fleurdelivres

A home for my miscellaneous favorite art, books, shows, and related things. Occasionally serious.

[vbartilucci]

Short -sighted, petty, and vindictive.

They will never recognize their mistakes, let alone admit them.

The only reason I don't cheer when they own themselves is I know it'll affect other people as well.

[dr-litcrit]

The Dangerous Myth of Redemption: June’s Forgiveness of Serena

In The Handmaid’s Tale, one of the most troubling narrative choices of the final seasons is the framing of June’s apparent forgiveness of Serena Joy. Serena, June’s abuser and rapist, a central architect of Gilead’s terror, receives not accountability but empathy — an empathy the show encourages viewers to share. This choice does not merely distort character arcs; it sends a dangerous message about abuse, complicity, and the nature of forgiveness in the face of oppression.

Serena is not just another woman surviving within a patriarchal regime. She is one of Gilead’s foundational architects — a woman who advocated for the removal of women’s rights in a book entitled A Woman’s Place, while never living by the doctrine she helped create. She was not a passive wife but an active political operative: writing policy, speaking publicly, and even participating in the planning of violent attacks that led to Gilead’s formation — including assaults on the Capitol, the White House, and the Supreme Court. She is portrayed as believing wholeheartedly in Gilead’s ideology, continuing to support it well into later seasons. In every instance where she could have escaped or defected, she instead chose to stay — or, when temporarily exiled, to return.

The fact that she is ultimately trapped within the world she built should not compel viewer sympathy. Her rare and self-serving attempts to change aspects of the regime are always motivated by personal stakes — not empathy or principle. Even after Noah is born, she shows no interest in full-time motherhood, entrusting his care to Marthas while seeking status and influence. Her arc is not one of awakening, but of strategic adaptation. The show’s portrayal of her as a tragic mother or fallen believer whitewashes the very system she created — and the cost of that narrative leniency is paid by characters like June.

A Mother First, a Monster Second: Serena’s Self-Justification

Since Season 1, Serena has been portrayed as both victim and perpetrator, but crucially, she remains ideologically aligned with Gilead’s core principles. Though she occasionally expresses personal regret about how she treated June — moments that the show highlights as supposed growth — Serena never truly repents for building the regime or enabling its horrors. Her emotional center remains tied to her own desires: power, recognition, and above all, motherhood. Even Yvonne Strahovski, who portrays Serena, has expressed skepticism about her character’s redemptive potential, stating in an interview: “I mean, it would take a lot to make her redeemable ... maybe she should become a nun or something. … It’s all for her own sake.” She elaborates further, acknowledging that while Serena may be aware of her wrongdoings, “she justifies them constantly because of her own personal circumstances… It’s a selfish survival mode, it’s not for the greater good of others.” (AwardsRadar, 2021). This actor’s insight aligns with the show’s textual portrayal: Serena’s choices are never truly altruistic, only strategic, and motivated by self-interest

Serena’s justification for Gilead’s terror crystallizes in her belief that “maybe it was all worth it.” This chilling admission reveals that, for Serena, the suffering of others — including June — was a price she was willing to pay to achieve her goal. Gilead, in her eyes, made her a mother, and that personal fulfillment absolves the system’s crimes.

She may have deeply wanted to become a mother, but she never showed any desire to be a full-time caregiver; her priority was always power and influence. Serena only pursued surrogacy via Handmaids after "window shopping" for kidnapped children — a chilling flashback in Season 5 shows her and Naomi evaluating children as if they were accessories. When her first Handmaid dies by suicide, Serena doesn’t mourn her — she’s angry that her reproductive plans have been disrupted. And even after Noah’s birth, Serena hands off most caregiving duties to household staff, contradicting her supposed maternal ideal.

As feminist theorists like bell hooks have noted, the tendency to excuse women’s complicity in patriarchal systems by framing them as victims of their own circumstances is deeply problematic. It shifts the lens from responsibility to sympathy, allowing women like Serena — women with power and agency — to hide behind sentimentality and strategic tears.

When Forgiveness Becomes Betrayal: June’s Survivor Story Undermined

June is often portrayed as a deeply Christian and forgiving woman — a trait the show emphasizes throughout the series. And yet, this identity is at odds with some of her most reckless decisions, many of which have led to unnecessary deaths in the name of her personal mission. That contradiction becomes especially glaring in her selective forgiveness. She extends empathy and grace to Serena, her abuser and rapist, but withholds it from Nick — the father of her child, the love of her life, and the man who risked his life repeatedly to help and protect her.

Nick’s so-called betrayal, which June condemns without hesitation, involved him revealing vague information about the Mayday plan under extreme duress. He never exposed names or concrete details. In fact, according to Max Minghella’s interview and the subtext of the scene, Nick assumed Wharton already knew about the plan and was merely testing him. It wasn’t betrayal — it was survival. Had Nick refused to speak, he likely would have ended up on the Wall. The choice was no choice at all. And yet, June’s response is not understanding, but condemnation.

This double standard reaches its peak when June lets Nick board a plane she knows has been planted with explosives — an attack orchestrated via Lawrence. Meanwhile, she embraces Joseph Lawrence, who refused to help her find Hannah, stood by as commanders plotted to kill her, and was complicit in shooting down the planes that were meant to raid Hannah’s school and rescue the children. She also grows closer to Aunt Lydia, who tortured her and her friends, mutilated Janine, and remained loyal to Gilead’s ideology for years.

This selective moral logic undermines June’s arc. It asks the audience to accept a distorted sense of justice where charismatic abusers are forgiven, while allies who falter under impossible conditions are discarded. It’s not only unrealistic — it’s narratively irresponsible.

When evaluating Serena’s role in June’s brutal rape, carried out at nine months pregnant, the show’s creators themselves emphasize that there is no ambiguity in Serena’s culpability. In an interview, writer Yahlin Chang makes clear that Serena actively “helped Fred rape June to make the baby come faster,” saying the brutality reflects Gilead’s normalization of assault:

“They don’t see any problem with that… I wanted to get it to the truth of sexual assault.” (The Washington Post, 2018)

This branding of the act as political realism underscores Serena’s moral agency: she does not hesitate to weaponize June’s body to satisfy her own longing for a child — even as June nears full term. That level of direct orchestration leaves no room for the sentimental forgiveness the narrative later grants her.

Serena’s cruelty is not limited to a single episode. She has a long record of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse toward June. After suspecting that June was pregnant — and then discovering she wasn’t — Serena punished her by confining her to her room for two weeks. She slapped, pushed, and physically assaulted her repeatedly — once smashing her head into a doorframe. She drove her fingernails into June’s hands during the Ceremony. She arranged Nick’s forced marriage to Eden and showed excitement at a wedding where visibly underage girls — no older than 13 or 14 — were married off. She paraded Hannah in front of June like a hostage and repeatedly used the child as a threat. Her cruelty was not incidental or coerced; it was sustained, intentional, and fueled by possessiveness and rage.

Despite Serena’s unrepentant stance, the show increasingly positions June as a figure of compassion toward her. The narrative aesthetic — soft music, tender close-ups, Serena’s tears — encourages viewers to see Serena primarily through the lens of her maternal suffering rather than her role as an oppressor. June’s gestures of empathy, from aiding Serena in childbirth to comforting her in moments of vulnerability, are framed as signs of June’s strength and healing. But this depiction misrepresents the realities of trauma and recovery.

As trauma theorists have argued, genuine healing does not depend on — and is often undermined by — offering forgiveness to an unrepentant abuser. On the contrary, forgiveness that is premature or demanded by social or narrative pressures can retraumatize the survivor, deepening the harm. The Handmaid’s Tale, however, seems to valorize June’s capacity to empathize with Serena as though it is a necessary step toward her own liberation — sidelining the need for justice and accountability.

The Perils of Sympathizing with the Oppressor

By romanticizing June’s forgiveness of Serena, The Handmaid’s Tale undermines its own feminist foundation. The series was initially celebrated for exposing patriarchal violence with stark clarity, offering little comfort to those complicit in oppression. Yet in its later seasons, that clarity erodes. The moral weight of the story shifts from the survivors of Gilead’s cruelty to the emotional struggles of its enforcers.

Elisabeth Moss herself describes the June-Serena dynamic in strikingly intimate terms, calling it “the centerpiece of the show. It is the love story of the show. They’re the heroes and the villains of the show, and they often trade places in those roles.”  (Vanity Fair, 2025) This framing lays bare the series’ approach: Serena and June are positioned as moral equals whose bond transcends their history of violence and abuse.

But this interpretation is deeply troubling. By romanticizing a relationship born of exploitation and cruelty, the show risks blurring essential moral lines. What began as a tale of survival and resistance against oppression transforms into a narrative where the abuser and the victim are cast as co-protagonists in a mutual drama — their power dynamics softened, their crimes reframed as mere chapters in a complicated love story. In doing so, the series undermines its own critique of patriarchy, offering redemption where none was earned and asking viewers to invest in an emotional arc that obscures the need for accountability.

Serena’s redemption arc is not earned through transformation or accountability, but through the emotional labor of her victim — a dynamic that feminist philosophers like Kate Manne have identified as central to the maintenance of misogynistic systems. The cultural narrative that emerges suggests that women’s participation in oppressive regimes is forgivable, even understandable, so long as they conform to familiar roles of suffering or maternal devotion. This is a dangerous message, as it not only distorts the ethics of the story’s world but also risks normalizing similar patterns in the real world, where abusers are often shielded by sentimentality and the myth of personal redemption without accountability.

In the end, June’s forgiveness of Serena is framed as a triumph of compassion over hatred, but in truth, it represents a failure to honor the survivor’s story. It offers a fantasy of absolution for the unrepentant — a dangerous myth that serves neither justice nor healing.

The implication is chilling: redemption is not about moral reckoning or change, but about who the narrative chooses to protect. Charisma, motherhood, and suffering become shields for cruelty — even as quiet, loyal resistance, like Nick’s, is punished or forgotten.

Beauty, Youth, and Sympathy: How the Show Shapes Our View of Serena

Another subtle yet significant way The Handmaid’s Tale distorts the moral clarity of Serena’s character lies in its casting and characterization choices. In Margaret Atwood’s original novel, Serena is an older woman, her power diminished not only by Gilead’s patriarchal structures but also by the way those structures devalue women past their reproductive prime. The novel’s Serena embodies the consequences of a system that punishes all women, even those who helped build it — a bitter, discarded architect of her own cage.

