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@nodenofthieves
Why Stories Matter: Letting Them Loose, and the Havoc They Wreak
a deeply emotional rant about The Handmaid’s Tale’s betrayal of Nick Blaine
This story is about trust — the kind you give so freely when a show means everything to you, when it becomes woven into the rhythms of your life and the fabric of your heart. I trusted the writers. I clung to the promise of narrative closure like a lifeline, certain they would honor the arcs they'd so carefully built. I was so full of anticipation, so ready to watch these characters I loved reach the end of their journeys, that I genuinely considered the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale the emotional highlight of 2025. But what I got instead wasn’t catharsis — it was heartbreak. A betrayal dressed up as bold storytelling, where integrity and consistency were sacrificed at the altar of shock. It didn’t just disappoint me — it broke something sacred. It left me completely shattered.
I started watching The Handmaid’s Tale when three seasons were already out. It was a bittersweet time: I was finishing my PhD, newly married, and we had just moved to a quiet house in the countryside. It was winter break. My husband worked in the capital during the week and came home on weekends. I stayed behind, mostly alone. We didn’t have our dog yet. We didn’t have our daughter yet.
One day, my neighbor and her little boy came over, and she suggested I try The Handmaid’s Tale. I’d read about the book but didn’t even know there was a show. I guess I was too buried in my studies. I needed something to watch in the mornings—just background noise while I made breakfast and drank my (now shocking to me) cup of coffee. I’m fully team matcha these days.
I gave it a go, assuming it wouldn’t be my thing. It seemed too heavy. I hadn’t read the novel yet, I absolutely knew what the book was about—I'm a literature professor with a PhD, after all. But our curriculum is very different, and The Handmaid’s Tale was never a required text, though it absolutely should be, considering our history. I’d read 1984, The Hunger Games, Red Rising… but I went in with zero expectations.
And then it happened.
The voices. The music. The imagery. The sheer emotional weight. It wasn’t background noise—it was everything. I couldn’t look away. I watched, completely still, barely breathing. It became my ritual, this sacred hour in the early morning dark. I devoured Season 1 and immediately bought the book. Then I rewatched Season 1 with the book’s insights. Then read the book again. Then rewatched again. It spiraled quickly, and I was loving every second.
I soon reached Seasons 2 and 3, and that’s when Nick Blaine truly became the heart of the show for me. His scenes were tiny rays of sunlight in the pitch-black cruelty of Gilead. He was hope, from the beginning. At first, I prayed he wasn’t an Eye. Then I hoped he was an Eye for a reason. And when we learned that he became one to take down corrupt Commanders after a Handmaid died under the Waterfords’ roof—it shattered me.
He didn’t yell or rally crowds. He didn’t write manifestos. His resistance was quiet, cautious, calculated—and deeply human. That made it more believable. More painful. More real. I saw myself in him.
I’m not loud. I go to protests, but I’m the one who moves with the crowd, not the one holding a megaphone. I vote. I sign petitions. I care. But I don’t scream. Nick felt like my kind of hero. Someone who shows up. Who watches. Who listens. And who acts—when it really matters.
His connection with June was the soul of the show. When he brought her that message from Luke in Canada… I don’t have words for what that scene meant to me. I rewatch it every time I’m traveling alone for work (I’m also a translator and interpreter). It gives me comfort—like a familiar voice in an unfamiliar city. At this point, Nick should be claiming frequent flyer miles for all the emotional support he's given me in hotel rooms. That kind of quiet love—that sacrifice? It stays with you, long after the credits roll.
When I ran out of episodes, I read The Testaments. It pulled me out of a COVID reading slump and helped me feel grounded during the chaos of those early lockdowns.
Season 4 was the first I watched live. Week by week. I’d rewatch each episode before the next aired. I was obsessed with the music (Adam Taylor’s score deserves awards), the cinematography, the acting. Honestly, if I could major in 'Handmaid's Tale Visual Suffering with a Minor in Symbolic Pacing,' I probably would’ve. I convinced my husband to watch with me, but I still needed those solo rewatches. As an introvert, I needed space to fully feel the show. And afterward? The podcasts. Above the Garage was (and still is) my favorite. (Eyes on Gilead lost me a bit with the inaccuracies.)
Season 5 aired while I was grieving a chemical pregnancy. The show, with its themes of motherhood and loss and strength, kept me afloat. My ritual stayed the same: episode with my husband, rewatch alone, podcast on my walks or while folding laundry. I lived and breathed this show. I analyzed every word, every glance. When Nick started acting… off… I noticed. Why was he asking June to come to New Bethlehem after risking everything to get her out of Gilead? It didn’t make sense. But I kept hope alive.
I got pregnant again soon after Season 5 ended. I was terrified the whole first trimester. Naturally, I turned to The Handmaid’s Tale. I rewatched it all during my pregnancy (well, up to Season 4—life gets busy). That’s how much it meant to me. That’s how much I needed it.
When my labor started, I tried to stay home as long as possible. In a stroke of absurd optimism, my husband put on The Handmaid’s Tale to distract me. Spoiler: it didn’t help. But I remember a scene where Nick tells Lawrence he just wants to keep June alive. That stayed with me through the pain.
Fast forward a couple days: I’m in the hospital with my newborn daughter. She’s sleeping beside me. And what pops up on my phone? A notification for a new Above the Garage episode: “Nick Blaine Character Analysis.” I listened, right there in my hospital room. No headphones. Just me, my daughter, and the voice of someone who got it. Honestly, if the nurse had walked in, I probably would’ve asked her to sit down and listen too—priorities, right?
Back home, I continued rewatching the series during those endless breastfeeding sessions. I was a hormonal mess (shoutout to postpartum life), but somehow it made me appreciate the show even more.
Now, let me tell you—I was blessed with a very difficult baby. Sleep? What sleep? Some days I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. My peace? Long stroller walks with The Handmaid’s Tale soundtrack in my ears. Or podcasts dissecting Nick’s every breath. That world became my safe place. Which, now that I think about it, is kind of ironic—finding comfort in such a bleak, brutal show. But maybe that’s what made it feel so real. So earned.
So when Season 6 was announced? I was ecstatic. Finally, we’d see Nick’s Mayday storyline in full. Finally, his years of quiet resistance would come to light. I couldn’t wait. My toddler had just entered the chaos era (Toddlerzilla unlocked), but I clung to this. Tuesdays became sacred again.
