glasskey

[glasskey]

Don’t reblog a lot, but rereading this….. I just can’t believe they did ALL of this to us and more.

Season 6 Chaos Theory Sample Mix

So we’ve finally received some S6 tasters in the form of trailers and press releases and having read and seen these I feel like a good old fashioned rant is in order. I’ll stick mostly to the Nick, June and Luke thing, because well that’s what most of you came for. Be warned, this will be absolutely brutal. If you haven’t seen the press releases or read The Testaments then just note there are spoilers in here. The first thing I want people to remember is that while the writers of this show have done a great job of setting up the transition to The Testaments, but in my time I have seen writers take a LOT of license with their source material. In this particular case, the show has been consulting closely with the author so that might lend some hope to the fact that it’s been respected. Atwood’s been a little intentionally obscure in parts of both texts, and it’s given the writers the ability to get creative. The Testaments DOES make mention of Nick and June (we CAN assume this regardless of the lack of names, as they’re referred to as the actual parents of baby Nicole), and one passage in particular where Elijah says to Daisy about her parents “They’re still alive. Or they were yesterday”. So either Elijah saw them both the day before TOGETHER, or he’s been running back and forth over the border. However, later on Nick’s referred to as maybe still being in Gilead, so yeah confusing. Apparently both of Daisy’s parents are “lucky to be alive” in The Testaments so I’m going to go out on a limb and say Nick escapes by the skin of his teeth. Having said that I didn’t like that sneaky “our baby” shit Luke pulled at the end of last season and writers may try to use it as some kind of weird assed loophole.

The end note in The Testaments does include him so it would be a huge violation to the actual text to kill him off. It all seems out of step with all the other elements that have been carefully laid out true to text as well. It IS mentioned in The Handmaids Tale that Nick was associated with Mayday and the trailers for previous seasons included him in the whole “we are Mayday” section, so I’m disappointed to see that show runners / writers SEEM to have back tracked here. Just be mindful that from day one we’ve seen Mayday agents, drivers and guards die; the manifestations of Nick in his many forms through the seasons. Characters often end up embodying the fates that they warn others of; Beth warned him that involving himself with a handmaid was a good way to end up on the wall (and we all know what happened to Beth). Nick told June TWICE that she could and WOULD die in Gilead. So maybe a few chants in the prayer circle for our young commander couldn’t hurt. Lets be crystal clear ALL of this is just speculation because well, as of yet just like everyone else, I haven't seen a single episode. The whole “shadow of death” phrase accompanied with a shot of Nick gives pause for thought. He’s been kicking around Gilead as the resident angel of Death for some time and make no mistake this particular shot was included to symbolize the threat of death, in particular to the rebellion. Once again, disappointing.

The press releases have stated that Blaine betrays June at some point this season but I have to say in terms of viewer acceptance, this is risky. It’s a HUGE vault to take from a character with moral grain with a deep emotional connection to the protagonist; to one that’s decided to throw all in against her, with a fascist regime he’s hated serving. These types of character transitions if not delivered properly are deadly to any sort of audience connection. If they don’t believe they are POSSIBLE, then their disbelief spreads to ALL of the surrounding characters and the entire storyline by default. If they want to 180 this character from “a good man in Gilead” to Voldemort, they currently lack the goods with which to back it up, and they don’t have much time to construct them. Seems like a fairly swift deconstruction of a character, from one who ran to June’s bedside and punched Lawrence in a room full of commanders, to one that would actually betray her. With a press release citing that without the love goggles, June now sees Nick for who he is and what he’s capable of, audiences NEED to understand that in the context of any love story, it’s hard, if not impossible to come back from that. After show runners have almost guaranteed the entire obliteration of his character in her eyes, their relationship may end up as nothing but a smoking wreck. One can only hope that love does truly keep no record of wrongs.