The show, however, deliberately alters this dynamic. By casting a younger, strikingly beautiful actress as Serena — and by crafting the character to be closer in age and life stage to June — the series invites a different kind of viewer response. The age gap that symbolized Serena’s loss of status in the book is erased; instead, Serena becomes a figure of misplaced potential, a woman viewers are encouraged to see as still vibrant, desirable, and emotionally complex. This is compounded by the charisma and vulnerability that Yvonne Strahovski brings to the role — traits that, while a testament to the actress’s skill, contribute to the moral confusion surrounding Serena’s actions.

This choice taps into a well-documented cultural bias: audiences are more inclined to empathize with attractive characters, particularly when their suffering is framed in familiar, humanizing ways. As feminist thinkers such as Naomi Wolf have argued, beauty functions as a kind of currency within patriarchy — one that can grant power, obscure culpability, and manipulate perception. In The Beauty Myth, Wolf describes how cultural narratives often conflate a woman’s value with her appearance, conditioning audiences to see beauty as a proxy for virtue or worth. Similarly, Laura Mulvey’s critique of visual culture notes how cinema trains viewers to find pleasure — and thus sympathy — in looking at beautiful women, even when their actions warrant moral scrutiny.

By making Serena younger, more beautiful, and emotionally layered through casting and scripting choices, the series not only departs from Atwood’s sharp commentary on the cost of complicity but also reinforces antifeminist tropes. It suggests, however unintentionally, that oppressive women are more forgivable — or at least more worthy of our sympathy — if they are attractive and charismatic. As Susan Bordo has pointed out, this dynamic reflects a deeper cultural logic that binds women’s moral and social value to their bodies, inviting audiences to forgive or excuse when those bodies conform to certain ideals.

The result is a narrative that prioritizes Serena’s humanity over the dehumanization she inflicted on others — and ultimately, over the humanity of those who were never granted the same narrative grace. This is especially striking when contrasted with the show’s treatment of Nick — a character who, despite his emotional restraint and consistent moral compass, is given significantly less screen time and far fewer opportunities for emotional framing. His sacrifice is quiet, his pain internal, and his love expressed in subtle, selfless gestures. His stoicism may be misread by some as detachment, but to viewers with literary, psychological, or visual literacy — or simply higher emotional intelligence — it’s clear that Nick is one of the most tender, brave, and quietly heroic characters in the series. Serena, on the other hand, remains emotionally volatile and fundamentally self-serving. Apart from Fred — already dead by the final season — she is perhaps the coldest main character, yet her beauty and vulnerability ensure that she is constantly rehumanized by the narrative. In the end, the show teaches us that redemption is not earned — it is framed.

Rather than exposing how systems like Gilead exploit and discard women, The Handmaid’s Tale risks reinforcing the very ideologies it set out to critique: that a woman’s worth, even as a villain, remains tied to her appearance and ability to evoke desire or pity.

Conclusion: The Price of Selective Forgiveness

The Handmaid’s Tale has always been a story about moral ambiguity — about the impossible choices people make to survive within a system designed to strip them of power, agency, and integrity. Its early power came from its unflinching portrayal of these complexities: how even small acts of defiance carried enormous risk, and how survival often required compromises that blurred the line between victim and collaborator.

Yet in its later seasons, the show loses sight of that moral subtlety, offering a fractured vision of justice that undermines the complexity it once honored. June’s journey — once defined by the brutal reality of navigating power under tyranny — becomes clouded by selective forgiveness that follows no ethical logic, only narrative convenience and emotional manipulation.

Elisabeth Moss framed June’s forgiveness not as something she offers to Serena, but as something she does “for Noah“.

„June knows that Serena does need that forgiveness, and June is big enough to give it. She’s a pretty great person.”  (Vanity Fair, 2025) This framing highlights the show’s attempt to portray June’s forgiveness as noble — but it sidesteps the question of whether such forgiveness is just. The moral weight shifts from Serena’s accountability to June’s capacity for empathy, erasing the need for genuine atonement.

We see June extend compassion and even trust to characters whose hands are stained with the very crimes she fought to survive. Commander Lawrence, the architect of Gilead and the inventor of the Colonies, orchestrated the bombing that killed innocents in Chicago, ordered planes to be shot down as they attempted to raid Hannah’s school, and stood by silently as Gilead’s leadership plotted June’s death. Aunt Lydia oversaw torture, mutilation, and humiliation of handmaids for years, burning hands, gouging out eyes, and enforcing the regime’s ideology with zeal. Serena subjected June to relentless cruelty: physical violence, orchestrated rape, psychological torment, and the exploitation of June’s own daughter as a weapon. And yet, June forgives them. She comforts Serena, allies herself with Lawrence, and accepts Lydia’s supposed change of heart — without any of these figures ever fully reckoning with their actions.

By contrast, Nick — who repeatedly risked his life to protect June and Nicole, who worked quietly against Gilead, who fathered June’s child without ever asserting ownership or control — is cast out. His loyalty is questioned, his presence is rejected, and no forgiveness is offered. The show frames him as somehow tainted — not by his actions, but simply by the uniform he wears, or the role he plays within Gilead’s ranks, despite his resistance from within.

Bruce Miller acknowledges this tension, admitting, “Serena’s done unforgivable things. I don’t think there’s any forgiving her as a human being. But can June forgive her? Redemption just doesn’t seem like something that exists in the world. It’s a nice idea in a fictional story, but if our story is going to help the audience navigate the world, it can’t be that picture.”  (Vulture, 2025) Yet, despite this, the narrative does seem to present a picture of redemption — or at least of softened judgment — for Serena, using motherhood and vulnerability as shields. This contradiction mirrors the show’s broader inconsistency: it claims to eschew simplistic redemption arcs, yet writes them into its fabric through emotional manipulation.

This inconsistency reflects, and reinforces, a dangerous cultural message. As feminist thinkers such as Kate Manne, Naomi Wolf, and Susan Bordo have shown, societies are conditioned to excuse harm when it comes wrapped in beauty, maternal longing, or charm. The Handmaid’s Tale — perhaps unwittingly — participates in this dynamic. The beauty, charisma, or proximity to parenthood of Serena, Lydia, and Lawrence becomes a shield that softens our view of their crimes. Serena’s biological motherhood, Lydia’s self-fashioned maternal role toward Janine, and Lawrence’s growing bond with Charlotte each provide a veneer of humanity that the show uses to invite sympathy — even in the absence of true atonement. Meanwhile, Nick — who longs to be present for his daughter but is denied that opportunity — is left without such narrative protection, his loyalty overlooked and his isolation reinforced.

What’s most troubling is not that June’s feelings are complicated — true complexity would enrich the narrative. It is that the show offers no coherent moral framework for forgiveness or condemnation. It invites us to sympathize with unrepentant abusers, while isolating those who resisted. In doing so, The Handmaid’s Tale ceases to critique the dynamics of power; instead, it becomes complicit in the very patterns of selective empathy it once sought to expose. A show that began as a searing portrait of resistance ends by asking its heroine — and its audience — to do the emotional labor of forgiving the unforgivable. That is not catharsis. That is capitulation.

[dr-litcrit]

The Betrayal of Nick Blaine: How The Handmaid’s Tale Undermined Its Own Storytelling

As a university professor with a PhD in literature, I’ve dedicated my career to analyzing narrative structure, character arcs, and thematic coherence. And I can say this with full confidence: what the writers did to Nick Blaine in Season 6 of The Handmaid’s Tale was not bold, subversive, or daring — it was a narrative betrayal.

And just to be clear: I’m not a shipper. I didn’t love Nick because of his romance with June. I appreciated him as a deeply layered character — one whose quiet resistance stood in stark contrast to the more performative defiance of others. Not every act of heroism is loud. Nick’s resistance began long before June entered his life, and for several seasons, the writers honored that. Until they didn’t.

Nick represented something rare on television: a portrayal of a man caught inside a brutal system, not loud or showy, but quietly working to survive while retaining his humanity and fighting back in the ways available to him. His arc was thoughtful, subtle, and realistic — and it offered a necessary counterpoint to the broader, more visible forms of rebellion in the series. That narrative was coherent, moving, and consistent — until Season 6 shattered it for the sake of shock value.

A HISTORY OF RESISTANCE — CAREFULLY BUILT

Nick’s arc was never centered on power. In fact, he resisted it. He smuggled contraband to Jezebels, joined the Eyes in order to report predatory Commanders (after Waterford’s first Handmaid died by suicide), and helped take down Commander Guthrie, one of the architects of the Handmaid system. These weren’t incidental moments — they were intentional signs of internal rebellion that the show carefully planted over multiple seasons.

After meeting June, Nick continued to act strategically. He was the one who secretly smuggled the Jezebels letters out of Gilead and delivered them to Luke in Canada — an act that directly led to Canada refusing to sign a diplomatic agreement with Gilead. And crucially, Nick did this without June asking him to or even knowing about it. At the time, June was in a terrible mental state, so desperate that she tried to burn the letters in the sink. Nick hid the Jezebels letters in his apartment before Eden moved in — making it all the more risky once she arrived and began snooping through his things.

His promotions weren’t rewards but consequences. Serena arranged his marriage to Eden out of jealousy. His rise to Commander wasn’t a reward for loyalty — it was a consequence of his decision to pull a gun on Fred to help June and Nicole escape, as even Joseph Fiennes has confirmed in interviews. Even his marriage to Rose served a clear purpose: to get closer to Hannah’s captors, the Mackenzies, and position himself in a place where he could act.

Importantly, the Marthas in Season 4 speak to Nick like an equal, not like someone they fear. One even asks him, “Is this business as usual?” — a small but significant clue that Nick had been working with the Martha network for a long time. This wasn’t a sudden shift. His ties to the resistance were consistent and deliberate. Even other Commanders call him a “boy scout” in Season 6 — a nickname that reflects his perceived moral rigidity and difference from the men around him.

THE HINTS THE WRITERS LEFT — THEN ABANDONED

Throughout the first five seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale, the writers laid down clear and deliberate hints that Nick was meant to function as a quiet resistor embedded within Gilead’s system. His actions were not accidental or incidental — they were purposeful choices, woven into the narrative to build a coherent, morally complex character.

Another major hint came in a cut scene from Season 3 — one that never made it to the screen but is preserved in the official scripts. In that scene, Nick is shown at the front during Gilead’s military campaigns, standing alongside Commander Mackenzie. This wasn’t designed to show him as complicit — quite the opposite. It placed him close to Hannah’s captors, setting up his position to act as an inside link, a person who might eventually help June find and rescue her daughter. This scene reinforced what the show had been quietly building all along: Nick was where he needed to be, playing the long game.