Problem: Tuesdays are my university days. I travel early to the capital to teach. Solution? Downloaded HBO to my phone. Set my alarm for 5:45. My sleep-deprived brain thought this was a solid plan—clearly, I was still in denial about how far the show would go to ruin my week before it even started. Watched episodes on the train, half-awake, headphones on, praying for a stable internet connection. If the signal failed, I hid in my office to finish the episode before lecture. Mother. Scholar. Fanatic.
When Nick “betrayed” June, I wasn’t even upset. We knew it was coming. He revealed a plan that June never supported anyway. I figured—okay, we’re moving pieces. He’ll explain next episode. We’ll be fine. It’ll all make sense.
Oh, how naive I was.
The second half of Season 6 felt like a cruel joke. It broke me. The writing wasn’t just inconsistent—it was insulting. I kept asking: who are these writers? Did they swap out mid-season? I was so disoriented I started talking to AI. My friends watched casually. I was spiraling alone.
Thank god for Easter break—and a couple of other unexpected free Tuesdays. I watched the last two episodes at home, alarm set for 6 am, praying for redemption. What I got instead? Grief. Disbelief. Rage. Intrusive thoughts. Total disillusionment.
It. Did. Not. Make. Sense.
For the first time in my life, I started commenting online. I argued. I brought receipts. I found other fans who felt the same. We built a community. We cried, raged, and analyzed together. And I realized something:
The people who care most about this show? The ones who remember every line, who understand every choice? They all love Nick. Because he’s not a coward. He’s not a villain. He’s not violent or dishonest. He’s just a man doing the best he can in a world gone wrong.
So no. I’m not watching The Testaments. They don’t deserve our viewership after this. I can't believe I'm saying this—but I'm glad it's over. The damage they did in just a few episodes was so severe that it turned years of love into something close to resentment. It's a brutal irony, really—how something that once brought me comfort and strength ended up making me feel betrayed and disillusioned.
The writers may have forgotten their own show. But we haven’t. We remember who Nick Blaine was.
And that’s why stories matter. Because even when they get ruined—when they get butchered by people who never understood their own characters—we carry the truth with us. As Philip Pullman once said, 'After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.'
And I won’t let those clueless writers take that away from me.
Nick in Margaret Atwood’s Canon: Every Appearance, Word for Word (updated)
THE HANDMAID’S TALE
CHAPTER THREE
A Guardian detailed to the Commander does the heavy digging; the Commander's Wife directs, pointing with her stick.
CHAPTER FOUR
I open the white picket gate and continue, past the front lawn and towards the front gate. In the driveway, one of the Guardians assigned to our household is washing the car. That must mean the Commander is in the house, in his own quarters, past the dining room and beyond, where he seems to stay most of the time.
The car is a very expensive one, a Whirlwind; better than the Chariot, much better than the chunky, practical Behemoth. It's black, of course, the color of prestige or a hearse, and long and sleek. The driver is going over it with a chamois, lovingly.
This at least hasn't changed, the way men caress good cars.
He's wearing the uniform of the Guardians, but his cap is tilted at a jaunty angle and his sleeves are rolled to the elbow, showing his forearms, tanned but with a stipple of dark hairs, He has a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, which shows that he too has something he can trade on the black market.
I know this man's name: Nick. I know this because I've heard Rita and Cora talking about him, and once I heard the Commander speaking to him: Nick, I won't be needing the car.
He lives here, in the household, over the garage. Low status: he hasn't been issued a woman, not even one. He doesn't rate: some defect, lack of connections.
But he acts as if he doesn't know this, or care, He's too casual, he's not servile enough. It may be stupidity, but I don't think so. Smells fishy, they used to say; or, I smell a rat. Misfit as odor. Despite myself, I think of how he might smell. Not fish or decaying rat; tanned skin, moist in the sun, filmed with smoke. I sigh, inhaling.
He looks at me, and sees me looking. He has a French face, lean, whimsical, all planes and angles, with creases around the mouth where he smiles. He takes a final puff of the cigarette, lets it drop to the driveway, and steps on it. He begins to whistle.
Then he winks.
I drop my head and turn so that the white wings hide my face, and keep walking.
He's just taken a risk, but for what? What if I were to report him?
Perhaps he was merely being friendly. Perhaps he saw the look on my face and mistook it for something else. Really what I wanted was the cigarette.
Perhaps it was a test, to see what I would do. Perhaps he is an Eye.
(...)
The Guardians aren’t real soldiers. Theyre used for routine policing and other menial functions, digging up the Commander’s Wife’s garden for instance, and they’re either stupid or older or disabled or very young, apart from the ones that are Eyes incognito.
(...)
(...) because none of this is the faul of these men, they´re too young.
CHAPTER EIGHT
In the driveway, Nick is polishing the Whirlwind again. He’s reached the chrome at the back. I put my gloved hand on the latch of the gate, open it, push inward. The gate clicks behind me. The tulips along the border are redder than ever, opening, no longer winecups but chalices; thrusting themselves up, to what end? They are, after all, empty. When they are old they turn themselves inside out, then explode slowly, the petals thrown out like shards.
Nick looks up and begins to whistle. Then he says, “Nice walk?”
I nod, but do not answer with my voice. He isn’t supposed to speak to me.
CHAPTER TEN
The Commander stoops, gets into the car, disappears, and Nick shuts the door. A moment later the car moves backwards, down the driveway and onto the street, and vanishes behind the hedge.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Nick walks in, nods to all three of us, looks around the room. He too takes his place behind me, standing. He’s so close that the tip of his boot is touching my foot. Is this on purpose? Whether it is or not we are touching, two shapes of leather. I feel my shoe soften, blood flows into it, it grows warm, it becomes a skin. I move my foot slightly, away.
“Wish he’d hurry up,” says Cora.
“Hurry up and wait,” says Nick. He laughs, moves his foot so it’s touching mine again. No one can see, beneath the folds of my outspread skirt. I shift, it’s too warm in here, the smell of stale perfume makes me feel a little sick. I move my foot away.
We hear Serena coming, down the stairs, along the hall, the muffled tap of her cane on the rug, thud of the good foot. She hobbles through the doorway, glances at us, counting but not seeing. She nods, at Nick, but says nothing.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
But there’s someone in the room, behind me.
I hear the step, quiet as mine, the creaking of the same floorboard.
