nick was a real gift - until life for the Handmaid and chauffer was complicated by June finding out her husband was actually alive.
Since escaping Gilead, June has worked on her marriage while continuing to see Nick whenever the opportunity comes up. Nick has further complicated their romance by staying in Gilead and being promoted to Commander and getting his Gilead wife pregnant.
In wanting June to move to New Bethlehem, Nick would get the best of both worlds - he'd get easy access to June and his daughter, Nicole, and June could be closer than ever to getting Hannah back. June has a big decision to make, and we look at whether she could choose to be with Nick at the end of The Handmaid's Tale season 6.
The following content contains spoilers for The Handmaid's Tale season 6 and possible spoilers for The Testaments.
Does June end up with Nick?
At the end of Margaret Atwell's The Handmaid's Tale novel, there's no solid conclusion to June and Nick's story. In his strange dual role both working as an Eye and a Mayday operative, it appears Nick brings Mayday to the Waterford's home to take June to a place of safety.
That is where the book and season 1 ends, and therefore the source material for the show - everything since that moment has been written purely for television. Although based on speculation and theories, we predict June and Luke won't be together at the end of The Handmaids Tale season 6, and we have our reasons.
Throughout all seasons of the show, June continuously grapples with Luke being her original love and the feelings she once had for him - and everything he's done for her while was in and out of Gilead. On the other hand, Luke doesn't and never will, understand what it was like to be trapped in the violent, totalitarian regime.
This is where June and Nick's connection is incomparable to her relationship with Luke. Their shared experience of such a deeply traumatic and volatile place to live, not to mention now sharing a child, means they'll be inextricably linked in a way June and Luke will never be.
We get it, Luke has acted as caregiver to Nicole, June's daughter with Nick, in her absence - a pretty selfless act when Nicole isn't his biological daughter. He's looked out for his wife in every single way and it's easy to see why June would feel guilty over her feelings for Nick.
Nick compounds these feelings by continuously not making things easy in their relationship. He's had plenty of opportunities to leave Gilead but has consistently chosen to stay there and rise up the ranks.
This could be because he feels better placed to protect June and Nicole from there, or simply because he wants his cake and to eat it - to keep his wife and family there while keeping June on the side.
We don't particularly buy into that though, as he seems pretty smitten with his former Handmaid love. So will they end up together? We think they will at some point, just not at the season 6 conclusion.
There's slightly more information about Nick in The Testaments, but still nothing solid about whether he's with June romantically or not. He does leave Gilead to continue Mayday operations on the outside. June also continues life working for Mayday and we'd like to think they'd end up together without Gilead borders to separate them.
Adding fuel to our theory while speaking to Deadline, Elisabeth Moss suggested she believes June loves Nick and he is the person she ultimately wants to be with. Series creator Bruce Miller also admitted the show had been written to keep audiences invested in June and Nick's relationship.
"You don’t want June to ever take off her love glasses about anybody… So you want to always have your audience and your main character be on Team Nick," he said, adding the caveat, "I think being on Team Nick means wishing and wishing and wishing that Nick made better choices."
At the end of sequel novel, The Testaments, June is reunited with both her daughters and Luke and Nick are both able to be with their respective daughters. So, everyone's alive.
But while it isn't stated which of the pair June is actually with, Bruce Miller got his way and we're definitely team Nick despite his flaws and dubious decisions.