His abrupt marriage to Rose further aligned with this arc. It wasn’t a romantic choice or a reward — it was another calculated move to get close to the Mackenzie family. The fact that we saw him and Rose at dinners with them in Season 5 wasn’t coincidence — it was strategy. Nick was positioning himself exactly where he could observe, influence, and perhaps, one day, act.

And here’s something telling: in his apartment above the garage, we see Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. That’s not just a random prop. It’s a novel about enduring love and resistance in the face of cruelty and loss. The writers deliberately placed that book in his apartment. It was a clear, intentional signal: Nick was written as someone with inner depth, quiet resistance, and a poetic soul. Bruce Miller says in The Art and Making of The Handmaid’s Tale:

“We were very careful about what books he reads, what books he has, and where we got them.” (p. 34)

And yet, all of these threads were dropped in Season 6. The Mackenzies vanished from the story. The careful groundwork that had been laid for Nick’s internal resistance arc was erased, discarded in favor of a last-minute, illogical narrative pivot that portrayed him as complicit without reckoning with everything the show had previously told us about him.

What’s worse, both the show’s own deleted material and the actual scenes up until Season 6 make it clear that Nick was never meant to be the villain they later tried to paint him as.The official scripts and cut scenes show him as a man horrified by the violence of Gilead’s rise, caught in it but never fully part of it. These clues weren’t just abandoned — they were actively contradicted in a way that undermined both the character and the larger themes of the series.

WHAT THE CREATORS & ACTOR SAY

Before Season 6, both the creators of The Handmaid’s Tale and actor Max Minghella consistently described Nick as a fundamentally decent man — a character carefully constructed to be morally complex, but not complicit in Gilead’s ideology.

Max Minghella, who portrayed Nick, made his view of the character clear as early as 2018:

“I trust Nick. I stand by him … at the root of Nick, he’s a good person. Whether he always does the right thing is a different question.” (Glamour, 2018)

Minghella recognized Nick as morally conflicted but ultimately decent — a man navigating impossible choices in an impossible world. His performance was built on the understanding that Nick was not a villain, but a man trapped by circumstances beyond his control, revealing himself through small gestures and quiet decisions.

In 2022, at the end of Season 5, showrunner Bruce Miller reinforced this characterization:

“I know what we’re setting up for Nick, which is exactly what you think it is. He’s the guy who we think he is. And even if he tries not to be the guy he thinks he is, it’s either going to be very uncomfortable for him like he is with Rose, or it’s going to fail and he’s going to end up not being able to stop himself from punching Lawrence. I think the nice thing is he follows his heart, and the scary thing is he follows his heart.” (Deadline, June 2022)

This statement from Miller is especially revealing in light of what ultimately unfolded in Season 6. His words confirm that as of the end of Season 5, Nick was intended to remain exactly as the audience understood him: a man driven by emotion, not ideology; someone uncomfortable when forced to conform; someone who couldn’t suppress his decency even when doing so put him at risk.

However, after Season 6, Miller’s commentary took on a different tone, attempting to reframe Nick’s arc:

“Nick isn’t choosing Gilead as a sudden endorsement of its beliefs and practices, but rather a belief that there’s no beating this regime; it’s better to protect yourself by moving with it rather than against it.” “Nick was trying to stay out of trouble … thinking about how to keep himself safe for his family.” (TV Insider, 2025)

These post-finale remarks sought to justify Nick’s sudden portrayal as complicit in Gilead’s horrors, but they stand in stark contrast to Miller’s earlier statements. What happened in Season 6 was not the culmination of a long-planned character journey; it was a last-minute pivot that abandoned Nick’s carefully built arc. His proximity to Gilead’s power structures had always been framed as about survival, not ideology — a distinction that Season 6 discarded.

Even Minghella was surprised by the shift in Nick’s moral framing, as he revealed in an interview with ELLE in 2025:

“Transparently, I was surprised … I thought it was a really bold and interesting choice to bring that story into this more nihilistic viewpoint.” “Maybe I hadn’t been playing this character correctly the whole time … there was probably a darker side to him that I didn’t realize was there.”

When even the actor playing Nick for six seasons no longer recognizes the character he’s portraying, it highlights how drastic and jarring the shift in writing was. Nick’s final arc wasn’t the result of a gradual, coherent evolution — it was a sudden, dissonant rewrite that undermined everything the audience, and even the show’s own team, had come to understand about him.

Where once the creators framed Nick as a survivor and quiet resistor, they later attempted to retroactively paint him as complicit. This contradiction is not just a failure of internal consistency — it’s a betrayal of the character they themselves had worked so carefully to build.

A SHIFT BEHIND THE SCENES — AND ONSCREEN

The betrayal of Nick’s arc didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was the result of major shifts behind the scenes that dramatically altered the show’s direction and tone, particularly in Season 6.

After Season 4, there were significant changes in the writers’ room, and after Season 5, Bruce Miller — who had been the showrunner and primary architect of the series’ complex moral landscape — stepped down as showrunner to focus on developing The Testaments adaptation. What followed was a tonal and narrative shift that was most starkly reflected in the treatment of Nick’s character.

In Season 5, the writers appeared to be setting up Commander Lawrence as the morally compromised figure whose choices would catch up with him. Lawrence, after all, had designed Gilead. He was one of its architects — a man who wielded enormous power and made decisions that cost thousands of lives, including the bombing of Chicago and the systemic torture of women. He was unwilling to help June find Hannah, even when she begged him, and he stood by as Gilead shot down American planes attempting to raid Hannah’s school. He didn’t intervene to stop this act of brutality, just as he never truly opposed the suggestions of other Commanders to have June killed when she became too much of a threat. But reportedly, Bradley Whitford — who plays Lawrence — pushed back against having his character face the full consequences of those choices.

So what did the writers do instead? They redirected that arc onto Nick. Rather than grappling with the moral failings of Gilead’s true architects, the show chose to scapegoat the one male character who had consistently resisted, quietly and at great personal risk, from the inside.

The result was a jarring pivot in Season 6, where Nick was denied the nuance and complexity afforded to characters like Serena, Lydia, Lawrence, and even Naomi Putnam. Naomi, a character who had benefitted enormously from Gilead’s brutal hierarchy and who had always relished her privileged position, was suddenly handed a redemption arc without narrative justification. Her decision to give Charlotte to Janine came out of nowhere, contradicting everything we had seen of her character before.

Meanwhile, Nick — who had quietly resisted for years, who had risked his life for June, Nicole, and the resistance — was given no such grace. His entire arc was collapsed into a simplistic and inconsistent portrayal of complicity, as if all his sacrifices and small acts of rebellion had never happened.

The complexity that had once made The Handmaid’s Tale so compelling was flattened in favor of a reductive, black-and-white view of its characters — one that betrayed both Nick and the show’s own core themes.

THE GASLIGHTING OF FANS

To make matters worse, in the wake of justified fan backlash over the abrupt and illogical rewriting of Nick’s character, the public statements from the show’s creators, writers, directors, and even lead actor felt like gaslighting. Rather than acknowledging the inconsistency or taking responsibility for the narrative pivot, they shifted blame onto the audience — particularly the female fans who had thoughtfully engaged with Nick’s arc for years.

The writers claimed that viewers misunderstood Nick because “we don’t see 95% of the things Nick does in Gilead.” This was offered as an explanation for why fans were supposedly confused — suggesting that any contradictions in Nick’s character came not from inconsistent storytelling, but from unseen off-screen actions. The writers also implied that fans had misjudged Nick because they saw him primarily through June’s eyes, and that her love for him clouded both her perception and, by extension, that of the audience. This framing felt deeply patronizing. It reduced thoughtful, critical engagement with the character to the idea that fans (especially women) were simply too emotionally attached to see the truth. The creative team further argued that Nick had plenty of chances to leave Gilead but chose not to, reinforcing their revisionist narrative. What makes this claim especially disingenuous is that the show itself repeatedly demonstrated how difficult, if not impossible, it was to leave Gilead. Even Lawrence — a man with immense power — tried to leave in Season 3 and couldn’t. To suggest that Nick could have simply walked away contradicts the very world-building the writers established.

And then Eric Tuchman went on to claim:

“Even though Nick is a wonderful savior and protector for June and Max Minghella is an incredibly charismatic actor with wonderful chemistry with Elisabeth Moss, Nick has a life beyond June in Gilead. We’ve known since Season 1 he was an Eye, as well as a driver. The Swiss didn’t want to talk to Nick because he was a war criminal and couldn’t be trusted. Serena told June, ‘Didn’t Nick tell you what he did? To help create Gilead?’ — and it was something ominous. June chose not to ask any further questions. We know that he bombed Chicago and a lot of innocent people were killed — June and Janine were there. Yes, he was following orders, but Nick has always been a fully willing participant in Gilead. He’s always embraced Gilead. The only times he ever helped the resistance were because of his connection to June. She has been his beacon to do the right thing. Nick’s betrayal was proof he wasn’t really part of the resistance.” (Cast Q&A, @handmaidsonhulu on Threads, 2025)

But these statements are deeply misleading. They ignore what the actual canon of the show established and contradict the very material the writers originally produced. The Swiss refused to talk to Nick not because of war crimes, but because of optics and politics — as shown in official deleted scenes and the scripts archived at the Writers Guild. In those cut scenes, Nick is portrayed during the rise of Gilead not as a war criminal, but as a minor guard, visibly horrified, described as “looking sick” at the violence unfolding around him. When a comrade is killed, Nick fires back “out of instinct” — hardly the mark of a man shaping or embracing the regime.

Another scene — one that did air — shows Nick returning a salute from Gilead troops. In the official script, this moment is described with a crucial note: Nick is “hating all the choices that led him here.” His internal conflict is explicitly spelled out, revealing that even in this small gesture of outward compliance, he is burdened by regret and trapped by circumstances. This wasn’t a man embracing Gilead’s ideology. It was a man caught in a web he couldn’t easily escape, trying to survive while carrying the weight of every decision that brought him to that point.

Bruce Miller himself confirmed that Serena’s ominous comment to June about Nick’s role in creating Gilead was a lie, meant to hurt her emotionally. And we know from canon that Nick objected to bombing Chicago, but didn’t have the power to stop it.

Director Daina Reid added fuel to the fire, directly targeting women in the fandom. In her Eyes on Gilead podcast interview, she said she “doesn’t understand these women who still defend Nick.” She went even further, claiming that viewers “invent scenes” to justify Nick’s actions — as if fans who had paid close attention to his arc were simply imagining things to excuse him. In doing so, she dismissed female fans specifically — implying that their continued support for Nick was irrational or misguided, and reducing thoughtful engagement with the character to naive emotionalism. This wasn’t just dismissive; it was a troubling attack on a loyal, thoughtful fanbase that had engaged deeply with the show’s themes of resistance, complicity, and survival.