The door closes behind me, with a little click, cutting the light. I freeze: white was a mistake. I’m snow in moonlight, even in the dark.
Then a whisper: “Don’t scream. It’s all right.”
As if I’d scream, as if it’s all right. I turn: a shape, that’s all, dull glint of cheekbone, devoid of colour.
He steps towards me. Nick.
“What are you doing in here?”
I don’t answer. He too is illegal, here, with me, he can’t give me away.
Nor I him; for the moment we’re mirrors. He puts his hand on my arm, pulls me against him, his mouth on mine, what else comes from such denial? Without a word. Both of us shaking, how I’d like to. In Serena’s parlour, with the dried flowers, on the Chinese carpet, his thin body. A man entirely unknown. It would be like shouting, it would be like shooting someone. My hand goes down, how about that, I could unbutton, and then. But it’s too dangerous, he knows it, we push each other away, not far. Too much trust, too much risk, too much already.
“I was coming to find you,” he says, breathes, almost into my ear. I want to reach up, taste his skin, he makes me hungry. His fingers move, feeling my arm under the nightgown sleeve, as if his hand won’t listen to reason. It’s so good, to be touched by someone, to be felt so greedily, to feel so greedy. Luke, you’d know, you’d understand. It’s you here, in another body.
Bullshit.
“Why?” I say. Is it so bad, for him, that he’d take the risk of coming to my room at night? I think of the hanged men, hooked on the Wall. I can hardly stand up. I have to get away, back to the stairs, before I dissolve entirely. His hand’s on my shoulder now, held still, heavy, pressing down on me like warm lead. Is this what I would die for? I’m a coward, I hate the thought of pain.
“He told me to,” Nick says. “He wants to see you. In his office.”
“What do you mean?” I say. The Commander, it must be. See me?
What does he mean by see? Hasn’t he had enough of me?
“Tomorrow,” he says, just audible. In the dark parlour we move away from each other, slowly, as if pulled towards each other by a force, current, pulled apart also by hands equally strong.
I find the door, turn the knob, fingers on cool porcelain, open. It’s all I can do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I visit the Commander two or three nights a week, always after dinner, but only when I get the signal. The signal is Nick. If he’s polishing the car when I set out for the shopping, or when I come back, and if his hat is on askew or not on at all, then I go. If he isn’t there or if he has his hat on straight, then I stay in my room in the ordinary way. On Ceremony nights, of course, none of this applies.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Someone has come out of the house. I hear the distant closing of a door, around at the side, footsteps on the walk. It’s Nick, I can see him now; he’s stepped off the path, onto the lawn, to breathe in the humid air which stinks of flowers, of pulpy growth, of pollen thrown into the wind in handfuls, like oyster spawn into the sea. All this prodigal breeding. He stretches in the sun, I feel the ripple of muscles go along him, like a cat’s back arching. He’s in his shirt sleeves, bare arms sticking shamelessly out from the rolled cloth. Where does the tan end? I haven’t spoken to him since that one night, dreamscape in the moon-filled sitting room. He’s only my flag, my semaphore. Body language.
Right now his cap’s on sideways. Therefore I am sent for.
What does he get for it, his role as page boy? How does he feel, pimping in this ambiguous way for the Commander? Does it fill him with disgust, or make him want more of me, want me more? Because he has no idea what really goes on in there, among the books. Acts of perversion, for all he knows. The Commander and me, covering each other with ink, licking it off, or making love on stacks of forbidden newsprint. Well, he wouldn’t be far off at that.
But depend on it, there’s something in it for him. Everyone’s on the take, one way or another. Extra cigarettes? Extra freedoms, not allowed to the general run? Anyway, what can he prove? It’s his word against the Commander’s, unless he wants to head a posse. Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words.
Maybe he just likes the satisfaction of knowing something secret. Of having something on me, as they used to say. It’s the kind of power you can use only once.
I would like to think better of him.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Down there on the lawn, someone emerges from the spill of darkness under the willow, steps across the light, his long shadow attached sharply to his heels. Is it Nick, or is it someone else, someone of no importance? He stops, looks up at this window, and I can see the white oblong of his face. Nick. We look at each other. I have no rose to toss, he has no lute. But it’s the same kind of hunger.
Which I can’t indulge. I pull the left-hand curtain so that it falls between us, across my face, and after a moment he walks on, into the invisibility around the corner.
What the Commander said is true. One and one and one and one doesn’t equal four. Each one remains unique, there is no way of joining them together. They cannot be exchanged, one for the other. They cannot replace each other. Nick for Luke or Luke for Nick. Should does not apply.
You can’t help what you feel, Moira said once, but you can help how you behave.
Which is all very well.
Context is all; or is it ripeness? One or the other.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
There’s Nick, hat askew; today he doesn’t even look at me. He must have been waiting around for me though, to deliver his silent message, because as soon as he knows I’ve seen him he gives the Whirlwind one last swipe with the chamois and walks briskly off towards the garage door.
(...)
“Your time’s running out,” she says. Not a question, a matter of fact.
“Yes,” I say neutrally.
She’s lighting another cigarette, fumbling with the lighter. Definitely her hands are getting worse. But it would be a mistake to offer to do it for her, she’d be offended. A mistake to notice weakness in her.
“Maybe he can’t,” she says.
I don’t know who she means. Does she mean the Commander, or God?
If it’s God, she should say won’t. Either way it’s heresy. It’s only women who can’t, who remain stubbornly closed, damaged, defective.
“No,” I say. “Maybe he can’t.”
I look up at her. She looks down. It’s the first time we’ve looked into each other’s eyes in a long time. Since we met. The moment stretches out between us, bleak and level. She’s trying to see whether or not I’m up to reality.
“Maybe,” she says, holding the cigarette, which she has failed to light.
“Maybe you should try it another way.”
Does she mean on all fours? “What other way?” I say. I must keep serious.
“Another man,” she says.
“You know I can’t,” I say, careful not to let my irritation show. “It’s against the law. You know the penalty.”
“Yes,” she says. She’s ready for this, she’s thought it through. “I know you can’t officially. But it’s done. Women do it frequently. All the time.”
“With doctors, you mean?” I say, remembering the sympathetic brown eyes, the gloveless hand. The last time I went it was a different doctor.
Maybe someone caught the other one out, or a woman reported him. Not that they’d take her word, without evidence.
