arctic-comet

[arctic-comet]

On Nick Blaine, Narrative Betrayal, and the Engineered Silence of a Fandom

This essay was originally posted on the private Osblaine subreddit. I'm posting it here in advance of the upcoming (final) AbovetheGarage podcast meta episode so it's accessible for anyone who wants to read the essay in full.

Spoilers for THT & lots of fan rage below the cut.

Sorry for the essay, but I feel so beside myself and gaslit by the whiplash of this experience that I needed to unload somewhere, and while it feels futile to even try to explain all of my thoughts at this stage, I feel compelled to share where I've landed. I'm so unbelievably down over this, guys. Gutted, as I know all of you are.

Nick Blaine wasn’t just killed, he was sacrificed on the altar of The Lesson™. An out-of-nowhere, contextually empty erasure of characterization, meaning, motivation, and continuity, all to teach the audience The Lesson™ we never asked for or needed to hear.

Nick wasn’t given a resolution. He wasn’t honored. He wasn’t even mourned! Not by the showrunners, writers, cast members, or other characters—and most painfully, not by the woman who we know loved him so deeply. Instead he was reduced to a message delivery device about evil MAGA Nazi incels or whatever buzzword is currently very popular on Twitter, in the most contrived and unearned narrative fashion possible. Once this utility was fulfilled for the whims of sycophants like Chang/Tuchman/Miller/Moss/Fagbenle et al these people just threw Nick in the trash where they claim he apparently always belonged.

And the worst part is that the show expects us to applaud. It expects us to look at Joseph "Pick three women June the rest die of radiation poisoning" Lawrence, and Serena Joy "But I never thought they'd take MY finger or MY child" Waterford with enormous pride and empathy and understanding. Don't even get me started on Lydia...I have PhD dissertations about that fascinating and deluded narcissist in my comment history, too.

To be clear, I love all these characters flaws and all, they engross me, and it's intriguing watching their dynamics unfold in this often hideous, violent sandbox. But in the end their arguably unnecessary redemptive arcs are heaped with praise and encouragement and the writers bait us with how terribly complicated and brave they are, while substantially less problematic Nick isn't offered the same consideration or forgiveness or grace (and now perhaps never will be) according to that very same moral framework. June herself generally gets a pass as the protagonist, even though she has long been a flagrant thematic and ethical mirror for all the considerable deficiencies we see in the antagonists. So who decides a character's worthiness for redemption or value then, and how? It is simply all SO INCONSISTENT. The framework gives everyone else the space to breathe, err and exist. Whereas for Nick, the framework is solely punitive. Why? Why is this?

Nick's actual unforgivable crimes: folding under Wharton's wall threats three episodes from the finale after YEARS of repeatedly saving June + Nichole's lives and helping them escape, being a lifeline for finding out Hannah's whereabouts, gathering intel for the American intelligence agencies, smuggling contraband to the Jezebels and also to Luke over the border, delivering Fred on a platter so June and the other handmaids could rip him apart, executing other wicked Commanders for their violence against vulnerable women....just a sample of his awful deeds. Keeping in mind that all of thirteen and a half minutes ago in the show's timeline he risked it all and was forced to murder two teenaged boys in broad daylight during a highly scrutinized diplomatic event, to save June's fucking idiot husband.

I'm so utterly baffled that I don't even know how to unpack the stupidity of the choices these writers have made. We are all such brain-dead slop consumers that a recent magazine interview had Chang confirming Nick's many atrocities, none of which are ever shown on screen or even alluded to in the dialog but which she assures us DEFINITELY happened, A LOT (trust me bro). This little blurb is apparently sufficient evidence for the narrative to unceremoniously dispose of Nick, his legacy, and all he meant to us. Have you ever heard of a TV show whose narrative coherence literally requires supplemental reading materials? It's fine. Just eat the slop you fucking morons. Eat it and like it.

This isn’t tragedy, this is didacticism. This is when a writer's room decides that making a point is more important than telling a good story. When characters stop being human and start being metaphors. When you trade nuance for shock, ambiguity for ideology, and call it brave.