As always watch for character placement on screen, Blaine’s usually positioned to her right side to indicate worship, succession and the sharing of power. When he starts shifting, you’ll know the dynamics are starting to change. Minghella cited his relationship with Rose as a factor in his waning patience with June, and as somewhat of an innocent I can see her being sacrificed, to incite Blaine’s rage in the context of the story line. But the idea that he’d somehow be transformed into a cold dead eyed monster defies belief. Is this the SAME Blaine that smuggled letters? That cried over a dead handmaid? That brought her Fred? That ran to her bedside? Too often audiences simply swallow content they’re fed without question, well this season I’ll be expecting some plausible explanations. I have to wonder about the timing of daddy dearest showing up IMMEDIATLEY after Blaine’s relationship fell apart with Rose. No doubt Rose would have told him that it was Osborne who came between them and daddy may have decided to sever the two once and for all. It is true that Nick’s impressionable and I can see Wharton being cast as the evil presence who tries to break apart the two lovers by exploiting Nick’s desire for guidance. As Blaine once said “some men need to be led.” June is depicted in a red gown striding amongst an army of handmaids, the implication here being that she too is a commander and as such this season will see Nick and June go head to head, with Wharton at the leash. Will Gilead succeed in breaking them apart? Apparently Tuello ends up with only Lawrence as his ally which kind of pisses me off that he’s being rewarded with a redemption arc of kinds while Nick gets cast into the cold. We’ll have to wait and see but that WOULD be a very big fuck you very much, for all the struggles he’s endured to remain moralistically intact in the Hell hole of Lawrence’s making.

Now way, way, way up the back of The Testaments is mention of a handful of plots by commanders to off a bunch of the elite commanders that triggers the purges, and it looks like that’s where we’re going this season. I do think that a sizeable amount of handmaid’s will pay with their lives as a consequence. No revolution comes without sacrifice, it’s just historical fact so get ready for the carnage. It appears they’ve decided to paint Luke as a hero and Nick as a villain this season very possibly to show their ultimate true faces. I can't help but wonder how fair these journeys comparatively EVER were. If Nick was always doomed to fall by spending literally YEARS in the dark prison of Gilead, then how easy is it for Luke to shine having spent all of his time on the couch in a free country? To quote June herself “Gilead turns you into a bit of a cunt.” How fair has this comparison EVER been when one came from poverty and the other lived a comfortable life? While Nick has been damned for his choice to join the SOJ, the choices that Luke’s life initially afforded him, certainly made all the difference. I do wonder how fair it is to paint the vulnerable, targeted poor as ultimately villainous? Now Blaine lives in a large house surrounded by all the comforts that Gilead has ensnared him with, if he throws his lot in with Mayday, he burns his whole life down. In comparison the now transient Luke has literally nothing to lose and everything to gain by joining the Rebellion. Is the destruction of Nick nothing more than a demonstration of the corruptive society he has lived in for so long? By painting him as a villain are we acknowledging his trauma or even the rigged game that spawned him? If their plans are to send her back into the arms of her, up until very recently, sheltered and complacent hubby, I’ll want answers. Revolution can be a comparatively easy act when you don’t live under a regime for over a decade, when the fist doesn’t tighten constantly or corrupt you in increments. To Luke it would seem natural to kick against it, unfortunately for Nick he’s been “groomed” since day one with the final stranglehold of a Gilead wife and kiddy to keep him in line.

After seasons of representing Luke as a homebody who practically had to be extricated from his house in the burbs, even after someone ran over his wife right in front of it, they’ve now decided that Luke has actually been full of gun toting moxy all along. Yep, he’s suddenly going to run rampant all over Gilead with hand grenades and a machine gun….ridiculous. Last season we saw him go from “lets file paperwork” to Mr gimme a gun, in the space of ONE SINGLE episode, simply because Serena gave him some shit about Nick. Had the guy stayed in Canada and rallied with Tuello, I would have believed his character arc, but THIS is a bridge too far. I would have absolutely bought Luke as a Mayday strategist, neck deep in the paperwork he thrives on. I have to say, I am not loving this journey for him at all.