“Some do that,” she says, her tone almost affable now, though distanced; it’s as if we’re considering a choice of nail polish. “That’s how Ofwarren did it. The wife knew, of course.” She pauses to let this sink in.
“I would help you. I would make sure nothing went wrong.”
I think about this. “Not with a doctor,” I say.
“No,” she agrees, and for this moment at least we are cronies, this could be a kitchen table, it could be a date we’re discussing, some girlish stratagem of ploys and flirtation. “Sometimes they blackmail. But it doesn’t have to be a doctor. It could be someone we trust.”
“Who?” I say.
“I was thinking of Nick,” she says, and her voice is almost soft. “He’s been with us a long time. He’s loyal. I could fix it with him.”
So that’s who does her little black-market errands for her. Is this what he always gets, in return?
“What about the Commander?” I say.
“Well,” she says, with firmness; no, more than that, a clenched look, like a purse snapping shut. “We just won’t tell him, will we?”
This idea hangs between us, almost visible, almost palpable: heavy, formless, dark; collusion of a sort, betrayal of a sort. She does want that baby.
“It’s a risk,” I say. “More than that.” It’s my life on the line; but that’s where it will be sooner or later, one way or another, whether I do or don’t. We both know this.
“You might as well,” she says. Which is what I think too.
“All right,” I say. “Yes.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Through the tunnel made by the hood I can see the back of Nick’s head. His hat is on straight, he’s sitting up straight, his neck is straight, he is all very straight. His posture disapproves of me, or am I imagining it? Does he know what I’ve got on under this cloak, did he procure it? And if so, does this make him angry or lustful or envious or anything at all? We do have something in common: both of us are supposed to be invisible, both of us are functionaries. I wonder if he knows this. When he opened the door of the car for the Commander, and, by extension, for me, I tried to catch his eye, make him look at me, but he acted as if he didn’t see me.
Why not? It’s a soft job for him, running little errands, doing little favours, and there’s no way he’d want to jeopardize it.
The checkpoints are no problem, everything goes as smoothly as the Commander said it would, despite the heavy pounding, the pressure of blood in my head. Chickenshit, Moira would say.
Past the second checkpoint, Nick says, “Here, Sir?” and the Commander says “Yes.”
The car pulls over and the Commander says, “Now I’ll have to ask you to get down onto the floor of the car.”
“Down?” I say.
“We have to go through the gateway,” he says, as if this means something to me. I tried to ask him where we were going, but he said he wanted to surprise me. “Wives aren’t allowed.”
So I flatten myself and the car starts again, and for the next few minutes I see nothing. Under the cloak it’s stifling hot. It’s a winter cloak, not a cotton summer one, and it smells of mothballs. He must have borrowed it from storage, knowing she wouldn’t notice. He has considerately moved his feet to give me room. Nevertheless my forehead is against his shoes. I have never been this close to his shoes before.
They feel hard, unwinking, like the shells of beetles: black, polished, inscrutable. They seem to have nothing to do with feet.
We pass through another checkpoint. I hear the voices, impersonal, deferential, and the window rolling electrically down and up for the passes to be shown. This time he won’t show mine, the one that’s supposed to be mine, as I’m no longer in official existence, for now.
Then the car starts and then it stops again, and the Commander is helping me up.
“We’ll have to be fast,” he says. “This is a back entrance. You should leave the cloak with Nick. On the hour, as usual,” he says to Nick. So this too is something he’s done before.
He helps me out of the cloak; the car door is opened. I feel air on my almost bare skin, and realize I’ve been sweating. As I turn to shut the car door behind me I can see Nick looking at me through the glass. He sees me now. Is it contempt I read, or indifference, is this merely what he expected of me?
CHAPTER FORTY
I reach the top of the stairs, knock on the door there. He opens it himself, who else was I expecting? There’s a lamp on, only one but enough light to make me blink. I look past him, not wanting to meet his eyes. It’s a single room, with a fold-out bed, made up, and a kitchenette counter at the far end, and another door that must lead to the bathroom.
This room is stripped down, military, minimal. No pictures on the walls, no plants. He’s camping out. The blanket on the bed is grey and says U.S.
He steps back and aside to let me past. He’s in his shirt sleeves, and is holding a cigarette, lit. I smell the smoke on him, in the warm air of the room, all over. I’d like to take off my clothes, bathe in it, rub it over my skin.
No preliminaries; he knows why I’m here. He doesn’t even say anything, why fool around, it’s an assignment. He moves away from me, turns off the lamp. Outside, like punctuation, there’s a flash of lightning; almost no pause and then the thunder. He’s undoing my dress, a man made of darkness, I can’t see his face, and I can hardly breathe, hardly stand, and I’m not standing. His mouth is on me, his hands, I can’t wait and he’s moving, already, love, it’s been so long, I’m alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling and water softly everywhere, neverending.
I knew it might only be once.
I made that up. It didn’t happen that way. Here is what happened.
I reach the top of the stairs, knock on the door. He opens it himself.
There’s a lamp on; I blink. I look past his eyes, it’s a single room, the bed’s made up, stripped down, military. No pictures but the blanket says U.S. He’s in his shirt sleeves, he’s holding a cigarette.
“Here,” he says to me, “have a drag.” No preliminaries, he knows why I’m here. To get knocked up, to get in trouble, up the pole, those were all names for it once. I take the cigarette from him, draw deeply in, hand it back. Our fingers hardly touch. Even that much smoke makes me dizzy.
He says nothing, just looks at me, unsmiling. It would be better, more friendly, if he would touch me. I feel stupid and ugly, although I know I am not either. Still, what does he think, why doesn’t he say something?
Maybe he thinks I’ve been slutting around, at Jezebel’s, with the Commander or more. It annoys me that I’m even worrying about what he thinks. Let’s be practical.
“I don’t have much time,” I say. This is awkward and clumsy, it isn’t what I mean.
“I could just squirt it into a bottle and you could pour it in,” he says.
He doesn’t smile.
“There’s no need to be brutal,” I say. Possibly he feels used. Possibly he wants something from me, some emotion, some ackowledgement that he too is human, is more than just a seedpod. “I know it’s hard for you,”
I try.
He shrugs. “I get paid,” he says, punk surliness. But still makes no move.
I get paid, you get laid, I rhyme in my head. So that’s how we’re going to do it. He didn’t like the makeup, the spangles. We’re going to be tough.
“You come here often?”