Even Elisabeth Moss, who plays June, contributed to this gaslighting. In interviews, she misremembered key parts of the story — for instance, forgetting that Eden suspected Nick’s lack of sexual interest in her and feared he might be a gender traitor. This was a significant part of Eden’s arc, yet Moss appeared unaware of it, undermining her credibility when discussing Nick and June’s relationship. Moss also insisted in interviews that June “absolutely did not want Nick to die,” while simultaneously suggesting that June could never forgive Nick for his so-called betrayal — despite the fact that if Nick hadn’t made that difficult choice in the moment, he would have died on the spot. The logic simply doesn’t hold: how can June not want him dead but also not forgive him for the very act that saved his life?

If we’re now expected to view Nick as a villain based on things we never saw, it’s not the audience inventing scenes — it’s the creators retroactively rewriting them. That’s not a failure of interpretation on the part of the fans; it’s a failure of storytelling on the part of the writers.

Adding to the irony, Elisabeth Moss recently explained in interviews that in respecting the book, they wanted to preserve a sense of open-endedness — to “keep a lot of loose ends” as the novel itself ends on a cliffhanger. Yet in doing so, they chose to alter one of the most crucial threads from the book: Nick’s arc. Adding to this contradiction, Bruce Miller himself asserted:

“I think the series has been good in large part because I chose to follow the story and tonal spirit of the novel as much as possible.” (Deadline, 2025)

If preserving the spirit of the book was truly the goal, they would have honored Nick’s role as Atwood envisioned it: a symbol of survival, moral conflict, and quiet rebellion.

What’s most telling is how drastically the messaging from the creative team has shifted. The Nick who was once described by Bruce Miller as a man of survival instincts, not ideology — a man navigating impossible circumstances while trying to protect his family — was suddenly reframed post-Season 6 as a willing and eager participant in Gilead’s horrors. This contradiction not only betrayed Nick’s character but also undermined the integrity of the show’s moral universe.

ATWOOD’S VISION, THE BOOKS, AND THE DANGER OF THIS REWRITE

Resistance from within is a hallmark of dystopian literature. From 1984 to The Hunger Games, these narratives often explore how individuals embedded in oppressive systems work quietly, strategically, and at great personal risk to undermine them. These characters are complex, morally ambiguous, and realistic — because real-world resistance is rarely loud or simple. The Handmaid’s Tale, as originally written by Margaret Atwood, understood this nuance, and Nick Blaine was designed to embody it.

Atwood herself envisioned Nick as a figure of internal dissent — a man trapped by circumstances, but capable of moral clarity and quiet rebellion. In The Testaments, set fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, Nick is still alive, still inside Gilead, and still working as part of the underground resistance. We see him reunite with Nicole, the daughter he risked everything to save, and we see that his arc was meant to reflect the endurance of hope and the power of resistance that survives even in the darkest places.

The show, for five seasons, respected this vision. Nick stayed in Gilead because that was his purpose — to help destroy it from within. His positioning near Hannah’s captors reinforced his role as an inside man. The writers kept him in Gilead because he was meant to be there, playing the long game. Until Tuchman and Chang decided they knew better than Atwood and discarded this crucial thread.

Atwood has been outspoken in her view that dystopian systems like Gilead harm everyone — men and women alike. As she has said:

“Patriarchy hurts men too. Totalitarianism hurts everyone — men and women alike.” (CBC, 2017)

And on feminism:

“Feminism is not about demonizing men. It’s about working with men so that everyone has the same rights.” (New York Times, 2018)

The show’s final season abandoned this fundamental ethos. Instead of portraying the complexities of complicity and resistance across genders, it simplified its moral world: all Commanders were framed as irredeemable, while even characters like Naomi Putnam — who had thrived under Gilead’s brutality — were suddenly offered redemption with no coherent justification. This flattening of moral nuance betrayed the depth and realism that had defined the show’s earlier seasons.

By erasing Nick’s internal resistance arc, the show not only disrespected Atwood’s source material but also weakened its own critique of authoritarianism. The danger of this rewrite isn’t just that it harmed a character — it’s that it undermined the very lessons dystopian literature is meant to teach us. It replaced complex truths about power, survival, and quiet resistance with simplistic, black-and-white moral judgments that serve neither feminism nor thoughtful storytelling.

Nick’s character was supposed to remind us that even those caught inside the machinery of oppression can still fight back in their own way. Erasing that lesson robbed the audience of hope — the most vital tool dystopian fiction can offer.

NICK’S ATTRACTIVENESS AND THE MISOGYNY BEHIND THE CRITICISM

One of the most troubling aspects of the backlash against Nick’s character — and against the fans who continue to care for him — is the way his physical attractiveness has been weaponized as a reason to dismiss thoughtful engagement with his arc. Critics, including members of the show’s creative team, have implied that fans (especially women) only care about Nick because of his looks — as if audiences are too shallow or simple to appreciate deeper qualities.

Disturbingly, this attitude wasn’t just reflected in off-screen commentary. It became embedded in the writing of the final season itself. After five seasons in which no character ever explicitly commented on Nick’s appearance, Season 6 abruptly shifted focus, framing his physical attractiveness as the defining reason June loved him. For the first time, June says that she would have noticed Nick even if he were bagging groceries or driving for Uber because he was very handsome. Moira joins in, comparing Nick’s looks to Rihanna’s and rating his hotness as if she were judging a celebrity. Even Lawrence remarks that June was “swept away” by Nick’s “smothering looks.”

This was no accident. The writers deliberately chose to center Nick’s attractiveness in a way they had never done before — as if to validate their own revisionist narrative that June’s love for Nick was shallow, and that fans’ attachment to him was based only on surface-level traits. In doing so, they reduced what had been a deeply layered, emotionally rich relationship to a matter of lust and superficiality — diminishing not only Nick’s character, but June’s as well.

As brilliantly articulated in the Above the Garage podcast’s cathartic essay on Nick:

“Nick’s physical attractiveness has nothing to do with the reason we love his character. Women are not as simple and shallow as you’re making them out to be. No matter how someone may try to shame you, it is not antifeminist to believe in, and care about, romantic love. Our protagonist herself has said, many times, that it is for love that she lives. Love is empowering, and we thought that was a message the show understood.”

What Nick represents is not some idealized, flawless hero. No one who values Nick as a character denies his flaws or excuses his moments of complicity. What Nick offers is a vision of the human capacity for joy, tenderness, and compassion in the bleakest circumstances. His quiet support of June, his ability to love and be loved amid horror, reflects the reality that even in war, oppression, and captivity, people have found ways to fall in love, to marry, to create art, to dream of a better world. Nick’s story was an opportunity to show how resistance can be sustained not just through defiance, but through humanity and connection.

The suggestion that shipping Nick and June, or simply caring about Nick as a character, is somehow naive or antifeminist, fundamentally misunderstands the complexity of these relationships. As the essay points out, the show could have leaned into Nick and June’s profound connection — a connection that empowered June, supported her agency, and could have stood as one of television’s greatest romances, without undermining the power of her friendships or her other relationships. Life is not either/or. Women can value deep friendships and romantic love. The audience can appreciate both without one diminishing the other.

Finally, it’s important to call out the hypocrisy in how romantic love is treated. As the essay puts it: “You know who else thought romantic love was naive and silly? Our old friend, Fred Waterford. May he rest in peace.”

Dismissing viewers who value love and connection as naive is not progressive — it echoes the mindset of the very villains the story sought to critique. It is not antifeminist to care about love, or to see beauty and strength in a character who represents its survival under tyranny. And it is certainly not a weakness or character flaw to find meaning in these narratives.

THE DANGEROUS MISLABELING: NICK AS A “NAZI”

One of the most disturbing narrative choices in Season 6 was the decision to have multiple characters — including June’s mother, Holly, and Luke — refer to Nick as a “Nazi.” This label was not used in earlier seasons, despite Nick’s long-standing position within Gilead’s structures. It was introduced only in Season 6, coinciding with the writers’ abrupt pivot toward framing Nick as complicit and irredeemable.

The comparison is not only morally and historically inaccurate — it is dangerous. Nick is not portrayed as an architect of genocide, nor as a willing enforcer of Gilead’s ideology. As the show itself spent five seasons establishing, Nick is a survivor — a man who joined the Eyes not to impose tyranny, but to report on and take down predatory Commanders after witnessing the suicide of Waterford’s first Handmaid. He smuggled contraband, helped the resistance, facilitated June’s and Nicole’s escape, and positioned himself near Hannah’s captors in hopes of aiding in her rescue. These are not the actions of a true believer in the system; they are the actions of a man trapped within it, trying to undermine it where he can.

Calling Nick a Nazi collapses the moral complexity that The Handmaid’s Tale once prided itself on. It flattens the nuances of complicity, survival, and resistance into simplistic, black-and-white thinking that does a disservice not only to Nick’s character but to the audience’s understanding of history. Gilead is a fictional regime meant to reflect elements of real-world authoritarianism, but equating every man in a uniform with a Nazi trivializes both the horrors of the Holocaust and the lived realities of people trapped within oppressive systems who did not have the power to change them, but found small, courageous ways to resist.

It’s also worth noting that the writers making these choices surely have not lived under totalitarian regimes themselves — which cannot be said about many of the show’s viewers. For those who have experienced or have family histories marked by real-world authoritarian rule, these labels are not just inaccurate; they are deeply offensive and reflect a dangerous misunderstanding of what life under such regimes actually entails.

June’s mother’s use of the term might be explained by her extremism and ideological rigidity — but when Luke adopts the same language, it becomes clear that the writers themselves wanted to frame Nick through this lens, erasing the character they had spent five seasons building. This lazy labeling serves neither history, feminism, nor good storytelling. It reduces complex questions about survival, complicity, and moral ambiguity to cheap, inflammatory rhetoric — the opposite of what dystopian fiction is meant to encourage us to grapple with

WHY THIS MATTERS

Nick didn’t need a heroic ending. But he deserved a consistent one. His arc represented a type of resistance that is rarely shown on screen: strategic, quiet, and deeply human. Nick’s story gave voice to the reality that not all acts of rebellion are loud, and not all heroes stand on podiums. His form of dissent — subtle, calculated, often invisible — was no less important than June’s louder, more visible defiance. In fact, it reflected the kind of resistance that most people caught inside authoritarian regimes actually engage in: the quiet, careful acts that chip away at power without drawing lethal attention.