I’ve never before experienced a show try to persistently foist a character on audiences as they have done Luke. Most of the audience didn’t like him, the feedback on social media was pretty loud and the shows response seems to have been to simply include more content with the hopes that sooner or later audiences would relent and embrace him with open arms. Despite their best efforts, to quote the classic “Mean Girls”; “Fetch just isn’t going to happen.” and I don’t think it ever has. To be honest they not only haven’t been able to really endear Luke to the majority of fans, but they’ve had to work flat out over the last season to even remotely level the scores between these two men, basically by marrying Nick off and knocking up his wife. Comparative to Nick and June’s fiery romance, moments of intimacy between Luke and June felt like oatmeal through a feeding tube. Perhaps there’s a reason for this, maybe it’s intentional, like Miller said; June sees their relationship as “work”. Much in the same way they’ve intentionally built Nick and June to be far more romantic in nature, but as we keep being told again and again; it’s not exactly practical. At this point in the journey I don't know how many people are too concerned with practicalities; they've been dangling a bucket of candy in front the audience for seasons now, so the kiddies can hardly be blamed for wanting to stuff their faces.

I guess Nick’s character annihilation would make sense plot wise, because well, Luke’s so fucking boring that SOMETHING had to be done to sabotage Nick’s appeal. Ultimately their solution has been to virtually turn Luke into Nick with Luke sporting Nicks trademark black coats, ala season 1, (like we wouldn’t notice) and roiding him up with a gun and a few hand grenades. Similarly Nicks now in New Bethlehem in some cushy digs with a wife and kiddy on the way. But to quote Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale itself: “They cannot be exchanged, one for the other. They cannot replace each other. Nick for Luke, Luke for Nick.” June wasn't going for it then, and I'm not either.

There’s also the small matter of June’s right to choose. Death or betrayal in a love triangle is actually a violation of the element of choice by our protagonist. It reeks of sabotage. These outcomes subvert any ability by the protagonist to actually CHOOSE and instead determines, at least in part, the outcome for her. Unimpressed. It also calls into question writer intent. What exactly is the message here after 5 seasons of him “trying to stay out of trouble” and then finally growing the spine to stand up to Gilead? Is it to keep your head down and shut up while the fascist regime takes hold? If he betrays her, what’s the lesson here? Never trust anyone? Love is a lie? Evil triumphs in the human spirit? Redemption is impossible? Are audiences to be dragged through 5 and half seasons of heartbreak, just to have their hearts crushed once again? It seems particularly heartless to rope audiences fully back into this “Nick and June” love triangle only to cut it off at the knees. The fact that they’re resurrecting it, simply to butcher it completely speaks to a whole new level of cruelty. It’s all looking a bit Star Wars with Nick as the young Vader, right down to shots where he seems to emanate a red glow (please see below) to symbolize danger. But I do wonder, have they honestly waited until now to visit upon audiences a full demonstration of Gilead’s corruptive influences?

The press releases seem to have made a point several times of mentioning that he was a commander, while that’s true I do wonder how a “why thanks but no thanks” would have gone down when it was originally presented to him. There’s no debating that Nick signed up in the beginning for SOJ, but scripts showed that he was vulnerable, targeted and quickly disgusted by its machinations. So if this ENTIRE plot was designed to be a tragic cautionary tale of a lambs slaughter at the hands of a regime, I’ll be horrified at the lengths to which they’ve drawn it out. These maneuverings all seem so incredibly cruel that an audience could not be blamed for switching off and never coming back for any other trips on the long, slow pain train spin offs. Why would they? The pain of attaching to beloved characters only to have them utterly decimated is not something viewers tend to wish to revisit. Last seasons are tricky, there’s a lot of expectation wrapped up in them as writers attempt to bookend characters and yet leave their journeys open for a possible revisit. A good last episode on a good last season is an even rarer thing, and if the endings not done right, audiences are loathe to even start the journey. A bad last episode is like poison, and the thing that content creators don’t seem to understand is that and audiences don’t actually NEED an amazing battle with explosions and 3 separate endings….they just need good. An ending that can live beyond itself, just an act of redemption, throw in a hint of tomorrow and you’re all good. Seriously, it’s all we want.

GOT had a notorious fiery trash bag of a last episode and it’s not the only one. Films now run 3 hours long and it seems that somewhere along the way the editor either fell asleep or just went home. In the effort to always be better, bigger, louder and larger, creators will often shoot too high or go too obscure. Go too big and you can fall really hard, go too small and it can feel unfinished, do whatever you want despite audience feedback and they will fucking hate you and avoid any of your future offerings. With the Testaments in play that last one is a particularly bad idea, certainly writer integrity is important but audience engagement is key. It’s interesting to think of Nick and June, at the end of the day, being reduced to dollars and cents. Their audience participation has simply become so large that an unhappy ending between the two will literally cost the studio and streaming services a gazillion dollarinos.