Nick Blaine meant something to me. I saw myself in him. I saw my own passivity in him—I also saw my capacity for great bravery and connection in him. He was kind, vulnerable, morally gray, emotionally grounded, deeply tethered to June and thus to me, the viewer, experiencing her world. He was human. His gentleness, his love for June and Nichole was such a vital counterpoint to the monstrous cruelty of Gilead. But rather than explore that complexity and offer him the obvious arc his character had earned, the show retconned him literally at the finish line, flattened him, eliminated all of his human dimensions. At the end I actually laughed—horribly, in grotesque & amazed outrage—like these writers were saying to me, Hey idiot, he was the real baddie all along, believe us that he deserved this, we're the experts. And thought I would just gleefully swallow this and lap it the fuck up. I'm not exaggerating: I legitimately don't think any of them watched the show in its entirety before they sat down to write this season.

Narrative cohesion and character continuity was clearly not their focus, why? Because message-driven media no longer trusts its audience to feel anything honestly. It has to teach us. To scold us. And if a character has to die in an embarrassingly hamfisted way so we can 'learn' something about the cost of love, or the futility of hope, or that there's actually NO GOOD MEN ANYWHERE unless they are played by Bradley Whitford, or the strength of a woman alone and any romance be damned, then so be it. Our fault. We watched it wrong. Silly females with our silly hopes and love stories and delusions.

This is not storytelling. This is narrative punishment, and poorly disguised moral performance art. I half expected the episode to be dedicated to All The Antifascists Out There On The Right Side of History Like Us when the end credits rolled. Story? Nah. Preachy lesson for dumbass audience who can't think for themselves? Hell yeah. Nick exits stage left as a convenient device for the showrunners to serve up as a pawn in their thematic chess game, designed wholly to teach the audience The Lesson™. He was the sacrificial lamb for their bizarre in-script anti-Nazi rhetoric (so overt it was cringe-inducing, and included for whom? all those Nazis gleefully tuning in to THT every week?) This conclusion is the final heart monitor flatlining after a long meandering decline of the show's earlier great writing.

It's not edgy or profound to gut a character’s arc for shock value. You’re not feminist or radical for flattening moral complexity into black-and-white symbols. It's an absolute mess of lazy, trite metaphors for THE CURRENT TIMES, this story is IMPORTANT and RELEVANT! And Hi, writers? We also live in the world???? God, it's so patronizing. It's so condescending. I'm so exhausted from this cheap process of demoralization.

And I looked around for the outrage and confusion and anger that should have echoed across the fandom and instead I saw silence. Sanitized comment sections. Applause from brand-friendly fan accounts with lots of emojis and lots of "OMG LAWRENCE PUTTING HIS HAND TO HIS CHEST 😭 !!!!!" The algorithm drowning dissent like it’s inconvenient noise. Entire social media posts being deleted out of nowhere.

This isn’t fandom, and hasn't been an organic one since streaming took over the market, or even before. It’s narrative control via PR management and we are all witnessing manufactured consent in real time. I'm not trying to be dramatic or cynical, it's just the truth. This is how it works now. Delivering twisty shock content drives up engagement on platforms, and tracking that engagement data is an enormous factor when OTT platforms are considering each season-to-season renewal. But man is it still disheartening and mundane to see it happening after so many years of stupidly giving a shit.

The emotional response to this episode should have been explosive fury and instead we get this eerie illusion of consensus, because anything that challenges The Lesson™ and inversely How Good They The Holy Virtuous Writers Are As People For Teaching It To Us Deluded Plebs gets buried or deleted. They want you and I to feel alone in our bewilderment, and to doubt our own perceptions of the show we've been watching and analyzing for an eon straight—it makes them feel better about the god-awful job they have done in the hopes they win some meaningless self-congratulatory accolades at the Emmys. And if you dare to feel betrayed or express that, you’re told you’re missing the point and somehow have been for an entire decade along with the majority of the fanbase with two eyes and a functioning brain in their skulls. It's so absurd it's almost satire. Someday it will be satire I think. But this is how it is right now, and I'm telling you, it's entirely on purpose.

