‘The Handmaid’s Story’ Showrunners Dig Into This Season’s Most Startling Character Arc

The Handmaid’s Story has only one episode left to wrap up the story of June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss), who’s been combating to take down Gilead since 2017—and has lastly made some rather big strides in that route. The penultimate episode of the Hulu present’s sixth and final season packed in just a few main “oh shit” moments, together with a number of farewells. Some were poignant. Others weren’t.

No person goes to cry for Commander Wharton. That features Serena, who’s now twice a widow, and whose intel helped June and Commander Lawrence plot to explode the airplane that may be carrying Gilead’s surviving leaders to an emergency assembly in Washington, D.C.

Commander Lawrence, nonetheless, we’ll miss. The Handmaid’s Story‘s quirkiest commander spent a lot of his time attempting to undermine the dystopia he’d helped create, and he had hope for the long run as soon as probably the most evil commanders had been taken care of. Too dangerous his scheme to plant a bomb aboard their personal jet was ill-timed, and he was compelled into making it a suicide mission.

However we’re undecided how one can really feel about Nick. The Max Minghella character had an advanced arc this season—he’s nonetheless deeply in love with June, however that didn’t cease him from ratting out the resistance to save lots of his personal pores and skin. Seeing him board the doomed flight on the final minute—as June watched in horror from her hiding place—was sort of an ideal farewell. Nick got here from a troubled background that muddied his selections as soon as Gilead got here to energy, however in the long run he made it clear he’d moved fully to the darkish facet.

In a brand new interview with Entertainment Weekly, The Handmaid’s Story co-showrunners Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang talked in-depth about Nick’s journey in season six. “It was actually essential that this season could be about testing and difficult these characters and having them reveal who they are surely,” Tuchman mentioned. “What have they realized or not realized over the course of this sequence? … For Nick, I’ll simply say we all know it’s a polarizing destiny for him and that lots of our followers are upset about it, however we perceive that that comes from the love that they’ve for this character and the connection he’s had with June.”

“However we’ve got to do not forget that she’s not the one factor in his life, and that he’s a commander in Gilead. And if there’s one factor the sequence has proven is there’s no such factor as an excellent commander. Irrespective of how great chances are you’ll be to our primary character, he has nonetheless been a prepared full participant in Gilead.”

Added Chang, “I even have quite a lot of sympathy for Nick. I imply, he was a man who did great issues to save lots of the girl that he cherished. Whereas on the similar time he had this job as a commander in Gilead, and I don’t see him as an evil villain. I feel that he was below quite a lot of stress … the concept that he abruptly went from white to black or from hero to villain is simply that we’d be doing a disservice to our characters by portray them as only one factor or the opposite. They’re all embodied in shades of grey as a result of that’s what people are.”

In a separate interview with Variety, Minghella mirrored on his personal shock after studying what route the character was going to soak up season six.

“It was fairly completely different to how he served the present beforehand … the Nick and June relationship has been a reprieve from the extra tense thematic components of the present. And so to floor that relationship, then, into among the darker, extra nihilistic points-of-view that we’ve got to discover in The Handmaid’s Story, I used to be shocked by it—however fascinated by it as an actor. I don’t know that I might have performed every part the identical up to now had I identified that was the place we had been going to land.”

The Handmaid’s Story finale arrives Tuesday on Hulu.

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