More than that, Nick was the show’s most realistic character. He was an ordinary man swept up by the rise of Gilead — lured into the Sons of Jacob not out of malice or ideology, but because of the brutal socio-economic conditions that preceded Gilead’s rise. Like many who find themselves caught in the machinery of authoritarian systems, Nick became increasingly trapped as the years passed. But crucially, Nick almost immediately saw Gilead for what it was. He recognized the horror. And despite the danger, he chose to resist in the ways available to him — quietly, strategically, and at great personal cost.

We needed that Nick. His arc was supposed to remind us that even those inside the system, even those who have made mistakes, can choose to act with compassion, courage, and moral clarity. His story offered a rare and vital kind of hope: that decency can survive in the darkest of places, and that ordinary people can make extraordinary choices even when the odds are against them.

In the difficult times we live in, as extremism and authoritarianism rise in the real world, Nick’s story could have served as a reminder of the importance of quiet resistance — of the fact that the fight against oppression doesn’t always look like a revolution, but can begin with small, courageous acts.

By collapsing his arc into a simplistic tale of complicity, the writers not only betrayed Nick as a character but stripped the audience of that hope. What happened to him wasn’t just a sad ending. It was bad writing. And it was a missed opportunity — a failure to honor both the character they had built and the powerful tradition of resistance that dystopian fiction exists to celebrate.

[vampiricalxdata]

I’ve tried to let it go but I can’t.

Everything THT did after the season 4 finale has been trash.

Seasons 5&6 could have been Nick & June uniting and becoming a part of the resistance.

It would have been so much more powerful to see the inner workings of a rebellion and the juxtaposition of June and Nick’s inner conflicts as they navigate change and the parts of themselves that were complicit in the rise of Gilead (yes, BOTH of them).

To move beyond the books and continue the tv series doesn’t mean an abandonment of the original themes and motifs. It’s about asking the right questions: What do those look like post escape? How do they present in Canada? Do they evolve or stay the same? What does the evolution of these themes look like?

Nick giving Fred to June isn’t as simple as, “his love language is acts of service.” Dude committed treason. That’s as much a declaration of loyalty as any and a flag flown that is not Gilead is inherently traitorous. If you didn’t think he was anti before, there can be no doubt now.

But they would have us believe his love is one dimensional. That it only extends as far as his reach to June. Sure, okay. Don’t show us what allyship looks like. Don’t show us what love and strength and support can do for a person who believed they might never see that for themselves.

And June whose greatest strength is her heart— what an opportunity to show what happens to someone whose love is twisted and manipulated, not just by Fred, but by Serena. There was an easy route between justified violence and a path to healing. And that path could have been lit by the same beacons who helped her find the strength to stay alive in Gilead: Janine, Alma, Brianna, Emily, Rita, and Nick. Hell even Aunt Lydia, who promised to watch over baby Holly.

Not to mention that’s also your in for a Lydia redemption. If June must be the pole all the ribbons tie back to, then why not actually use her. Lydia could easily feel a higher calling to June’s girls after being made a de facto godmother. To believe it is now well within her divine right to keep an eye on Hannah. Cut to her seeing the actual quality of life for these girls who are children and therefore innocent and pure insofar as a Lydia character is concerned, as opposed to these “ungodly” women she’s attempting to make “righteous.” It’s as good a catalyst for change as any.

And in all of their desperation to put moms on a pedestal, they overlooked an opportunity to showcase motherhood in all its aspects. Because guess what? SOME MOMS ARE BAD MOMS. Some are bad people. Some are hateful, selfish, oppressive people. “June was appealing to the mom in Serena.” SERENA IS A BAD PERSON. SERENA STEALS BABIES. SERENA BEATS AND ASSAULTS OTHER WOMEN. SERENA USES CHILDREN AS MANIPULATION TACTICS. SERENA BELIEVES IN GILEAD AND ALL ITS TENETS.

She believes possibly more than Fred, at least to start. In the flashbacks we see how she pushed him toward Gilead from the beginning. It’s Serena giving the speeches, not Fred. It’s Serena in the movie theatre invigorating the fight in them, not Fred. Even as he stood conflicted, wanting to fight for her voice in that boardroom, she insisted it was a sacrifice she had to make. When she’s lying wounded in the hospital, she basically calls him a pussy so he runs and kills the dude. I’m not saying Fred isn’t bad on his own, but to quote that dumbass traditional saying (and these two are nothing if not traditional): Fred is the head, but Serena’s the neck.

Basically, Serena is the Commander and Fred is her soldier.

Until she’s not.

And only then, when she feels just a fraction of the weight of the life she fought for; only when she’s uncomfortable, does she care. So, when Serena fights for women to read it’s only because she wants to be able to read.

Because Serena only fights oppression after it oppresses her. Because it’s not about the rights of the people, it’s about her individual autonomy. And the second she realizes a version of power exists for her in DC she reneges on her decision to let Holly go.

And to that I have to wonder: what kind of man would a woman like that raise?

But sure, let’s redeem Serena. Let’s give her a fighting chance. Because she’s a mother and all mothers are inherently good right?

Missed opportunity after missed opportunity.

And it’s infuriating because an actual impactful ending was right there.

Lydia vs Serena — 2 women with a similar belief system. One who can change. One who doesn’t want to.

Nick vs. Fred — Men compelled by the women they love. One who chooses to liberate. One who chooses to oppress.

These 4 characters who are moved and transformed, for better or worse, by the roles of June, Hannah, and Holly— with June as the narrative voice at the center and her daughters as the plot device that pushes her story, and the stories of everyone around them, forward.

Because humans are not stagnate. Stubborn though we may be, even when we fall into the worst of ourselves we are still moving.

Instead we watched them all rock back and forth on the same stupid pattern to the point that the only option for an ending was heavy handed soap box monologuing.

Instead they offered up a story that lacked hope. That lacked the belief that love can change us. That implied trauma makes us cruel and single minded entities for revenge. That forgiveness can only come to those whose self lies in their small children. That salvation lies in your ability to give birth.

Because in the end, if Serena could not have conceived Noah, would she still have been worthy of her redemption?

[daemyra-fire]

I've said it since episode 9 premiered but the worst mistake they made was having June in that hangar.

Because if any other character were there, Nick's death would be different, because anyone would have let him die to free Boston from the commanders but putting the character of June who always did the impossible to save those she loved and let him die; it not only killed Nick as a character but also June because neither of them would act the way they did if we base our analysis on their entire run on the series.

To then reaffirm that she wasn't the same in episode 10, her dialogue and everything became meaningless, making her hypocritical and ungrateful, and that's why they killed the series.

It felt like they both died in that episode, they always showed them as a mirror, she was the only one who knew who Nick was, not the one from Gilead, but the real one, and everything he sacrificed to help her despite the danger, it's the biggest writing mistake I've ever seen in a series.

But they had an obsession with placing June in every damn scene, it didn't make sense that after being hung and falling from that height she was as if nothing had happened going everywhere and also sending her with Lawrence alone, when hours before those commanders were going to kill her is the stupidest thing they could have done, not to mention that there were a thousand possibilities to get Nick out of there… I hate them.

[blazepanda17]

Justice Sensitivity & THT S6 ending

I saw some comments last week about neurodivergent folks connecting with Nick’s character—and thank you. I felt so seen!

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about justice sensitivity, especially as I try to work through my lingering frustration with how the show ended.

In case you haven’t heard of it before, here’s a helpful definition:

“An individual's justice sensitivity is the degree to which they are aware of issues of equity, equality, fairness, and other justice issues. Those with high justice sensitivity are more likely to remain focused on injustice with more intensity and for longer periods of time... They may be driven to take action to correct it, but also experience burnout from how much injustice there is in the world.” — Verywell Mind

And according to another source, it tends to include:

1. Being sensitive to perceiving injustice. 2. Reacting emotionally to it. 3. Obsessing over it. 4. Feeling an urge to undo or fix it. (Psychology Today)

Although this is usually talked about in social justice contexts, I think it absolutely applies to fictional narratives too, especially with THT which is rooted in real systems of injustice.

So am I reacting this strongly because I’m immature or “too emotional” for caring about a character? Or is it possible I’m highly attuned to the unfairness in the story (the lack of continuity, the unequal narrative outcomes) not just based on characters’ morality, but on how their stories were constructed and resolved?

This is not just being unhappy about the fact Nick died or that Nick and June didn’t end up together. I’ve heard another writer (Brandon Sanderson, who’s well known for his world-building and consistency) describe writers and the audience as having a contract. The writer makes promises and asks us to care—to invest emotionally in certain characters, themes, or outcomes. So when those promises are broken or resolved in ways that feel unfair or inconsistent, it doesn’t just feel disappointing. It's unjust.

Why it can hit ND viewers harder: I’m not an expert, but as someone navigating ND, these are some connections I’ve noticed in myself and others.

Pattern sensitivity makes it easy to notice contradictions in character arcs—even subtle ones most people might miss.

Hyperfixation can lead to deep emotional attachment, especially to characters we resonate with.

A strong attunement to fairness doesn’t mean we expect happy endings. We just want the story to honor its own rules.

And with a low tolerance for hypocrisy, mismatched consequences or inconsistencies between characters can feel even more infuriating.

Maybe that’s why my reaction has been so intense. It’s not just that I like Nick’s character—it’s that the show asked me to care, and then made choices that violated that care. As someone who’s justice-sensitive, it feels like a personal offense.

The show has been my hyperfixation lately, so… dare I say it? I think I’m picking up on details and inconsistencies the writers have overlooked. I was never asking for a perfect ending. I’m just holding the story accountable for the standards it set for itself!

I’m not going to rehash all of these injustices. We know they’re there and have been discussing them for weeks. (the newest Above the Garage was incredibly validating!!)

I’m still somewhat new to my adhd diagnosis, but this framing has been really healing. Naming it helps. If this resonates, or if you’re still processing your own feelings about THT, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

TL;DR: It’s so much more than just not liking an ending in which a “ship” doesn’t end up together. Justice sensitivity = “This didn’t match the story’s moral and emotional logic, and feels like a personal offense I can’t move past.” 

[otp-after-dark]

It drives me nuts when Anti-Nick people say he only helped June because he loved her —like that’s a flaw or a reason to be killed off?? Be serious.

Oh selfless ones — how many of you are risking your life for strangers?

The truth is: love is the most real reason people change. Most won’t bend, adapt, or take a bullet for just anyone—but they will for someone they love.

Which is also why that plane scene may drive me insane forever. It's AU level insanity. If that’s my guy on that tarmac, I don’t care what it takes—I’m getting his ass off that plane. Whether I die or not. And that's not even factoring in the baby daddy of it all. There is just no universe where June does that.