To the writers, showrunners, social media managers + Hulu press interns:

I see exactly what you did, and what you are currently doing to manage the fallout.

You killed a beloved character not for plot or for truth or to honestly serve the story's natural conclusion, but for theater and for social media engagement. For a moral takeaway. For prestige TV applause. And worse—for the proud, smug, holier-than-thou sniffles of liberal feminists who require all media to pander to the current political 'thing' rather than just telling a good goddamn story. Congrats, the whole IP has been permanently ruined by this type of short-sighted shallow garbage and will never recover its early reputation. This could have been a timeless piece of television with some hiccups; now it will forever remain a preachy manipulative product of one particular era. An ode to our fragile cultural psyche and its associated political catchphrases and ego interference. It's limp and it's finished, like GOT was at the end. No one will care or remember or rewatch this trauma-porn soap opera when all its nuance and ambiguity and soft edges have been snuffed out in the most incomprehensible way. THT will be forgotten, like every other show before it that has gone on too long only to totally blow it in the last inning. The Testaments is probably dead in the water too, and will be canceled lightning fast without a doubt if this tripe is any indication of this team's ability to go meaningfully off-book. It gets proven over and over and over again with zero room for doubt that audiences don't like to be lectured and morally grandstanded to, but here we are yet again.

In conclusion, this absolute swill is what happens when writers try to write at the audience rather than for the characters.

Nick Blaine somehow became the worst villain amongst these brutal, sadistic people, all the social architects, economists, rapists, abusers, traffickers, slave-owners, murderers. Not because he was actually always that way 'off-screen' of course, but because the people who were compelled time and again to watch his complex character evolve and grow had to be taught The Lesson™. Nick Nazi, Nick Complicit, Nick Evil Forever, Nick Dies A Coward, durrrrr. Just stop. Stop caring! Just eat our slop. They turned a living, breathing character (who we loved and puzzled over for years and paid their bills to spend time with) into a morality lecture to tell you how goddamn dumb you are, they replaced his arc with a sermon and then expected us to clap.

But I’m not clapping. I’m grieving. Because it's all just such an awful, incredible waste.

I'm grieving the time and energy I've wasted on a product that the creators stopped caring about and lost interest in understanding. I’m grieving a character who mattered more than this, and a profoundly loving relationship that moved my heart amidst all of that darkness, and a story that once knew how to hold pain with complexity instead of turning it into hollow, curated shock.

They didn’t write an ending, they wrote a manipulative virtue signal to make fools out of all of us who actually dared to give a shit. I won't pretend that it's important art with something to say, and I will never again give them the benefit of my dollars, attention or engagement.

[arctic-comet]

Why they shouldn't have used the word N*zi in The Handmaid's Tale

I've been quite disturbed for a few weeks about the overusage of that word in the series. It was used once in S5 to described Lawrence (said by Luke), but it seems to have been overused for Nick Blaine this season. But using the word N*zi to describe a character like Nick Blaine is highly loaded, and for a lot of us European audiences, it is actually problematic and offensive.

And here’s why it’s an issue :

- The word N*zi carries immense historical weight

Nazism isn’t just a generic label for someone complicit in a regime, it refers to a very specific, horrifying ideology and genocide. Using the term outside of that exact historical context, especially for shock value or metaphor, is actually deeply insensitive. But who cares I guess, right ?

- Nick Blaine is a morally grey character, not a N*zi

Nick is a complex figure who has helped June, saved lives, and resisted from within Gilead. It's not because the showrunners decided to do a 180 turn in the 11th hour that it is ok to use that word on him. Labeling him a N*zi oversimplifies his role and falsely equates Gilead's fictional authoritarianism with the Holocaust.

- Us, European audiences, are more sensitive to historical accuracy (sorry about that but we care...)

In places like Germany, Poland, France, the Netherlands, and Eastern Europe, comparisons to Nazism are not something we take lightly. In fact, in case you didn't know, many countries have strict laws about misusing Nazi comparisons because of the need to preserve historical truth and memory. And that should be respected everywhere, especially by American showrunners and writers. The viewers of this show are all over the world.

