The death of Max Minghella Nick, who ends the show

Spoiler alert: This story contains spoilers for ‘version’, season 6, episode 9 of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, which now streams on Hulu.

Max Minghella’s commander Nick Blaine is no longer.

Towards the end of the penultimate episode of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, which had been a relatively simple piece of sabotage, turned into a suicide mission for the Turncoat commander Joseph Lawrence by Bradley Whitford. He was forced to board one side of commanders only with an explosive device he had hoped before the others arrived, but when commander Wharton (Josh Charles) invited Lawrence on the plane, he had no choice but to get to them. Not aware of what awaited them was Nick, who raised his last moments to ask Lawrence if June was in order and then remembered that she had often told him to leave Gilead behind that he had ignored.

Nick was right to worry. Earlier in the season, Nick, whose annoyed love affair with the protagonist of Elisabeth Moss June the show gave the show his central romance, promised her that he would finally bring her to freedom, he had already exposed the plans of June to commander Wharton, Nick’s Aarts Policy Character.

During the run of the series, Nick’s hesitations between trying to help June and a persistent loyalty that grinds her, made for a complicated drumbeat under the action and politics of the show: he is loyal to her, except when his loyalty to the state and the strong men who lead it in the way.

This was all brought to life by Minghella, an earlier Emmy -nominated for the role and a filmmaker in himself. (“Shell”, a film he directed with Elisabeth Moss, played the Toronto International Film Festival last fall.) Variety From a film that takes place in Wales, Minghella relieved his thoughts about the complicated loyalty within Nick and what connects this specific radicalized young man, and not – our current political moment.

What does it mean for you that he discussed Nick at the last moments and thinks about June?

It felt very moving – and consistent with the character and how he functioned in the show. He is really driven by that relationship. It was also wonderful to end with Bradley, who has become such a good friend outside the show. That also felt good to me.

It is interesting that your character and Bradley’s discuss about June, because Nick and June had such a broken love story in the series – they really had a feeling for each other, but it was all structured and crooked through the insane political situation around them. In many ways they were at odds until the end.

I don’t even know if it was the original intention. Lizzie and I did not know each other before we started photographing this show. We were relieved to discover that we not only, I think, together on the screen had some chemistry, but also really connected as creative partners. So that was probably more reflected in the story. I always looked forward to their scenes and I think she did that too.

I imagine that the writers started writing in the course of time in the direction of the chemistry and relationship that you two shared.

I don’t know the answer. I have always been great unconsciously of the inner functioning of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, especially out of confidence in the writing team and the creative leadership of the show. It was great not to have to think too much about this kind of decisions.

I find Nick’s character very moving because – and I hope this does not insult you – he is fundamentally weak. And so he is very easily led by strong male figures, and that is how he gets involved in Gilead for the first time, and what continues to withdraw to his leadership. Was it a challenge to play someone who is smooth and indecisive?

That has been there since the first season. We do not know the tendency to know an enormous amount about the background story of the characters in this show, but in the first season we were offered small flashbacks of whom each of these people were before all this happened. In the case of Nick, in a short time, you really get a clear feeling of who he was, and how his combination of a lack of education and, clearly, an insulting upbringing has led him to cling to paternal figures that appear in the course of the story.

I thought Josh was a very smart piece of casting for this reason, and Josh and I spoke a lot about this. You see this much of the real world: I think that young men who become fundamental or can easily be led astray, often looking for a strong male role model that they can somehow miss. So I thought that was pretty smart. And I thought Wharton is the worst man we had in Gilead, and yet he is probably the most own and assertive. So although he is a very malicious character, I think there is a security that leads Nick astray.

Are you familiar with the so-called “male atmosphere”-this alternative media landscape where podcasters and content makers share right-wing ideas about what it means to be a strong man?

I am not aware of that. I saw that show ‘adolescence’ and I think it is a number of that stuff that you are talking about. This is probably not the answer you hope for, but what I have always found so interesting about “The Handmaid’s Tale” is that it is a text from 1985, right? And it is quite timeless in the themes and ideas that it is investigating. The show has had a kind of classic tendency, and I have always leaned on that – it is just as steeped in real history as in classical literature. And I have always enjoyed the melodramatic arches of the show. It does not shy away from the opera elements of the story.

I think what you say has to do with what Margaret Atwood said-that her novel is not meant to be about present-day America, because she can indicate scenarios through the history of women’s hatred and abuse.

We are guilty of thinking that something is new if it is actually cyclical in our history. We often think that some ideas we are doing come across for the first time when they resound in eternity.

Speaking of the archetypal aspects of Nick itself, the same weakness that we discussed brings him low. Earlier in the season, after June until June, he finally started breaking with Gilead and moving her to Paris, it is revealed that he had betrayed her plans for commander Wharton. Were you surprised and read that for the first time in the script?

It was not as if I discovered the information when I read it. Lizzie and I spoke together for another project, before this season. So for the first time I was quite aware of the direction of the character [before receiving scripts].

Transparent I was very surprised by where they would take Nick in season 6, because it was very different from how he served the show earlier. Not to be macro about it, but the Nick and June relationship has been a delay of the more tense thematic elements of the show. And so to ground that relationship, in some of the dark, more nihilistic point-of-view that we have to explore in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, I was surprised by but interested as an actor. And certainly nobody could accuse them of Pandering.

I don’t know that in the past I would have played the same thing as I would have known that we would land. But that is probably just naiveté on my part, so I wouldn’t say there was a shock. I just thought it was an interesting and daring decision.

I agree that it is not a last season that pulls bumps.

It is really difficult to finish a show. I am not jealous of someone who is responsible for that. But when I recently looked a lot of the episodes, I found it extremely satisfactory to see again – in a visceral, emotional level – revenge are delivered in a satisfactory way. And I hope that the audience will not only enjoy the closed aspects of the show, but also some emotional retribution.

This interview has been edited and condensed.