“And what’s a nice girl like me doing in a spot like this,” I reply. We both smile: this is better. This is an acknowledgement that we are acting, for what else can we do in such a setup?
“Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.” We’re quoting from late movies, from the time before. And the movies then were from a time before that: this sort of talk dates back to an era well before our own.
Not even my mother talked like that, not when I knew her. Possibly nobody ever talked like that in real life, it was all a fabrication from the beginning. Still, it’s amazing how easily it comes back to mind, this corny and falsely gay sexual banter. I can see now what it’s for, what it was always for: to keep the core of yourself out of reach, enclosed, protected.
I’m sad now, the way we’re talking is infinitely sad: faded music, faded paper flowers, worn satin, an echo of an echo. All gone away, no longer possible. Without warning I begin to cry.
At last he moves forward, puts his arms around me, strokes my back, holds me that way, for comfort.
“Come on,” he says. “We haven’t got much time.” With his arm around my shoulders he leads me over to the fold-out bed, lies me down.
He even turns down the blanket first. He begins to unbutton, then to stroke, kisses beside my ear. “No romance,” he says. “Okay?”
That would have meant something else, once. Once it would have meant: no strings. Now it means: no heroics. It means: don’t risk yourself for me, if it should come to that.
And so it goes. And so.
I knew it might only be once. Goodbye, I thought, even at the time, goodbye.
There wasn’t any thunder though, I added that in. To cover up the sounds, which I am ashamed of making.
It didn’t happen that way either. I’m not sure how it happened; not exactly. All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.
Partway through, I thought about Serena Joy, sitting down there in the kitchen. Thinking: cheap. They’ll spread their legs for anyone. All you need to give them is a cigarette.
And I thought afterwards: this is a betrayal. Not the thing itself but my own response. If I knew for certain he was dead, would that make a difference?
I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
This is the story, then.
I went back to Nick. Time after time, on my own, without Serena knowing. It wasn’t called for, there was no excuse. I did not do it for him, but for myself entirely. I didn’t even think of it as giving myself to him, because what did I have to give? I did not feel munificent, but thankful, each time he would let me in. He didn’t have to.
In order to do this I became reckless, I took stupid chances. After being with the Commander I would go upstairs in the usual way, but then I would go along the hall and down the Marthas’ stairs at the back and through the kitchen. Each time I would hear the kitchen door click shut behind me and I would almost turn back, it sounded so metallic, like a mousetrap or a weapon, but I would not turn back. I would hurry across the few feet of illuminated lawn, the searchlights were back on again, expecting at any moment to feel the bullets rip through me even in advance of their sound. I would make my way by touch up the dark staircase and come to rest against the door, the thud of blood in my ears.
Fear is a powerful stimulant. Then I would knock softly, a beggar’s knock. Each time I would expect him to be gone; or worse, I would expect him to say I could not come in. He might say he wasn’t going to break any more rules, put his neck in the noose, for my sake. Or even worse, tell me he was no longer interested. His failure to do any of these things I experienced as the most incredible benevolence and luck.
I told you it was bad.
Here is how it goes.
He opens the door. He’s in his shirt sleeves, his shirt untucked, hanging loose; he’s holding a toothbrush, or a cigarette or a glass with something in it. He has his own little stash up here, black-market stuff I suppose. He’s always got something in his hand, as if he’s been going about his life as usual, not expecting me, not waiting. Maybe he doesn’t expect me, or wait. Maybe he has no notion of the future, or does not bother or dare to imagine it.
“Is it too late?” I say.
He shakes his head for no. It is understood between us by now that it is never too late, but I go through the ritual politeness of asking. It makes me feel more in control, as if there is a choice, a decision that could be made one way or the other. He steps aside and I move past him and he closes the door. Then he crosses the room and closes the window.
After that he turns out the light. There is not much talking between us any more, not at this stage. Already I am half out of my clothes. We save the talking for later.
With the Commander I close my eyes, even when I am only kissing him goodnight. I do not want to see him up close. But now, here, each time, I keep my eyes open. I would like a light on somewhere, a candle perhaps, stuck into a bottle, some echo of college, but anything like that would be too great a risk; so I have to make do with the searchlight, the glow of it from the grounds below, filtered through his white curtains which are the same as mine. I want to see what can be seen, of him, take him in, memorize him, save him up so I can live on the image, later: the lines of his body, the texture of his flesh, the glisten of sweat on his pelt, his long sardonic unrevealing face. I ought to have done that with Luke, paid more attention, to the details, the moles and scars, the singular creases; I didn’t and he’s fading. Day by day, night by night he recedes, and I become more faithless.
For this one I’d wear pink feathers, purple stars, if that were what he wanted; or anything else, even the tail of a rabbit. But he does not require such trimmings. We make love each time as if we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there will never be any more, for either of us, with anyone, ever. And then when there is, that too is always a surprise, extra, a gift.
Being here with him is safety; it’s a cave, where we huddle together while the storm goes on outside. This is a delusion, of course. This room is one of the most dangerous places I could be. If I were caught there would be no quarter, but I’m beyond caring. And how have I come to trust him like this, which is foolhardy in itself? How can I assume I know him, or the least thing about him and what he really does?
I dismiss these uneasy whispers. I talk too much. I tell him things I shouldn’t. I tell him about Moira, about Ofglen; not about Luke though. I want to tell him about the woman in my room, the one who was there before me, but I don’t. I’m jealous of her. If she’s been here before me too, in this bed, I don’t want to hear about it.
I tell him my real name, and feel that therefore I am known. I act like a dunce. I should know better. I make of him an idol, a cardboard cutout.
He on the other hand talks little: no more hedging or jokes. He barely asks questions. He seems indifferent to most of what I have to say, alive only to the possibilities of my body, though he watches me while I’m speaking. He watches my face.
Impossible to think that anyone for whom I feel such gratitude could betray me.
Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.
(...)
But the Commander is no longer of immediate interest to me. I have to make an effort to keep my indifference towards him from showing.
Keep on doing everything exactly the way you were before, Nick says.
Don’t change anything. Otherwise they’ll know. He kisses me, watching me all the time. Promise? Don’t slip up.
I put his hand on my belly. It’s happened, I say. I feel it has. A couple of weeks and I’ll be certain.
This I know is wishful thinking.
He’ll love you to death, he says. So will she.
But it’s yours, I say. It will be yours, really. I want it to be.