- There's a difference between complicit and N*zi

It’s one thing to critique Nick as someone complicit in a regime, a morally uncomfortable position. But calling him a N*zi erases nuance and inflames rather than informs. There are more accurate and respectful ways to critique his character without resorting to such a charged word.

Using N*zi to describe Nick Blaine, or anyone in The Handmaid’s Tale, is misguided, inflammatory, and offensive. It undermines the very real horrors of Nazi history and shows a lack of sensitivity to how language can distort memory and meaning.

And let's also mention that it is not appropriate to call any characters in The Handmaid’s Tale N*zis, including Lawrence, Serena, Fred, Putnam or anyone in Gilead. The term is historically specific and deeply tied to the Holocaust. Using it loosely to describe fictional villains or authoritarian figures, even in dystopian contexts like Gilead, diminishes the real horror of Nazism and is disrespectful to its victims.

The showrunners should have done better. They could have use fascist, war criminal, oppressor but no, they chose N*zi, and this is not ok. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[arctic-comet]

A lot of people genuinely do hate or dismiss romance novels because they think all sexual frankness in fiction is immoral and harmful, or because they think women (and only women) are too stupid to know fiction from reality, or because they think it’s gross and laughable for women (especially ones they don’t consider fuckable) to have sexual desires, or because they automatically assume that anything popular with women is inferior, or because they only care about fiction being formulaic or light entertainment when it’s something women like. This doesn’t mean that every romance novel is great and deep and progressive, but these people aren’t coming from a good place with their criticism and they don’t deserve a pass.

[arctic-comet]

Really love this podcast ! This new episode is so good. Great analysis of both Nick and June's character, as individual character and as a couple, from the pilot through season 6.

Highly recommend it to everyone!

#SeeYouLater

#AboveTheGarage

[arctic-comet]

Elisabeth Moss was 100% mad that people starting caring more about Nick than June you can't convince me otherwise

I completely agree. He had too much attention, and she was probably happy to squash that. It seems like the showrunners have been angry about this for years, while he’s been exponentially increasing their views for them…

It’s like saying Max’s “best work” was in ep 9 when all he did was sleep on a desk (Emmy worthy, that’s fair), stare at his wife, walk in slow motion, and deliver a couple completely OOC lines. But she got to direct him doing it.

Apparently his “best work” can only be when she’s in charge of him… not when he’s delivering beautiful, honest dialogue at a waterpark…

[arctic-comet]

THT Showrunners do The Hunger Games:

KATNISS offers a handful of night lock berries.

Peeta shakes his head. “There can be only one winner, and it’s me.”

He shoves the berries down Katniss’ throat and laughs as she foams at the mouth and goes limp.

Show runners do interviews telling the fans they shouldn’t have trusted Peeta. He was always just out for himself.

[arctic-comet]

To osblaines, this is for you ♥️

Even if we try to understand the writers’ intent, this was still a bad narrative choice. And here’s why:

1. The tone of The Handmaid’s Tale has always been pain but with hope. Horror, yes, but always with a sliver of light. Good didn’t triumph easily, but it did triumph. Everyone survived almost a fairytale. Serena is on the path of redemption. Aunt Lydia was given the chance to evolve. Rita with the gun, Luke finally got his heroic stunt, Moira used her voice, I mean everyone. But not Nick

2. Nick was given nothing. No closure, no final moment with June. No redemption, no emotional reckoning, not even a tragic end!!!!!! Not a hero, not a fully villain, not a victim, just ash. Forgotten, unmourned. this was emotional whiplash.

3. It betrayed the promise of the genre. If this show were purely bleak, like Black Mirror maybe this would’ve worked. But this was never just darkness for darkness’s sake. It always offered meaning. This wasn’t “realism.” It felt like a twist for shock value: “Let’s destroy the brightest thing in the story just because we can.”

And so, the audience who for 8 years held onto that light is left with nothing.