[smoulderingocean]

I've been thinking of how The Handmaid's Tale writers just decided to have Nick's mother abandon him to his abusive father without getting into any of the details of it and I just- why? Why would they do that to him? It just didn't achieve anything other than establishing him as someone who was never loved, was trapped by circumstance, and who took a lot of things from June that he shouldn't have because he not only had daddy issues, but mummy issues as well.

I'm assuming their goal was to show him as some sort of incel/red pill/manosphere/whatever who believed in the messaging of the SoJ because his mother abandoned him and he had no good women in his life growing up? Which really does not work in him as a character for reasons that were upheld by their own writing even within this last season.

It seems like there was a total misunderstanding of those groups, likely even done on purpose, in an effort to sloppily send some sort of message and cling to current political trends. A key component of these groups is a disdain for women, and a desire to control and dominate. Which is the exact opposite of what we saw with Nick. Nick, who didn't hate any women (not even Serena who abused him and kidnapped his daughter, or his mother who abandoned him) but instead hated himself. Nick, who constantly gave up control to the women around him (and not just June, but other women like Beth and his black market contact Marthas, Lori and Reese) and who more than happily let June dominate him, often to his detriment. Yes, Nick wanted more control over his life in a way the US and unfettered capitalism denied him, but that's not the same as wanting control over everything, women included. It's normal to want to have more control over your life, it's not to want to have control over others. And the latter is something we just never saw over Nick. In fact it's something we did see in Serena. But she's a wealthy white woman, so I guess it was ok for her to want to control others, and terrible that Nick, a mentally ill working class man of colour, to want more control over his own life.

In the end all they really achieved was writing Nick as a character that has been unloved his entire miserable life despite making sacrifices for the people he loved, and that's really just depressing as fuck.

[glasskey]

Season 6 - Critical Mass

Fuck me. Season 6. Some loved it, most hated it. Episode 9 in particular really brought the whole house of cards down for this season, and left the writers and show runners with nothing but angry fans and a thousand questions to answer. I started making my own list sometime ago and episode 9 just tipped me over into critical mass. Because it involved the death of not one but two beloved characters, fans were let’s say, a little miffed. The choice to off Nick Blaine in particular has drawn considerable heat and there’s plenty of reasons why. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest reasons that Season 6 broke abso-fucking-loutely everything.

Firstly, I don’t think that it’s an exaggeration to say that at times season 6 just felt surreal and not in a good way. Previous seasons had set up the rules and guidelines for this world and season 6 simply didn’t care about any of them. For instance; how were people just waltzing in and out of Gilead now? That place used to be fucking locked down. Spot lights, dogs, guard towers, drones, Eyes….anyone remember how Emily had to swim over that freezing river with Holly to get to freedom and it was scary AF? Baby Holly nearly drowned. Now June Osborne, Gilead public enemy number one is just jumping in the car to go shuttle Lawrence across the border to a completely abandoned aircraft hangar. But season 6 didn’t stop there, it also didn’t respect the laws of gravity when it dangled Osborne from a crane 30 feet in the air and then hurled her to the ground without a scratch. In addition to disregarding the very laws of physics, Season 6 also gave characters amnesia on multiple occasions, cited off screen occurrences as lore as some sort of “fail safe”, sought to rewrite characters very natures, violated original texts, assumed knowledge, disregarded plot holes and selectively altered the basic moral compass by which characters would be judged. In fact, there really isn’t much that season 6 didn’t do in terms of just breaking all the guidelines that keep a world intact. I can only hope that it will be used as an example of what NOT to do by future writers, because quite honestly the disbelief and anger by audiences has been visceral, and personally I’ve never wanted to smash my television more.

This season was meant to be about people showing their true faces and I am STUNNED that somewhere, somehow these writers have justified that a woman who participated in multiple rapes, stole a baby, and had her hand in the conception of Gilead, has a benevolent “true face”. On Serena’s wedding night she was astonished to learn that her new husband, King of all the High Commanders was a die hard loyalist who liked to keep a handmaid on staff. She had a bit of a whimper but next morning she was ready to kiss and make up, and then her new hubby left for a morning appointment to execute her bestie. Despite this, Serena the baby snatching rapist, was afforded a redemption arc. I was and am, horrified.

Show runners have seen fit to state that Serena and June were actually the love story all along and I cannot tell you how much it disgusts me to hear that they would actually think that a victim / abuser relationship should ever be described as such. I am deeply disturbed that the creators of this show believe it is appropriate to describe the relationship between a kidnapper, rapist, physical and psychological abuser and their victim, as a love story. To say that June is able to forgive her abuser is one thing, to say that she loves her is quite another. If Serena had been a man, a father, she would have pushed her aboard that doomed plane. As it was she was a mother and therefore untouchable so she ultimately walked away virtually unscathed. So the writers message was we could be forgiven anything, even the vilest acts against our own gender, as long as we reproduced. If they intended me to feel all supported and warm and fuzzy as a woman, they well and truly missed the mark. Women like Serena Joy are fucking traitors, because they know full well what it’s like to be a woman, to fight for every single tiny square inch of freedom, and yet they seek to seize power by crushing their fellow women beneath their heel in order to get it.

Next in line is Aunt Lydia, who sanctioned and carried out torture, rape and murder. She arranged for Janine’s eye to be ripped out and farmed women into slavery. Suddenly she was pleading ignorance over what actually happens to the handmaids in their retirement? Are you fucking kidding me? This woman was so far up Gilead’s arse there was literally nothing that demon didn’t know about what was happening to those Handmaids. Atwood’s text reveals the aunts kept secret detailed files on all of them, and having Aunt Lydia now whining about her “poor girls” after tasing them for 5 seasons is laughable. She’d chained a pregnant handmaid in the basement and informed June she’d be shot after giving birth, so all of her sudden crocodile tears about the ex handmaids being sent to Jezebels was the weakest bunch of bullshit I’d ever seen for her entire character arc. But she’s needed for The Testaments, so she had a benevolent face slapped on her at the last moment and was given a redemption arc of sorts as well. Writers also failed to explain how Aunt Lydia was going to be embedded back into Gilead society now that she’s blown her cover.

Next victim is Lawrence. Last season Lawrence shot down the rescue planes for Hannah and told Blaine that it was a free for all to use June Osborne as target practice. He’s responsible for inventing a world of slavery and death, and he kept his wife imprisoned for years, but Lawrence has a strong papa bear vibe with some punchy one liners, so he gets a redemption arc and a heroes death. It’s worth mentioning that Joseph was actually the one responsible for dragging Serena back to Gilead and NOT Blaine as the Show runners would have you believe. Blaine actually spoke up for her, asking if “it was really necessary to drag her back into this”, however this was painted as Blaine’s decision to bring Serena back……despite the fact it was Lawrence who suggested it…..and physically went and got her…..and virtually strong armed her into the car. It’s also worth noting that Lawrence was all aboard the Gilead train, chowing down on that delicious power as a newly appointed High commander, until he learned that all the other commanders (except Blaine) were gunning for him. So it’s really not like he gave a shit about Mayday out of some sense of righteous justice, he just thought it might save his own neck. The martyr’s death / self sacrificial death are the highest value character deaths and quite frankly I’m not sure he deserved that quality of death but he’s cuddly and Whitford didn’t want him to die a villain, so there you go.

Finally we come to Nick Blaine. Out of the Gilead four this season, he was definitely the one most deserving of a redemption arc, but you know clever plot twist, scapegoat required….and guess who gets fucked after 5 seasons. Nick Blaine had spent 5 seasons risking his life on almost a bi seasonal basis for the protagonist, was deeply in love with her and had connections in Mayday. But in season 6 the writers decided to transform him into nothing but a greedy, power hungry, little fascist over the course of 3 episodes, and then unceremoniously had the protagonist kill him off as some sort of true measure of her strength. The writers not only made him the villain and had him killed, but gave him a death befitting a coward. I’m not sure who thought it would be a good idea to serve up this pile of revenge to a fan favourite who’d been a benevolent companion to the protagonist for the last 5 seasons….but it hideously back fired. I foresaw this when I viewed the original trailers and I prayed that they hadn’t been so stupid as to destroy both a character and a couple that over 80% of the audience were deeply invested in with a spin off waiting in the wings….unfortunately they were and the backlash has been brutal. It was around the time that they decided to bring it all home, that I couldn’t help but notice that out of all of the Gilead four, they’d actually taken the lowest socioeconomic character and seen fit to make him the sole villain and then grind him into a fine powder. It was one thing in season 1 when they illustrated how the poor and uneducated masses could be easily targeted and recruited, it was quite another to make the statement that because he came from “nothing” he was more likely to turn to villainy. Reality is the well spring of most of the worlds evil fuckery lies deep in the hearts of those born to wealth and power. They’re used to it, they don’t like to share it, they’re terrified of losing it and they’ll do anything to get more of it. My nomination for most likely villain out of the Gilead Four was actually Serena. She's used to wealth and power and desperate to send her little spawn of Satan to a decent private school.

Meanwhile in Mayday central the folks there could do no wrong; Tuello fed civilians into the meat grinder that was Gilead’s highly trained military against Blaine’s advice, and yet remained untouched by any moral judgement from the writers. While everyone cheered as Tuello strode purposefully into the room to find Serena breathless at the sight of her little thirst trap, I ground my teeth and felt my fingernails digging into my palms. I just couldn’t help but wonder why on earth would Tuello trust Lawrence after that little incident with Hannah last season either. He’d just been burnt by Nick and his first response is to go pal up with the Architect of Gilead himself? I also didn’t understand why Tuello was skulking around in No Man’s Land in the first place. All the other diplomats were welcome in New Bethlehem, so why wasn’t he running recon or checking in with why Blaine suddenly wasn’t answering his calls? Why not set up a diplomatic embassy in New Bethlehem? Perhaps because IT WOULD HAVE MADE SENSE. This season saw Blaine give up Mayday’s plan. He’d chosen his side apparently and it wasn’t Osborne….after 5 seasons of choosing Osborne (sigh). So I couldn’t help but wonder why this hideous traitor didn’t just tell the other commanders where Mayday central was? He knew approximately where it was and yet there they were all hopping on a plane to DC to work out some intricate plan to curb the rebel operations. I mean the guy could virtually draw a map with a sign that says “bomb here” pointing to the Mayday camp and yet…..Urgh.

