I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that any fan of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale could guess that certain characters were never long for this dystopian world. When you spend your entire time on a television show playing with fire, chances are that you’re going to burn. All of which is to say, I wasn’t surprised that both Nick Blaine (Max Minghella) and Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) die before the series’ finale as much as I was shook at the way it unfolded.
In season 6, episode 9, Mayday is desperate to kill the remaining extremist commanders, and Lawrence agrees to help by leaving an altitude-triggered bomb on the airplane said commanders about to take to D.C. Meanwhile, Rose Blaine (Carey Cox) is healing from pregnancy complications caused by the sedatives Mayday used to put the commanders and their wives to sleep in episode 8. In her recovery, she tells her husband, Nick, “You need to show your allegiance to Gilead and God and me and our son.” We already know which side Lawrence is on—now it’s Nick’s turn to make a final choice.
This all leads to one of Handmaid’s greatest denouements: As Lawrence approaches the plane, with June (Elisabeth Moss) watching, the rest of the commanders show up and assume Lawrence is proving his solidarity by joining them on their trip. If Lawrence walks away, the commanders win, and everything will be for naught; if Lawrence walks onto the plane, he’ll be signing his own death certificate, but he’ll go a hero. He chooses the latter. Not moments later, Nick arrives and takes his place on the plane as a true Gilead commander—unaware of the consequences—and June watches as the men who kept her alive all these years die in front of her.
It’s a fitting end for two of Handmaid’s most interesting and morally complicated characters. It was also literally the end for Minghella, who filmed those scenes on his very last day on set. “You dream of that stuff,” he tells ELLE. Below, the actor unpacks Nick’s tragic fate but not before delivering a message to fans: “I’m really grateful to everyone who’s stuck by us,” he says. “I hope they’re happy with what happens. And remember: It’s all fiction.”
I watched the entire scene plane scene with my hand over my mouth. What did you think when you read the script for episode 9?
Well, I had a heads-up on what the arc of the year was going to be for a while.
So someone sat you down and they were like, “You’re going to die”?
[Laughs] No, no, no. I was working with Lizzie [Moss on a different project], so she just told me a lot about what was happening in the various scripts as they were figuring them out. So I’d known for quite a while what was going to happen in the show for everybody. I really enjoy the show when it leans into the melodrama and the soapier elements. So I thought it was really fun.
And sentimentally, I was happy that I was doing the scene with Brad [Whitford] and Josh [Charles, who plays Commander Wharton]. Brad has become a dear friend of mine outside of the show, so finishing with him felt really special to me. And then Josh was a new friend this season and somebody I also became super close with. So getting to wrap with those guys, and with Lizzie, just on a spiritual level felt really great.
It’s a testament to your performance that even after everything Nick has done this season, there’s a moment right before he gets on the plane where he pauses for a long time, and I was hoping that somehow he’d know June was there, and he’d look over at her. How did you consider that pause? What do you think he’s thinking about?
It’s built to do what, hopefully, it achieved, for you anyway. It’s a moment of tension that we milk. Lizzie [who directed this episode] is a brilliant filmmaker and really knows how to underline the suspense elements in the show.
Once I realized he wasn’t going to look at her, I was like, “Oh, is he second-guessing his decision?” Is that what you took it as?
Yeah, there’s that. There’s also [him] sort of sensing Lizzie’s presence in that way that lovers from afar can feel one another. It’s supposed to have that kind of insinuation, I think.
Definitely. Then once he gets on the plane, he tells Lawrence, “I guess you decided to join the winners.” That felt so unlike Nick. What did you think about that line in particular?
Maybe this is too nuanced an interpretation—I could have played that line a lot of different ways—I think that he’s trying on a suit. I don’t think it’s one that fits very well, even by the time he’s finished that scene. You’re just seeing somebody explore whether this is a direction he wants to take. I don’t know that it’s a journey he would’ve stayed on had he not blown up in a plane. But we’ll never fucking know.
We’ll never know. Throughout almost the entire series, I felt like these two characters in particular—Nick and Lawrence—must die in the end. The choices they’re making…
It’s inevitable…And Eric [Tuchman] and Yahlin [Chang], who were our showrunners this year, did such an amazing job of finding a really unexpected, surprising way to wrap all this stuff up. I was really amazed by what they did.
Was that your last day on set, filming that scene?
It was, which was so amazing. You dream of that stuff. Being with Bradley, Josh, and Lizzie at three in the morning, or whatever it was, in Toronto in the winter felt exactly right. It was a great experience in my life making this show, and I can’t believe we did it for so long and everyone stayed on such great terms and enjoyed going to work every day, the whole time. That doesn’t happen all the time. That was really rare. I’ll treasure it forever.
How did you feel when your last scene was done?
It felt right. I think we’ve done the show for the exact right amount of time. People use the word bittersweet; I think bittersweet is exactly right. It’s so much fun to make this show. It’s such a comfortable thing to do that I’m sure we would’ve all gone on for far too long trying to tell the story. When we went to the premiere of the show this year, there was a tremendous sense of pride amongst the whole team that we finished the show so strongly. I think it’s one of our best seasons, and that doesn’t happen all the time. I’m really happy that we got to finish up in a way we can all feel really proud of.