It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen a couple dictate the direction of a series, determine its success or failure and consequently, the size of a studios profits. It's not unusual to see spinoffs and seasons get cancelled because a deep character connection has been dissolved and the audience has followed suit. I hate to think of one single plot twist poisoning the well of a beautiful and epic 5 season long love story. After watching seasons of painful goodbyes I really don’t have the stomach for another one and I grow weary of season finales that leave audiences hollow and despondent like a depressing 1970’s movie. It's worth keeping in mind that just maybe these show runners and writers NEVER anticipated the type of enthusiasm that they received for the connection between these two characters and they've consequently had to roll with it. Seasons later we have a PR machine cranking overtime, they drop a bit of controversy about this love triangle and sure enough everyone takes the bait. Let's face it, people have lost their ever lovin minds and the folks at PR central must be LOVING it. Nick and June’s romance all seems to have been a bit of a mish mash of Casablanca and Romeo and Juliet from the get go, and both of those ended up in a whole big bunch of fuck you to any hope of real happiness. Casablanca holds its place after 80 years as one of the most timeless tales of love and sacrifice for the greater good, and if these two see any sort of conclusion that doesn’t involve a blade or noose, I suspect that’s what they might be going for here. The fact that it was released around the time of the German invasion shouldn’t be lost on audiences either. It had a lot to say about sacrifice and courage in the face of adversity during war, specifically fascism. Regardless of the life lessons that writers and show runners are attempting to teach, after 6 seasons of drawn out heartbreak, this one is going to feel really, really unkind.

To be brutally honest I’d prefer to watch Blaine die serving Mayday than see him betray June and have their love corrupted. After all the sacrifices he’s made, I’m horrified they couldn’t even afford him that small dignity, and I fucking swear if I have to watch him turn to poison and then die in the dirt, I will burn my TV (season 3 of Severance be damned). Then again, if this is all just a set up for the Battle Royale for his soul, I’ll be absolutely gagging to see June fight for it tooth and nail.

[glasskey]

As a rule I don't reblog....I just don't. But I'm making an exception because yep......all of this. I just want to highlight this passage:

"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." Above all else, I will never forgive the writers choice to villainize the lowest socio-economic character.

The Betrayal of Nick Blaine: How The Handmaid’s Tale Undermined Its Own Storytelling

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.

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.

Importantly, the Marthas in Season 4 speak to Nick like an equal, not like someone they fear. One even asks him, “Is this business as usual?” — a small but significant clue that Nick had been working with the Martha network for a long time. This wasn’t a sudden shift. His ties to the resistance were consistent and deliberate. Even other Commanders call him a “boy scout” in Season 6 — a nickname that reflects his perceived moral rigidity and difference from the men around him.

THE HINTS THE WRITERS LEFT — THEN ABANDONED

Throughout the first five seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale, the writers laid down clear and deliberate hints that Nick was meant to function as a quiet resistor embedded within Gilead’s system. His actions were not accidental or incidental — they were purposeful choices, woven into the narrative to build a coherent, morally complex character.

Another major hint came in a cut scene from Season 3 — one that never made it to the screen but is preserved in the official scripts. In that scene, Nick is shown at the front during Gilead’s military campaigns, standing alongside Commander Mackenzie. This wasn’t designed to show him as complicit — quite the opposite. It placed him close to Hannah’s captors, setting up his position to act as an inside link, a person who might eventually help June find and rescue her daughter. This scene reinforced what the show had been quietly building all along: Nick was where he needed to be, playing the long game.

His abrupt marriage to Rose further aligned with this arc. It wasn’t a romantic choice or a reward — it was another calculated move to get close to the Mackenzie family. The fact that we saw him and Rose at dinners with them in Season 5 wasn’t coincidence — it was strategy. Nick was positioning himself exactly where he could observe, influence, and perhaps, one day, act.