But let me tell you something: You weren’t wrong for loving him. You saw the good in someone, You saw his pain, his growth. They gave the chance to the others. That’s unfair. And you have every right to grieve it.

You’re not foolish, not naive. In fact, you’re the best kind of viewer! The kind who didn’t just watch, you listened. You heard their visual language, the lighting, the silences, the rhythm, the angles. You trusted there was meaning behind it. That there was a soul behind it.

You even defended them. You told others:

“Wait. There’s a reason they showed this. There’s love in this. There’s a journey here.” You protected their vision from the people who only wanted to slap labels on characters. You used your intellect, your empathy to read between the lines. You believed in nuance.

And in the end, they said:

“No. He was just bad. Just a Commander. They all are evil. You were blinded.” And that feels like a slap to the most beautiful part of you.😭😭😭

to your ability to love complexity and feel deeply and think clearly. It’s as if they used your trust, your openness, your belief in their vision just to say:

“You didn’t get it. We were always telling a simple story. He was just a villain.”

I’m sorry guys, I’m so sorry. I’m with you 💔

[arctic-comet]

They’re gonna try to spin it like June had no choice. She had to let Nick go as a sacrifice for the greater good.

Fuck, no.

She had a staggering amount of time to warn him in countless ways, starting from the moment he got out of the car. She was in an inexplicably empty hangar, all the other commanders were on board the plane already, and no one was expecting Nick to show up. He almost looks directly at her. She could have breathed sharply and he would have sensed her. The plan would have absolutely stayed intact. But no.

Instead, she callously and passively - with full awareness - lets the man die…

who has literally saved the lives of many of the people she loves, some of them multiple times (Moira, Luke, Holly/Nichole, and June herself)

who was ready to leave Gilead with her a couple weeks ago

who has killed for her

who gave her her agency back

who freely offered her the only safe space in the darkest place

who has never once controlled her

who gave her a way to rebel through the power of love

who has consistently sacrificed his mental and physical wellbeing in favor of hers

who endured a forced marriage to a teenager because of her

who married again (fight me on this) to hold his position in Gilead to help June with info on Hannah (he was already married in 4x09 when he gave June the Hannah file!)

who knew he would probably never see his daughter again and still actively worked to get her and June to safety

who was made a Commander and sent to die in Chicago because he made sure June and Holly were able to escape by holding Fred Waterford hostage

who delivered that same man to June to make sure she got justice for what Fred had done to her

who stood up to Serena for her, risking being reported and put on the wall

who watched her go back to her life with another man because he loved her so selflessly that all he wanted was for her to be happy and safe, even when that could never be with him (“try and be happy” / “keep yourself safe”)

who let another government official take advantage of him and use him, just to fight what Gilead was doing to her in Canada

who punched another Commander in front of a room full of witnesses just because she had been endangered again

who asks about his daughter every single chance he gets and misses and loves her with every breath

who is consistently sickened by violence and only fantasizes about peace and safety

who is terrified and alone and grieving and lost and just needs her help and her love, even if it’s only a fraction of the limitless love he shows to her so effortlessly…

This is the man she destroyed. This is the man she let walk out of her and her daughter’s lives forever, leaving his wife a widow and his unborn son fatherless.

[arctic-comet]

