Farewell, High Commander Joseph Lawrence. The architect of Gilead is killed in The Handmaid’s Tale season 6’s penultimate installment, which will go down as one of the biggest, most shocking, and most explosive (quite literally) episodes in the show’s history. It started with apparent triumph, as the Handmaids continued to execute their plan to kill the Commanders, but by The Handmaid’s Tale season 6, episode 9’s ending, it was blended with tragedy thanks to the demise of Lawrence.

Of course, he wasn’t the only character killed there: the death of Commander Nick Blaine carries mixed emotions, given his romance with June Osborne and, more recently, his betrayal; High Commander Gabriel Wharton being taken out, on the other hand, was solely satisfying for one of the show’s final villains. Those are major losses for different reasons, but it’s the death of Lawrence, who had been brilliantly played by Bradley Whitford in The Handmaid’s Tale‘s cast, that really hurts.

Commander Lawrence Was Long The Handmaid’s Tale’s Most Ambiguous Character

It Was Never Fully Clear If He Could Be Trusted

Image via Hulu

Image via Hulu

Lawrence has long been the biggest enigma in The Handmaid’s Tale, and a character I’ve gone back-and-forth on multiple times over the years spent watching the show. Could he be trusted? What did he really want? Whose side was he on? His actions constantly provoked those questions, without easy answers, which is why he was so fascinating to watch.

He seemed like a decent person, cut from a different cloth to most Commanders, and yet was undeniably an architect of Gilead and all its ills. He helped Mayday and June with their resistance, but also shot down U.S. planes and protected Gilead’s borders. He wanted to reform Gilead from the inside with New Bethlehem, rather than completely tear it down. And, while he took risks, he also tried to ensure his own safety too, until his final moments.

Why Lawrence Got On The Plane In The Handmaid’s Tale Season 6, Episode 9

He Proved Himself A Good Man In The End

Image via Hulu

Image via Hulu

Some of Lawrence’s misdeeds can be explained away; he was doing what he thought was best as a means of changing Gilead, without getting himself killed so that all that work was lost. But that also meant pleasing neither side, and that would’ve caught up to him one way or another – the Commanders had plans to make him face the wall – and so he had to choose. And, thankfully, he picked the right side.

Faced with the crushing realization that carrying out his plan to kill the Commanders on the plane would mean taking his own life, Lawrence made the bravest decision he ever had in going through with it anyway. He made the ultimate sacrifice to help June, striking a major blow against Gilead that will reverberate long after his passing, and dying to destroy that which he had created. For a character who had always carefully calculated every move and orchestrated things as much as possible, to see him make this final decision was an incredible endpoint to his journey.

Of course, in a way, this was Lawrence sticking to the side he had always been on: that of his late wife Eleanor. Lawrence’s attempts at changing Gilead were driven by her, and it’s his love of her – and Angela/Charlotte, the young girl he calls his daughter – that really motivates him to go through with this, which just makes it even more perfect.

Lawrence’s Death Was Brilliantly & Emotionally Done

His Goodbye To June Was Particularly Touching

Image via Hulu

Image via Hulu

Image via Hulu

Lawrence’s story – and that of Eleanor’s too – was so entwined with June’s that it was only right she was there as he made his sacrificial choice and headed onto the plane. The final moment between them, when he looks at her and puts his hand on his heart, was a poignant way of saying goodbye from him to June and to the viewers. Speaking with THR, Whitford revealed that wasn’t actually scripted:

“That [gesture was] one of those things where you don’t know what’s going to happen until you’re doing it. I’d seen [the gesture] before. A friend of mine did that to a coffin of a loved one at a funeral and it was always a very moving thing to me. I also think it’s an extension of what this experience with [Elisabeth Moss] has meant to me and the creative long-term bond I feel with that woman [starting with The West Wing]. That wasn’t the last scene we shot, but it was getting there.”

It was also fitting that Lawrence got to impart some final words to Nick, before they both died in the explosion. Telling him that he should’ve listened to June, and got out of Gilead when he had the chance, is a smart tip of the cap to June’s influence, and that, perhaps, she could help carry things forward and defeat Gilead in a way he couldn’t in life, but that his death goes a long way towards.