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Holly Gibney

  • ️Tue Feb 06 2024

Holly Gibney (Literature)

Holly Gibney is a character created by Stephen King, featuring as both a supporting player and a central protagonist in King's more crime oriented stories. Introduced in the "Bill Hodges" trilogy, Holly is a sensitive, empathic, and probably neurodivergent private investigator, with obsessive compulsive tendencies and anxiety issues.

She has been played by Justine Lupe in the television adaptation of Mr. Mercedes, and by Cynthia Erivo in HBO's version of The Outsider. Lupe also provided narration on the audiobook version of Holly, reprising her role in the process.

Appearances:

Tropes:

  • Age Lift: In the source material, Holly is middle-aged from her first book, moving into her fifties by the time of Holly. Both screen adaptations dramatically de-age her, placing Holly at around her early thirties as of Mr. Mercedes, likely as a means to fully establish her as a surrogate daughter to Hodges in the first three books.
  • Ascended Extra:
    • Holly was originally meant to be just an episodic character; however, King liked her so much that he gave her a more prominent role, and then she became the main protagonist of his 21st-century Mythos.
    • From her initial role as Jerome's kid sister and Damsel in Distress in the second half of Mr. Mercedes, Barbara Robinson is the One Degree of Separation between the rest of the cast and the Kid Hero of Finders Keepers, and is a main character in End of Watch and the subsequent Holly books.
  • Author Tract: Holly, set in the politically fraught year following the outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the election of Joe Biden, makes all of Stephen King's views on these subjects very, very clear. In its Author's Note, King himself admits to what he calls "soapboxing."
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Despite being probably the single kindest character in her author's entire body of work, Holly is not a woman to be pushed too far, and boasts by far the highest success rate of any character in King's detective series when it comes to killing or incapacitating villains, by means of varying and sometimes spectacular brutality: Brady Hartsfield (head caved in, permanently disabled), the Outsider (head caved in again), the Ondowski-Thing (hurled down an elevator shaft), Roddy Harris (throat slashed), and Emily Harris (neck snapped).
  • Black Best Friend: Jerome and Barbara Robinson are Holly's closest friends following the death of Bill Hodges.
  • Breakout Character: Other than Roland and Flagg, Holly is probably the most popular, ubiquitous character in King's entire bibliography, appearing in no fewer than six novels. This wasn't even originally by design, either; per the author himself, Holly was meant to be no more than an incidental character in Mr. Mercedes, but ended up appealing to him so strongly that she worked her way up to eventually becoming The Hero of King's detective mythos.
  • Failed Future Forecast: If It Bleeds places its major action in December of 2020 and depicts characters boarding airplanes, vacationing in Bermuda, visiting one another for Christmas, and even repeatedly accessing a nursing home (the institutionalization of Holly's Uncle Henry being a major plot point) without a single mention of the COVID-19 Pandemic and its associated restrictions. Holly, which resumes the story in the summer of 2021, would not only Retcon all of the above into the series, but turn it into a crucial plot point when Holly's mother dies from the virus, which she catches while visiting the aforementioned nursing home.
  • Fantasy Creep: Mr. Mercedes is a straightforward crime thriller, as is its sequel Finders Keepers... until the last few pages, when it's implied comatose killer Brady Hartsfield has developed unusual mental powers. The final book, End of Watch, goes into full blown sci fi/horror territory as Brady learns to Body Surf and plots a mind-plague of suicides.
  • Genre Shift: The books in which Holly appears are somewhat genre-fluid. For instance, Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers are fairly grounded crime thrillers, whereas End of Watch introduced more paranormal elements such as telepathy. The Outsider and It It Bleeds steer things into more familiar Horror territory that King is best known for (both stories feature horrific shapeshifting monsters), although Holly does return the series to its non-supernatural roots.
  • Hate Sink: Charlotte, Holly's mother, is abusive and controlling and is responsible for virtually every problem Holly had before meeting Bill Hodges. Even after Holly slips out of her control, she continues trying to get her to move back home with an elaborate lie about her trust fund being stolen. She also harbors a set of political beliefs that are the exact opposite of Stephen King's, which eventually kills her when she catches Covid after refusing to get vaccinated.
  • Hollywood Atheist: Averted. Holly is the only positively-portrayed atheist in King's novels. She does pray, but it's just a way of speaking her thoughts out loud, suggested to her by her therapist.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: Holly is nearly three decades older than Jerome Robinson, but he and his younger sister Barbara are two of her closest friends.
  • Nice Girl: Especially coming from an author known for almost exclusively writing characters who range from morally complex to outright repulsive, Holly is just fundamentally good. She has her moments of frustration and anger - sometimes rage, as the villains and assorted dicks of her mythos discover - but Holly is a woman who genuinely doesn't understand cruelty and ignorance, stubbornly treating everyone she meets, be they pleasant or unpleasant themselves, with the same basic standard of politeness and respect.
  • No Social Skills: Partly because of her questionable upbringing and partly because of her specific combination of neurodivergent quirks, Holly remains a bit lost in social situations throughout her whole series. Though she is always perfectly, almost obsessively polite toward everyone she meets, especially clients, Holly is obviously uncomfortable around all but a very select few people, mostly leaving friendly conversation to her friends - first Hodges, then later Jerome, Barbara and Pete.
  • Private Investigator: She inherits the Finders Keepers detective agency from Bill Hodges after the conclusion of End of Watch.
  • Race Lift: Holly is caucasian in the books and the tv-series Mr. Mercedes, but black in The Outsider.
  • There Are No Therapists: Averted. Holly sees many therapists throughout the series and they play an important role in her Character Development.