And here’s something telling: in his apartment above the garage, we see Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. That’s not just a random prop. It’s a novel about enduring love and resistance in the face of cruelty and loss. The writers deliberately placed that book in his apartment. It was a clear, intentional signal: Nick was written as someone with inner depth, quiet resistance, and a poetic soul. Bruce Miller says 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)

And yet, all of these threads were dropped in Season 6. The Mackenzies vanished from the story. The careful groundwork that had been laid for Nick’s internal resistance arc was erased, discarded in favor of a last-minute, illogical narrative pivot that portrayed him as complicit without reckoning with everything the show had previously told us about him.

What’s worse, both the show’s own deleted material and the actual scenes up until Season 6 make it clear that Nick was never meant to be the villain they later tried to paint him as.The official scripts and cut scenes show him as a man horrified by the violence of Gilead’s rise, caught in it but never fully part of it. These clues weren’t just abandoned — they were actively contradicted in a way that undermined both the character and the larger themes of the series.

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. His proximity to Gilead’s power structures had always been framed as about survival, not ideology — a distinction that Season 6 discarded.

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. 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. 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 man of survival instincts, not ideology — a man navigating impossible circumstances while trying to protect his family — was suddenly reframed post-Season 6 as a willing and eager participant in Gilead’s horrors. This contradiction not only betrayed Nick’s character but also undermined the integrity of the show’s moral universe.

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”

One of the most disturbing narrative choices in Season 6 was the decision to have multiple characters — including June’s mother, Holly, and Luke — refer to Nick as a “Nazi.” 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.

June’s mother’s use of the term might be explained by her extremism and ideological rigidity — but when Luke adopts the same language, it becomes clear that the writers themselves wanted to frame Nick through this lens, erasing the character they had spent five seasons building. 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.

[glasskey]

What Season 6 did to Nick AND June

Yeah, I’m never going to get over this. Now in the past when I’ve not been entirely happy with series finales I’ve been somewhat soothed by time to ponder and follow up press from Show runners and cast that had something constructive and generous to offer. Here, we received the opposite and as a result I’ve been left to stew in the delicious juices of my hatred and resentment.

After all of the push back, it’s pretty evident that Blaine was unjustly dealt with in season 6, particularly in comparison to the rest of the Gilead Four. Not only that, but there’s a resounding consensus that Nick and June’s relationship was callously spat on and set on fire with an almost gleeful hatred. Last but not least, June now seems to look unsympathetic and opportunistic….and THAT is not her fucking fault. Please, let me elaborate.

The writers had several options to chose from to cast as the villain but they found Blaine the most convenient to go with for a multitude of reasons. They also wanted to make a political statement, so there you go. They weren’t really concerned with all the rest of the “sense of justice”, “out of character” element because they could always fall back on deniability and off screen character history. Unfortunately the audience WAS concerned with these things and have considered the show runners dismissal of their opinion as let’s say, quite rude. They’ve unfortunately chosen to paint Serena in a positive light and, cast the core message of the show about motherhood instead of female autonomy, which undermines basically all of it’s feminist values. Essentially it simply re enforced Fred Waterford’s philosophy about women’s greatest purpose being as a walking womb. Yet they somehow managed to undermine their OWN themes of mother hood by having June running around Gilead constantly bleating about Hannah, while treating Holly like an inconvenient after thought.

They missed their chance to utilise that love triangle as a demonstration of a woman having the power to choose in her personal relationships, by determining Nicks actions be the deciding factor. Honestly, I’ve seen more autonomy demonstrated in the infamous Joey / Pacey / Dawson love triangle in Dawson’s Creek. I mean FFS….DAWSON’S CREEK! Because American writers are so stifled by traditionalist theological values, the idea of a woman actually leaving her husband because she dared to fall in love with someone else, remained absolutely inconceivable. The writers themselves commented “I don’t think the audience would like it if she just abandoned her husband”, yes that’s right ”abandoned”, like leaving him was tantamount to orphaning a helpless child. Like men are utterly incapable of looking after themselves, and women should feel guilty over wanting to end their marriage. It’s made no less offensive by the fact that Luke walked out on his wife and it was written off as “people change”. Once again, OK for a man, but not for a woman. Got it. I felt SO failed as a woman, by the moralistic, traditionalist messaging that occurred, I find it difficult to articulate. In order for the writers to disassemble the idea of Nick and June as the manifestation of an autonomous choice of collective rebellion, and jam these traditionalist ideals back into place, they had to flip both Nick and Luke’s character. They had to violate a text, destroy narrative symbolism and change the very core nature of characters. I’m wholly unimpressed that these writers idea of true love is that some man “waited for her”, like she OWES him something. It’s utterly archaic. Seems almost stalkerish considering the fact that the protagonist actually asked him not to, and yet here we are being told that it’s some sort of demonstration of undying love. Must be the same person who thinks that June and Serena’s relationship is a “love story”.