The character transformations have gone from zero to a hundred with nothing in between this season. Luke went from wanting to join Mayday, to planting bombs, to running around screaming with a machine gun and hand grenades. Rita went from not wanting to get involved with Mayday, to poisoning the cake with sedatives, to running screaming down the street shooting wildly. Serena got engaged and married in like a week and went from “I didn’t really think about what happened to the handmaids”, to teary eyed demanding to know the “real name” of her new one. Nick proclaimed his undying love for June, 10 seconds later they had a brutal break up, next episode he virtually skipped down the aisle with his wife singing about his new baby and renouncing the parentage of Holly, then he completely ignored the fact that the love of his life was about to be hung (can we just pause and consider how absolutely unbelievable THAT is please), said some BIZARRE shit about commanders being the winners and promptly exploded. Fuuuuuuuck. I mean it would have been hilariously ridiculous if it wasn’t just so fucking tragic to watch all that potential come to such a pointless end. Like so many things this season, this plot line doesn’t make any sense at all. I mean how were these commanders the “winners”? The rebels had just bombed their city and killed most of them, they were practically an endangered species. Somehow the audience was convinced into believing that if the Boston commanders ever made it to DC, Gilead would win and rule over the earth forever and ever. I guess that must have been where they had been keeping their secret special map room and chanting circle. I mean where is the plot? Is the plot in the room with us now? The trajectory on Blaine’s character arc comparative to other seasons, felt like the pilot had suddenly decided to fly the plane into the mountain (excuse the pun). He’d been building to something huge and both of Atwood’s texts indicated that Mayday was in his future, however it was at this point that the writers took incredible licence and deviated from the source material completely. It seemed a huge violation that Blaine’s character was altered from the version in both texts and while all the other characters were carefully manoeuvred into place, he was killed off. Granted Miller and co. had, had the freedom to fill in the blanks between season 2 - 6, various elements of the texts still acted as a guide for these characters natures, journeys and ultimate destinations and there was just no way around the fact that they’d chosen to completely ignore it. Insultingly I was asked to ignore Blaine’s death on the basis that he “had it coming”. Not only was that NOT an answer as to why such liberties were taken with the source material about his nature, depicted allegiances, and you know the fact that he was fucking ALIVE in the book, but that reasoning was also completely riddled with holes.

Throughout the seasons Blaine had been firmly established as an ally to the protagonist via a multitude of mechanisms which were now being blatantly discounted. For example; ALL of the acts of violence that the audience had been shown that were directly and voluntarily committed by Blaine were all performed AGAINST a member of Gilead to either protect the protagonist, at her request or as a form of righteous justice for her cause. Now I was being told that off screen he’d been sneaking around the protagonists back committing horrendous acts on behalf of Gilead….but we just hadn’t seen it….and didn’t know about it…..and SOMEHOW the writers couldn’t understand how that would be confusing..…or even believable. Urgh. The more I looked, the more holes appeared and the more it all just reeked of rewriting history for the sake of a plot twist and a quickly constructed political narrative. For whatever reason it was done, it was sloppy and completely contradictory to the characters original nature, both on screen and in the texts. Even if I did give these writers the benefit of the doubt and BELIEVED their spiel about this character, I’m not sure it worked in their favour to be constantly pointing out that they had neglected to fill in the audience properly on vital character elements during previous seasons.

For some reason the writers and show runners were now under the illusion that their audience had not actually been paying attention while watching the previous 5 seasons, that they had developed some sort of selective amnesia. They also deemed to give the protagonist amnesia, thus making her seem unempathetic, heartless and deeply unlikeable. Blaine had turned up for her countless times and yet was given no quarter. She had simply developed amnesia about what it was like to try and survive in Gilead after a brief stay in Canada. The writers may have intended to make her look strong and assertive, but her failure to extend any measure of compassion or even seek to dig further, made it seem as though the entire relationship had been transactional. It was as if now that Blaine had ceased to serve a purpose, he was being abandoned. This effectively destroyed any integrity to their former bond, it simply made him look like a liar and her an opportunist. I became a bit suspicious that it was not entirely unintentional that these creators were now seeking to change the very nature of this relationship in retrospect, when June attributed Serena responsibility for their relationship in the first place. It sought to completely discount the fact that these two had been circling one another prior to Serena's interference, or even that they continued their relationship despite her objections and efforts to seperate them later.

It was simply more evidence of an almost desperate attempt by the writers to erase this loving connection and replace it with something convenient and superficial. They’d forgotten that Nick and June’s love was actually an act of rebellion, forbidden, a place where both Blaine and Osborne sought freedom and autonomy. Had they remembered this, they might have understood that for a true depiction of a successful rebellion, Nick Blaine should have joined the underground and the two lovers destinies remained intimately intertwined. His true character narrative was as an Eye with connections to Mayday. June / Offred was unsure if she could trust him, but he remained a source of hope, love and quiet rebellion within Gilead. The Handmaids Tale afterword revealed that he’d risked his life to help June escape and gone on to join the resistance. Gilead had tried and failed to kill him at least once and he was later reunited with June and his daughter. The successful depiction of a rebellion that used their relationship as the intended metaphor, was one that had Blaine subvert Gilead as an Eye turned agent for Mayday. Instead his death indicated the success of Gilead to eradicate collective rebellion….by somehow encouraging rebel forces to self sabotage. It simply made no sense, particularly given the rebellions success in the area where Blaine had been stationed. It was like someone had either failed to understand the metaphor completely OR had simply been so desperate to destroy the character and the relationship, that they didn’t care if it meant tearing apart a central theme. Which was absolutely fucking insane.

Fans had followed the writers cues and had understood the underlying message of rebellion in their bond. They’d waited years for the rebellion to succeed and the symbolic narrative to reach it’s natural conclusion, by having Blaine cross the border to join June and Mayday. So when instead the writers chose to start labelling Blaine as a loyalist and gut this relationship, slaughtering this manifestation of collective rebellion, the audience was understandably angry and confused. His role as an embedded Mayday agent in The Testaments stand as evidence that this was precisely who Blaine was and not some dubious fascist all along. Atwood consulted during season 2, but it was only during season 3 that show runners decided to whack a commander suit on Blaine and start using him for statements about patriarchal power that had nothing to do with his original character construct. He was never a commander, not in The Handmaid’s Tale and not in The Testaments either…..but these writers thought they knew better than the author, so here we are. I think about the potential for this story line had it been completed correctly and I could just weep. I could write a book on why the destruction of this character and relationship was one of the dumbest fucking things I’ve ever seen a writer do to their own creation, and how this is one of the biggest violations of an authors symbolic narrative I’ve ever witnessed, but honestly I’ve got a lot to get through today.

The writers and staff scrambled to provide clarity about who Nick Blaine was all along, but what they failed to understand was that it was utterly irrelevant. If they had to tell audiences after the fact who their character actually was and what their true motivations were, then they’d failed their mission. Writers cited story elements that supposedly occurred off screen, as lore when they either should have been clearer from the beginning or just followed the established on screen character arc through without trying to get clever. Now for clarity I believe the rot started in season 5 but only truly set in in season 6.

Come season 6 Minghella would be lucky to get a few minutes of screen time in 6 episodes, and in that time they had to convince the audience that he’d been a totally different person than the one they’d been shown all along. Consider the characters nature, established relationship with the protagonist and everyone around him….over 5 seasons….now with ALL of that think about how impossible it actually is to flip that character in the space of approximately 10-15 minutes, and how insane you’d have to be to green light that shit. And yet SOMEHOW it was my fault for not believing them. Probably because I’d read the books.

Writers asked audiences to reassess characters 4 episodes from the end of a final season. That’s neither realistic or wise and they shouldn’t be surprised if people feel like they’ve been duped and cheated. The fact is that they told audiences that a character had a particular motivation for the last 5 seasons, etched it into to him like it was the very essence of his being, and suddenly they wanted audiences to believe that he was forsaking it in the last moment. That he would simply give it up at the first sign of adversity. That he’d be just kosher with not only giving it up but destroying the object of his obsession within 2 brief episodes. It’s utterly ridiculous, I don’t believe any of it and these writers shouldn’t be surprised by that. You can’t tell me that someone is deep and sensitive in one breath and then tell me they’re angling for an upper management position in a society that enslaves the vulnerable in the next….particularly if the bottom of barrel is exactly where they come from. It makes no fucking sense.

Because of his core nature as a sensitive, loving and loyal individual, the ONLY parts of Nick Blaine’s character that actually EVER made any sense were the ones attached to Mayday, those that loved June, that “would do anything for me and for Nicole”, that were trapped and tricked into signing onto Gilead, anything else just seemed in direct conflict with his personality overall. Blaine cried over a dead handmaid and refused to call June by her slave name, he had contacts in Mayday that he referred to as “friendlies”. What made the writers think I would believe an individual this sensitive and obviously invested in rebel operations, would seek a higher position in this society for ANY other reason than to subvert it? Ambitious greedy ghouls do not smuggle out letters of imprisoned handmaids and they don’t baulk over sleeping with their child brides. They just don’t give a fuck.

Right now show runners are working overtime to create a narrative in which they write off Nicks damning choices in episode 6 as the result of both full autonomy AND coercive control. If he acted with full autonomy, Blaine was a monster who knew what he was doing, sought power and subscribed to Gilead’s rhetoric of slavery. If he was acting as a result of coercive control he was frightened, abused and controlled with little to no recourse. The reason that the writers couldn’t decide which one it was, was because they wanted it to be the first, but they knew full well it was the second. Season 1 and 2 had already shown that Blaine was indeed stripped of his autonomy and yet in 5 10 Tuello claimed that he could have run away with her while he lived at the Waterfords. They were trying to alter the narrative around how much power he had possessed, but it was too late, we’d already seen the dogs, the drones, the spotlights, the checkpoints and all those guardians. We’d already seen all that terror and we weren’t about to forget.

Show runners claimed that Blaine had full autonomy on the basis that he had many chances to defect, but again there was plenty of evidence to discredit this theory. In season 2 June boarded a plane to leave and a driver attempted to sneak on board. He’s hauled off the plane and shot by Gilead guards, this heavily implied that Blaine would have died if he’d tried to accompany her. In season 3 Eleanor told June that Lawrence could never leave because he’d be imprisoned for life. In season 4 Fred was arrested at the border and jailed, when he tried to negotiate immunity he was traded back to Gilead and ended up dead. In season 5 Blaine WAS offered a deal from Tuello which he took, but it did require that he remain in Gilead indefinitely. Throughout season 6 the presence of Wharton was inserted specifically to create an environment of coercive control that restricted and monitored his movements. So no I don’t believe he had full autonomy. It also seems incredibly odd for the writers to say that Blaine has full autonomy and THEN have Serena tell June “If he ever thought he had a choice, he would have chosen you”. I mean in what alternative dimension should an audience NOT be confused by this constant mixed messaging?