We don’t pursue this, however.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Nobody moves forward. The women are looking at him with horror; as if he’s a half-dead rat dragging itself across a kitchen floor. He’s squinting around at us, the circle of red women. One corner of his mouth moves up, incredible – a smile?
I try to look inside him, inside the trashed face, see what he must really look like. I think he’s about thirty. It isn’t Luke.
But it could have been, I know that. It could be Nick. I know that whatever he’s done I can’t touch him.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
I go out the back door, along the path. Nick is washing the car, his hat on sideways. He doesn’t look at me. We avoid looking at each other, these days. Surely we’d give something away by it, even out here in the open, with no one to see.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Dear God, I think, I will do anything you like. Now that you’ve let me off, I’ll obliterate myself, if that’s what you really want; I’ll empty myself, truly, become a chalice. I’ll give up Nick, I’ll forget about the others, I’ll stop complaining. I’ll accept my lot. I’ll sacrifice. I’ll repent.
I’ll abdicate. I’ll renounce.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
“Pick up that disgusting thing and get to your room. Just like the other one. A slut.
You’ll end up the same.”
I stoop, gather. Behind my back Nick has stopped whistling.
I want to turn, run to him, throw my arms around him. This would be foolish. There is nothing he can do to help. He too would drown.
I walk to the back door, into the kitchen, set down my basket, go upstairs. I am orderly and calm.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
I could walk at a steady pace down the stairs and out the front door and along the street, trying to look as if I knew where I was going, and see how far I could get. Red is so visible.
I could go to Nick’s room, over the garage, as we have done before. I could wonder whether or not he would let me in, give me shelter. Now that the need is real.
(...)
I expect a stranger, but it’s Nick who pushes open the door, flicks on the light. I can’t place that, unless he’s one of them. There was always that possibility. Nick, the private Eye. Dirty work is done by dirty people.
You shit, I think. I open my mouth to say it, but he comes over, close to me, whispers.
“It’s all right. It’s Mayday. Go with them.” He calls me by my real name. Why should this mean anything?
“Them?” I say. I see the two men standing behind him, the overhead light in the hallway making skulls of their heads. “You must be crazy.”
My suspicion hovers in the air above him, a dark angel warning me away. I can almost see it. Why shouldn’t he know about Mayday? All the Eyes must know about it; they’ll have squeezed it, crushed it, twisted it out of enough bodies, enough mouths by now.
“Trust me,” he says; which in itself has never been a talisman, carries no guarantee.
But I snatch at it, this offer. It’s all I’m left with.
One in front, one behind, they escort me down the stairs. The pace is leisurely, the lights are on. Despite the fear, how ordinary it is. From here I can see the clock. It’s no time in particular.
Nick is no longer with us. He may have gone down the back stairs, not wishing to be seen.
HISTORICAL NOTES
As for the subversive Waterford was accused of harbouring, this could have been “Offred” herself, as her flight would have placed her in this category. More likely it was “Nick,” who, by the evidence of the very existence of the tapes, must have helped “Offred” to escape. The way in which he was able to do this marks him as a member of the shadowy Mayday underground, which was not identical with the Underground Femaleroad but had connections with it. The latter was purely a rescue operation, the former quasi-military. A number of Mayday operatives are known to have infiltrated the Gileadean power structure at the highest levels, and the placement of one of their members as chauffeur to Waterford would certainly have been a coup; a double coup, as “Nick” must have been at the same time a member of the Eyes, as such chauffeurs and personal servants often were. Waterford would, of course, have been aware of this, but as all high-level Commanders were automatically directors of the Eyes, he would not have paid a great deal of attention to it and would not have let it interfere with his infraction of what he considered to be minor rules. Like most early Gilead Commanders who were later purged, he considered his position to be above attack. The style of Middle Gilead was more cautious.
(...)
We can only deduce, also, the motivations for “Nick’s” engineering of her escape. We can assume that once her companion Ofglen’s association with Mayday had been discovered, he himself was in some jeopardy, for as he well knew, as a member of the Eyes, Offred herself was certain to be interrogated. The penalties for unauthorized sexual activity with a Handmaid were severe, nor would his status as an Eye necessarily protect him. Gilead society was Byzantine in the extreme, and any transgression might be used against one by one’s undeclared enemies within the regime. He could, of course, have assassinated her himself, which might have been the wiser course, but the human heart remains a factor, and, as we know, both of them thought she might be pregnant by him. What male of the Gilead period could resist the possibility of fatherhood, so redolent of status, so highly prized? Instead, he called in a rescue team of Eyes, who may or may not have been authentic but in any case were under his orders. In doing so he may well have brought about his own downfall. This too we shall never know.
THE TESTAMENTS
CHAPTER 22
“My other parents. My real ones. Who were they? Are they dead too?”
“I’ll make more coffee,” said Ada. She got up and went into the kitchen.
“They’re still alive,” said Elijah. “Or they were yesterday.”
I stared at him. I wondered if he was lying, but why would he have done that? If he’d wanted to make things up, he could have made up better things.
“I don’t believe any of this,” I said. “I don’t know why you’re even saying it.”
Ada came back into the room with a mug of coffee and said did anyone else want one, help yourself, and maybe I should have some time to myself to think things over.
Think what over? What was there to think? My parents had been murdered, but they weren’t my real parents, and a different set of parents had appeared in their place.
“What things?” I said. “I don’t know enough to think anything.”
“What would you like to know?” said Elijah in a kind but tired voice.
“How did it happen?” I said. “Where are my real…my other mother and father?”
“Do you know much about Gilead?” Elijah asked.
“Of course. I watch the news. We took it in school,” I said sullenly. “I went to that protest march.” Right then I wanted Gilead to evaporate and leave us all alone.
“That’s where you were born,” he said. “In Gilead.”
“You’re joking,” I said.
“You were smuggled out by your mother and Mayday. They’d risked their lives. Gilead made a big fuss about it; they wanted you back. They said your so-called legal parents had the right to claim you. Mayday hid you; there were a lot of people looking for you, plus a media blitz.”
“Like Baby Nicole,” I said. “I wrote an essay about her at school.”
Elijah looked down at the floor again. Then he looked straight at me. “You are Baby Nicole.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I thought about that, sitting in the dark among the plumbing supplies. “So where is she now? My mother?”
“Sealed document,” said Ada. “The less people who know that, the better.”
“She just walked off and left me?”