Where do we think the writing for Nick went horribly wrong? I’m confused, because in the end he dies a Gilead simp frankly out of left field this season. Looking back, in the early seasons 1-2, he was very heavily in Mayday, he was very much against Gilead & in open and active rebellion against it… i.e., working with them to get June and their baby out. He grieved and had an internal shift when the first Offred killed herself. He detested Fred very much openly to the point Fred punished him repeatedly and ultimately made him a commander / sent him into warfare to try and kill him. Season 4 comes around and i think? this is where we are introduced to Rose or the idea, anyway, that he’s got another wife. Lawrence antagonizes Nick about his love for June and his non-belief in Gilead and MAKES HIM drop a BOMB on Chicago, in front of everyone else - knowing damn well that June was there and that was the entire point. Bonus points: Now Lawrence, also a commander and an actual mandatory piece in the construction of Gilead, who as stated did try to come for June on more than one occasion, ends as the new June Simp TM and gets to die in a blaze of glory in her eyes and the rest of Mayday? Hmm… Then season 5, Nick and June don’t have much going on yet he still punches Lawrence in retaliation and is detesting his marriage / Gilead life and now season 6 - up until episode 6 - he flips and is the biggest simp ever. They tell us the writing has always been on the wall…. Where? This guy was written to be knees deep in Mayday in THE TESTAMENTS… June just lets him get on the plane, doesn’t share any plans with him, similar to the cake situation last week. They really HARD nosedived a ship they built up for the past 5.5 seasons all in 2-3 episodes, because he got threatened his life or reveal SOME of a doomed plan? Serena, Lydia, Lawrence all get redeemed? Everyone else gets to shift into their TT roles? Nichole/Holly be damned, while we’re at it.

Honestly. I did an in-depth breakdown of this last week and I can't do it again because it's too exhausting because the writing is legitimately bad.

[arctic-comet]

Nick and June are not a trauma bond.

June and SERENA? Absolutely.

The idea that she deserves (or has even earned) some sort of redemption is abhorrent and absurd and the worst example of women sticking together.

Just... NO.

[arctic-comet]

Why Now?

Throughout the seasons, I was always cautious, always waiting. They could've killed off Nick at any time or given crumbs and shown Nick loving his status in Gilead, not always selfless. They had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 seasons to do that in, but instead they depicted Nick in constant selfless survival mode. Not only dd he keep saving June and his daughter, but he also didn't truly believe in Gilead. He didn't want to sleep with his teenaged first wife and blamed himself for her execution.

Now in the 6th and final season, when my caution finally lowered, they decided to say, ''Yep, Nick's not really a good guy after all.'' It's cheap and cruel to do to fans, especially when the Osblaine love story was the only glimmer of hope and happiness in an otherwise depressing show.

[arctic-comet]

they're treating the audience like we're crazy. this was YOUR writing this was YOUR press that made us believe in Nick and June. you had your lead actress and EP go on an osblaine podcast a week before the show started and say Nick and June were her favorite part of the show. Now you're treating us like we're nuts for believing in them.

Gaslighting.

Classic abuse behavior.

Not cool.

[arctic-comet]

shout out to elisabeth moss for letting me know i no longer have to continue watching this piss poor writing, piece of shit show (source)

[arctic-comet]

THE HANDMAID'S TALE - SEASON 6, EPISODE 6 "No. You’d be you. You’d be good, kind and brave. And very, very handsome. I definitely would have noticed that."

[arctic-comet]

Okay 6.06 thoughts

1. That was the BIG betrayal that supposed to make her fed up with Nick!? First off it’s clear he was not in a good place after what he had to do at the hospital. He wanted desperately to talk to June about it and then he gets accosted by Wharton for the TWO things he did for June. It’s very clear from Nick’s body language that he’s terrified of Wharton and gave up something under the destress to save himself.

2. I’m sorry I still hate Serena like she’s still as obnoxious and clueless of ever

3. I adored the little moment between Janine & Nick

4. THE osblaine flashback was so niceeee. It was so wonderful to see an intimate moment like that of them just being together.

5. it genuinely made me so sad to watch Nick ask her to go to Paris and for her to actually choose him knowing that it was about to be taken from him. (Also June mentioning Rose & not Luke…..why are they still together?)

In conclusion after everything, Nick has done for June if this is the end of them, then she never deserved him, but I really don’t think this is the end of them. I think this is the beginning of her seeing Nick as a person who has weaknesses and not as this knight shining armor that can always just hand her what she wants. All of his actions and all of the things he’s done for her has consequences and now she has to see the fall out of that.

[arctic-comet]

The Pope, desperate to avoid ever interacting with JD Vance again, went to the one place the Vice President couldn't follow: heaven.

[arctic-comet]

Sorry, I've had enough of running away, Sophie. Now I've got something I want to protect. It's you.

HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE (2004) dir. Hayao Miyazaki