I was informed through various forms of PR, that the second Blaine knew his relationship was over with Osborne he’d simply sought to lose himself in power, but this was utterly ridiculous. Blaine had been confronted with the reality of losing her many times before and he still hadn’t stuck his face in a bucket of Kool Aid. The idea that Blaine had failed to show up and do anything about June being executed because he considered their relationship over, was laughable. In season 4 he’d strong armed Lawrence into keeping her alive even though he knew she “was never coming back to him”. In season 5 he dashed across the border and signed a contract with Tuello just to ensure her safety even though “she already has people who care for her, I’m nothing”. It didn’t wash. NONE of it washed. Now I MIGHT have been able to swallow that he’d taken solace in Gilead after his relationship with Osborne completely dissolved but there was no period of mourning for the loss of a deep abiding love he’d carried with him for 5 and half seasons. No tears, no despair, nothing….Instead Blaine immediately started rambling on about Gilead like it was Sale of the fucking Century and he couldn’t get enough of those Nazi war spoils. It was utterly baffling. Mid season we all travelled deep into the Twilight Zone when Blaine made some sort of schizophrenic switch from prioritising June to an unquenchable thirst for power. It was impossible to reconcile with his previous manifestation, but somehow this all remained my fault for failing to grasp it, rather than the writers for either not communicating it in earlier seasons or an ill advised quick change.

We were also told that Blaine was a villain because of his role in the original attacks and that well, because you had to be a bad guy to be promoted to a commander. Firstly; scenes of Blaine actually participating in the original attacks were cut and are now being cited as part of the character history, and I’m not sure that works in their favour, as the original ones show him being sick and stunned at the violence anyway. It read more like someone who’d been roped into something that had quickly turned nightmarish and of which he now couldn’t escape. In season 3 Blaine said about the government “they don’t give a shit about us” and “once you get in bed with the government, it’s not so easy to get out”, not REALLY the words of an enamoured loyalist. Secondly; Blaine was promoted from a Eye to a Commander as a form of punishment from Fred for his insubordination, to have him sent to the front to die. These two singular moments should have been definitively painted to follow the writers intention from the beginning, but they weren’t and as a result his characters role in Gilead's conception and growth remained hazy at best. Again, not the audiences fault, the writers. Creators can't keep claiming they had an active loyalist on their hands all along when everything they ever showed their audience said otherwise. They can't keep claiming it in the face of the source material which completely contradicts them.

It’s pretty telling that audiences aren’t so much sad as angry about it. Writers are doubling down because well, they don’t have much choice. What’s done is done and they’re never going to take any of it back or admit any shortcomings. They’re never going to admit they sidelined and significantly altered a character from the source material. They’re never going to admit they out right IGNORED their audience and then proudly claimed to be listening to them. After analysing all of the diatribe and reasoning that the cast, writers and show runners have put forth I’ve come to a few simple conclusions about why Blaine was killed off. Firstly: Certain individuals could not tolerate the idea of a woman leaving her husband for another man, I believe this stems from a deep seated theological indoctrination that is ingrained into American society and consequently into ALL of their writing. It’s most evident in their attitudes to sex and love and these moralistic shackles severely restrict all of their plot and character development. My advice, go and learn from some of our British friends, they know how to write and their final seasons don’t look like a dogs breakfast. Secondly: He was used as a scapegoat for the rest of the Gilead four. Put simply, they had to have at least one bad guy. Thirdly: they wanted to make a political statement about young males being recruited into neo fascism in America today. They were not concerned about breaking with literary integrity, character construct or even narrative symbolism in order to achieve it. As someone who has taught analysis of media and literature, I can honestly say, they should have been concerned, because it definitely looks fucking broken and it will cost these creators.

I’m still reeling from the fact that so many gossamer threads in this vast story line which could have been pulled together beautifully, were instead clumsily tangled or just abandoned. Replaced instead with plot lines delivered with a clumsy ignorance of how the audience would actually feel. Which sick fuck thought that plane trip into the abyss should be the Casablanca ending they were referring to all along? I’d prefer to leave The Handmaid’s Tale behind me at the end of season 4. Even though some of the constructs of Blaine’s character were already incorrectly portrayed by this point, it was during season 5 that show runners decided to truly begin Blaine's slide from ambiguous ally to Gilead loyalist. One of the biggest appeals of Nick Blaine was his mystery but it seems that during these last 2 seasons show creators were intent on stripping him of it and reducing him to nothing but a 2 dimensional family man who just turned to water at the sign of a strong father figure.

Miller’s Wilderness was possibly one of the most amazing television season finales I’ve ever seen, and it just never got any better than that. It set the story line up beautifully to lead into The Testaments, and he could have simply walked straight into his spin off with a few cameos to smoothen the transition. I don’t know why those writers were so afraid of the character dynamic between Nick and June, it was extraordinary and we’ll be lucky to see one like it ever again. From the beginning there was something about these two that the audience emotionally engaged with and if the writers had been smarter they would have truly acknowledged and embraced it. Instead their relationships sudden end, and the death of Nick Blaine, will become the one thing that follows this series around, and sticks in the craw of many viewers for years to come.

[fleurdelivres]

I want to tattoo this on my heart.

[maymaymay5th]

If you ask me, the most powerful thing about The Handmaid’s Tale was never that it taught you how to be a hero —

it showed you how to remain human in the darkest of circumstances.

The moment it shifted into a “main character success narrative,”

it betrayed the very essence of what it once stood for.

[justbwilde]

When a Story Tries to Please Everyone, It Ends Up Saying Nothing

This is probably going to be another controversial take that’ll get me judged by some people, but I’ll say it anyway: I don’t think The Handmaid’s Tale was ever meant to be made for a mainstream audience, or to try to “please everyone”—because in the end, I feel like it ended up pleasing no one at all.

Honestly, I believe there are stories that should be hard. Complex. Exhausting. Stories that make the viewer think long and hard, read between the lines, struggle with the meaning and the interpretation—and most importantly, be allowed to form their own understanding without having a specific (and often biased) message shoved in their face by the creators.

The Handmaid’s Tale was never supposed to be a story that relies on cheap drama, epic explosions, and characters running around like it’s some Hollywood action flick where you sit back with popcorn and a Coke and turn your brain off.

And that’s how the story used to be—at the very beginning! It really wasn’t the kind of show you’d put on in the background while folding laundry.

But as the seasons went on, the show started trying harder and harder to draw in more viewers, to expand its audience—and alongside those lingering, thought-provoking moments, they started adding in hollow crutches that just don’t work when mixed together.

And that’s honestly one of the reasons why I suffered through this latest season. Because underneath it all, there’s still so much depth, but on the surface, it’s buried beneath cheap, overly literal lines that are just enough for the average viewer. And my brain couldn’t take it.

No, I seriously don’t want to watch a story where I spend most of the time noticing clever narrative choices and subtle moral dilemmas—only to have someone suddenly throw it all away and say, “Hey, this character’s bad now and this one’s good,” and then expect me to just nod, accept it, and move on. Like, really?

And you know what frustrates me the most? I fell for it too. I let myself get dragged into that silly game. Not like most people, who started trashing Nick right along with the writers… but I started to hate June without even trying to understand her perspective. My first reaction was shock, anger, and disgust. But with time, I see more now… and still, I can’t defend her. Because I don’t understand her reasoning, and I honestly can’t come up with any truly logical resolution for what she chose to do.

All that said, I truly think The Handmaid’s Tale aimed for the wrong audience. Because the people who are cheering for Nick’s death, who laugh at us, the ones who sigh blissfully over June and Serena’s scenes—this story was never really meant for them. And I’d almost bet that most of those people would say: “Wait, it’s based on a book? Whatever, I don’t care about the book…”

Like I said—this story was never meant to be for viewers who blindly accept the creators’ game: “What I tell you literally is canon, even if it contradicts 98% of the original story.”

It was never built up on screen — it just happened off-screen, thrown at you for the sake of surprise. This story was never meant to be (with apologies) for the simpler viewers who are content with that.

[baxterbella24]

Atwood's "Offred" fearlessly admitted she would've done things for that man. Things he didn't even require from her. She admitted that she felt safe with him, that they were passionate together.

None of it is demeaning because that's how we act when we're in LOVE, when we DESIRE. That's not a "woman" thing, it's a human thing, so it shouldn't be viewed as embarrassing for a woman to feel those things, to accept them and enjoy them to the fullest. Especially when we are lucky to be with a person that actually wants us as we are, doesn't try to change or control us in any way. A person with whom we can just BE.

I don't get why it's so hard to understand that THAT is what drew us to that story. It's not just because it's romance, and we are women and of course we like romance (ugh), it's because of the type of love it shows.

Love that doesn't restrain, doesn't hold back, doesn't tell you what to do, doesn't stop you, doesn't possess you. It's a love that IS, that STAYS, that TRUSTS and it's TRUSTFUL, that GIVES and most of all, only requires for you to be on the other end.

It's such a wasted opportunity to have shown us this for an entire 6 seasons run, just to tells us that, in the end, it never fucking mattered.

Well, it didn't to them I guess, but it did to me. It will always be important to me, and thank God I got both books to remind me, it IS canon, and it WILL forever be.

[placingglaciers]

If any Osblaine fic writer is out there doubting or feeling insecure about their story/stories...just know 6x09 made it all the way to our television screens. You got this 💪

[g3rmb0y]

My dumb cat is cute as hell

[mostlycatsmostly]

sound on

[kaijuno]

that is a bird

[zachary3186-blog]

I DON’T THINK CUTE EVEN COVERS IT THAT IS FLIPPING ADORABLE

[g3rmb0y]

His name is Pistachio, and he curls up next to my head every night and purrs as he falls asleep. He was a stray, and he definitely appreciates a forever home.

[princesstigerbelle]

I love this cat

[la-sanfi]

Chirping Cat

[artist-picasso]

Head of woman, Pablo Picasso

Medium: oil,cardboard

https://www.wikiart.org/en/pablo-picasso/head-of-woman-1901

[punjabipyaar]

[portsherry]

My most valuable plush doll

WHO’S READY TO READ?! Gee, I’m one to talk about ugly misshapen characters…

(Originally published on July 31, 2012)

[Website] [Facebook] [Twitter] [Instagram] [Spanish]

Support: [Patreon] [Ko-fi] [Shop]

[portsherry]

I made this comic in 2012. I think it’s only fair to tell you guys that Ice Age

says hi.

[fleurdelivres]

I love him.