“She was up to her neck in it,” said Ada. “You’re lucky you’re alive. She’s lucky too, they’ve tried to kill her twice that we know of. They’ve never forgotten how she outsmarted them about Baby Nicole.”
“What about my father?”
“Same story. He’s so deep underground he needs a breathing tube.”
“I guess she doesn’t remember me,” I said dolefully. “She doesn’t give a fuck.”
“Nobody is any authority on the fucks other people give,” said Ada. “She stayed away from you for your own good. She didn’t want to put you at risk.
But she’s kept up with you as much as she could, under the circumstances.”
Transcript of Witness Testimony 369B CHAPTER THIRTY
My mother was a Handmaid? And my father…"So my father's one of those?" I said. "A Commander?" The idea of part of him being part of me—being inside my actual body—made me shiver.
"Luckily not," said Elijah. "Or not according to your mother, though she doesn't wish to endanger your real father by saying so, as he may still be in Gilead. But Gilead is staking its claim to you via your official father. It's on those grounds they've always demanded your return. The return of Baby Nicole," he clarified.
Transcript of Witness Testimony 369A CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
“Now that we’re sisters,” I said, “you can call me Agnes when we’re alone.” “Okay, I’ll try,” Nicole said. We went into the main room. “I have something I want to share with you,” I said. “Just a minute.” I went upstairs. I’d been keeping the two pages from the Bloodlines files under my mattress, folded up small. When I returned, I unfolded them carefully and flattened them out. Once I’d laid them out on the table, Nicole—like me—couldn’t resist placing her hand on the picture of our mother. “This is amazing,” she said. She took her hand off, studied the picture again. “Do you think she looks like me?” “I wondered the same thing,” I said. “Can you remember her at all? I must’ve been too young.” “I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes I think I can. I do seem to remember something. Was there a different house? Did I travel somewhere? But maybe it’s wishful thinking.” “What about our fathers?” she said. “And why did they blank out the names?” “Maybe they were trying to protect us in some way,” I said. “Thanks for showing me,” said Nicole. “But I don’t think you should keep these around. What if you get caught with them?” “I know. I tried to put the pages back, but the file wasn’t there anymore.” In the end, we decided to tear the pages up into small pieces and flush them down the toilet.
Transcript of Witness Testimony 369A
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
"Do you think we'll ever see our mother?"
"I have faith that we will."
"Do you think she'll like us?"
"She will love us," I said to soothe her. "And we will love her."
"Just because people are related to you doesn't mean you love them," she murmured.
"Love is a discipline, like prayer," I said. "I'd like to pray for you, so you'll feel better. Would you mind?"
"It won't work. I won't feel any better."
"But I will feel better," I said. So she said yes.
"Dear God," I said, "may we accept the past with all its flaws, may we move forward into a better future in forgiveness and loving kindness. And may we each be thankful for our sister, and may we both see our mother again, and our two different fathers as well. And may we remember Aunt Lydia, and may she be forgiven for her sins and faultts, as we hope we may be forgiven for ours. And may we always feel gratitude to our sister Becka, wherever she may be. Please bless all of them. Amen."
By the time I'd finished, Nicole was asleep.
THE THIRTEENTH SYMPOSIUM
I will conclude with one more fascinating piece of the puzzle.
The group of slides I am about to show you portrays a statue located at present on the Boston Common. Its provenance suggests it is not from the Gilead period: the name of the sculptor corresponds to that of an artist who was active in Montreal some decades after the collapse of Gilead, and the statue must have been transferred to its present position some years after the post-Gilead chaos and subsequent Restoration of the United States of America.
The inscription would appear to name the principal actors cited in our materials. If this is so, our two young messengers must indeed have lived not only to tell their tale but also to be reunited with their mother and their respective fathers, and to have children and grandchildren of their own.
I myself take this inscription to be a convincing testament to the authenticity of our two witness transcripts.
(...)
Here is the inscription. The lettering is weathered and difficult to read on the slide, so I took the liberty of transcribing it on the following slide, here.
And on this last note I will close.
IN LOVING MEMORY OF BECKA, AUNT IMMORTELLE
THIS MEMORIAL WAS ERECTED BY HER SISTERS AGNES AND NICOLE AND THEIR MOTHER, THEIR TWO FATHERS, THEIR CHILDREN AND THEIR GRANDCHILDREN.
AND IN RECOGNITION OF THE INVALUABLE SERVICES PROVIDED BY A.L.
A BIRD OF THE AIR SHALL CARRY THE VOICE, AND THAT WHICH HATH WINGS SHALL TELL THE MATTER.
LOVE IS AS STRONG AS DEATH.
All excerpts are taken from The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. These texts are the copyrighted property of the author and publisher. This compilation is shared for educational, archival, and commentary purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended.
The Betrayal of Nick Blaine: How The Handmaid’s Tale Undermined Its Own Storytelling
For the most recent and complete versions, please visit my Medium profile: https://medium.com/@drlitcrit
INTRODUCTION
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. This reading of Nick is also explicitly supported by writer Kira Snyder, who explained:
“Part of the fun of that episode was to kind of peel back the mystery of this young man and see where he came from, how he got recruited, and how his idealism was turned against him, how it was curdled by the corrupt system of Gilead. How he keeps trying to find something to believe in, some way to make things work, make things good. Which is what we see with his becoming an Eye; he doesn’t have a lot of ways to strike back at the Commander, but through his role as part of the secret police informer network he has ability to try to keep a check on the man.” (The Art and Making of The Handmaid’s Tale, p. 73)
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.
In Season 4, a Martha tells Nick, “If you want to make a shipment, use the usual channels.” Though brief, this exchange reveals a great deal: the absence of fear signals trust, and the language suggests an established working relationship. It implies Nick’s sustained involvement with the Martha network and positions him as a consistent, embedded actor within resistance operations.
In the same season, when June first meets Tuello in his office, a strategic planning board is visible behind him. Among various documents and images, Nick’s photograph appears alongside screenshots from his social media, a timeline of his involvement with the Sons of Jacob, and — notably — the word “ALLY” written beside his name. This visual detail, easily overlooked, is significant: it demonstrates that the resistance had already identified Nick as an asset well before June ever spoke on his behalf. Despite knowing his full background — including affiliations the show’s later writers framed as damning — Tuello and his team clearly regarded Nick not as a threat or high-ranking Gilead official, but as a cooperative figure whose actions aligned with their objectives.
Later in Season 4, we also see Nick handing June a file he compiled himself — a dossier on Hannah, including a recent photo taken by “friendlies.” This not only shows Nick’s continued efforts to help June behind the scenes but also hints at his possible collaboration with the Colorado resistance. In Season 6, other Commanders derisively call him a “boy scout,” suggesting his reputation for moral rigidity and reluctance to embrace their cruelty. These were not throwaway lines; they were narrative breadcrumbs.
Even visual cues deepened his characterization. In his apartment, we glimpse Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez — a novel about endurance, love, and defiance. As Bruce Miller notes 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)
These creative decisions weren’t arbitrary — they were part of a deliberate effort to paint Nick as a man of quiet conscience.
In fact, some of the clearest evidence of Nick’s resistance came from scenes that were never aired but remain preserved in official scripts. A deleted scene from Season 3 shows Nick having secured a position alongside Commander Mackenzie at the front — a calculated move that placed him close to Hannah’s captors and demonstrated his embedded strategy — not complicity. Another cut scene during the rise of Gilead shows a young Nick visibly horrified by the violence, acting only out of fear and instinct. In a later aired moment, Nick returns a salute from Gilead soldiers — and the script notes explicitly describe him as “hating all the choices that led him here.”
These were not the actions of a man embracing Gilead’s ideology. They were the marks of someone surviving within a regime while trying, however imperfectly, to resist it from within.
And yet, all of this was abruptly discarded in Season 6. The Mackenzies disappeared. His resistance ties were erased. His marriage to Rose was stripped of meaning. And most egregiously, the carefully built narrative of moral tension was replaced with a lazy recharacterization of Nick as a complicit actor — despite years of evidence to the contrary. The show contradicted not only its own canon but its own creators, who had once framed Nick as someone trying to do the right thing under impossible circumstances.
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. Miller, for his part, keeps defending Nick in post-finale commentary, yet given that he wrote the final episode himself — the script that framed Nick’s death as reaping what he sowed after a life of dishonesty and violence — these remarks read less as a sincere clarification of the character’s arc and more as post-hoc damage control in response to fan backlash.
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. Yahlin Chang even added that Nick “has done some bad things that weren’t shown, so it’s convenient to forget.” But how can viewers be faulted for forgetting something they were never shown? How can fans be blamed for not accounting for actions that supposedly happened off-screen, when the writers themselves failed to depict or meaningfully hint at them? Rather than admitting to the abrupt, unearned shift in Nick’s arc, these kinds of statements simply deflect responsibility onto the audience, as if the failure lies in our perception rather than in the storytelling itself.
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. If they were willing to deviate so drastically as to completely rewrite one of the novel’s most important characters, why stop there? Why not give Hannah back to June, as so many viewers had hoped? It’s baffling that the showrunners still don’t seem to understand that fans resent unnecessary deviations from the source material — when has that ever served a story well? Nick was a vital symbol, as Atwood herself emphasized repeatedly in interviews and public talks, including the historical notes and symposiums tied to the books. She also described the love story as an essential part of the novel, yet now the showrunners tell us it was never truly about romantic love at all.
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 good man — someone who listens to his heart and ultimately does the right thing — has, after Season 6, been reframed as a willing and eager participant in Gilead’s horrors. And when this portrayal drew backlash, the narrative shifted again: suddenly, Nick was said to be a man trapped between impossible choices, aligning with Gilead out of necessity rather than conviction. This contradiction stripped Nick’s character of its coherence and damaged the moral framework the show had worked so hard to establish.
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”
Among the most concerning narrative choices in Season 6 was the deployment of the term “Nazi” by characters such as June’s mother, Holly, and Luke in reference to Nick — a label that invokes complex historical and ethical implications. 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.
It seems no coincidence that the writers chose to have multiple characters label Nick a “Nazi” — a term that has, regrettably, become fashionable in today’s social media and cultural discourse. On platforms where complexity is often sacrificed for immediacy, “Nazi” has become a catch-all slur, casually applied to signal absolute villainy, regardless of historical accuracy or ethical appropriateness. The emotional weight and instant recognizability of the term make it an appealing — if irresponsible — tool for simplifying moral judgments. This is likely why the showrunners resorted to using it: not because it accurately reflected Nick’s actions or beliefs, but because it aligned with a broader trend of flattening complex characters into easily digestible archetypes. 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.
For the most recent and complete versions, please visit my Medium profile: https://medium.com/@drlitcrit
But this guys gonna choose the wife he doesn’t care about over June? Ok……. You’re wrong, but ok. lol
oh Nick Blaine you are so special to me
water before coffee - the world is sweet like toffee
coffee before water - one thousand years of slaughter
having audio processing issues is so humiliating like yeah i heard you and yeah i was actively listening but the problem is i dont know what the fuck you sayed
i was paying attention, i was listening, but you see the problem is....it didnt work
this is making me emotional
the ashtrays in airplane bathrooms are a fascinating harm reduction metaphor. yes it's illegal as hell to smoke in there. yes there's a smoke detector that will snitch on you the second you light up. so why is there an ashtray? because if there weren't, your single momentary dumbass crime could kill 300 people. it is fucking vital that if someone does have a lit cigarette on a plane, they have a place to safely put it out.
how to become good at everything no practice no effort no motivation no passion no talent fast free
"queer-owned business" means nothing anymore. OpenAI and Palantir are both queer-owned businesses.
if this is how you find out that both sam altman and peter thiel are gay im sorry
hurr hurr I'm a human body hurr hurr I'm gonna solve all my problems using mucus
"i require more fluids" well what did you do with the fluids I already gave you. hmm? did you make more mucus with them? you made more mucus with them.
this post genuinely helps me when i'm sick because it reminds me to slime it up
I can’t believe there are people in this world who find ‘ambitious’ people attractive. If I was on a first date and the person I was talking to was like “Yeah, I’m an entrepreneur. It’s my dream to be a billionaire.” or “I plan to climb the corporation ladder to the top.” I’d be like ‘Ew, that’s disgusting.’ that is a terrible goal for a life partner to have.
I just saw someone say “You need to read a book intended for adults.” instead of “Read a different book.” to a Harry Potter fan. Big fan of that.
did you know avoidance only makes all of your problems worse. no one has ever discovered this before
Incredible tweet
German car giant with Nazi-era roots pivots to defence production as the industry struggles to compete with China
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