I personally RESENT being told by both these writers, and by default the fans that latched onto this ridiculous bullshit, that I have “romanticized” a “Nazi”, when the writers themselves built the character to play the dark romantic hero for 5 seasons, and then suddenly changed their minds. I don’t care if the writers have suddenly discovered a new delicious flavour of virtue signalling. It’s insulting and worse still, it makes fans a target. No matter how many times these writers try to whack Blaine with this inflammatory label, historical fact dictates that it still doesn’t make it fucking so. They previously ran promos for him being a part of Mayday, made continual distinctions between Blaine and the rest of Gilead’s foul regime and then suddenly decided to run around screeching that he was an unholy, irredeemable war criminal. They can fuck right off with that 180 self righteous, holier than thou, bullshit.

Everyone was all on board for 4 09 and 4 10. By the way, don’t think that I don’t remember those very same little Nick haters that posted comments relenting past hatreds during season 4, who are now proudly crowing about how “they always knew he was a war criminal and a fascist”, because I see you. Those writers aren’t fooling anyone; if it looks like a take back, and it smells like a take back….then it fucking is. There’s a REASON that the majority of the audience FEELS betrayed and no whining or mealy mouthed justifications by the writers, to their little press besties is going to fix it and magically make it go away. I also refuse to sit back and have their finger wagged at me for wanting the candy they dangled in front of me for 5 seasons, or at the very least adherence to the original source material. They can fuck right off with that shit too. These writers are the ones that violated a text and if they’re getting a mouthful about it, they should just fucking own it instead of acting like self righteous little brats.

Daisy’s / Holly’s story line has essentially been removed from The Testaments TV series and the timeline shortened. It honestly feels like the audience is constantly having to point out to the writers, that they are not fucking idiots, that they don’t have amnesia, that they read the books and that they KNOW when writers are violating a text. This whole branch of the family feels like it’s been treated as if it was simply so inconvenient to these writers that it needed to be erased. As season 6 concluded, Holly was hand balled to her names sake, while June skipped off to rescue the family favourite.

The way that both Blaine and his relationship with Osborn were disposed of in The Handmaids Tale felt nothing short of personal. The writers weren’t satisfied with splitting the pair apart permanently, they wanted to do it brutally, they wanted to devalue their previous connection, they wanted to strip Blaine of his parentage and last but not least, have the love of his life kill him. Even his final words made it sound as though he’d had a gazillion chances to be with her and his daughter, and had greedily chosen power instead. It was like watching the writers beat Blaine to death and then gleefully kick his corpse.

It wasn’t just Blaine that Season 6’s schizophrenic manoeuvrings touched, it was many others including June. I’ve been hearing a lot of rumblings about June lately, and coincidently they started this season. They’ve not been flattering, frankly some of them have been a bit disturbing. I’d argue that if Blaine’s character wasn’t consistent this season, then neither was hers, particularly when it comes to the context of their relationship. June knows what it’s like to survive in Gilead, previous seasons have depicted her doing awful shit to either stay alive or for her cause. I don’t believe this character would suddenly develop some sense of self righteousness that would make her deaf to any of Blaine’s reasoning; including the fact that he told his demented father in law the girls at Jezebels had nothing to do with it, and that he had no idea he would kill them. Let’s just consider what happened with Eden and what went down at the Jezebels in season 4. June KNOWS what the deal is in Gilead. Audience’s should have no doubt that the writers changed the tone of their interactions, the nature of their relationship and as such they changed the character of both Nick AND June within it’s context. While it was not their aim to make her look unsympathetic, because of their rampant tampering in their relationship, it was an inevitable result. I’m actually surprised at audience members who DID readily gobble this up as sounding legit for their characters. Some of these people were actual critics who should have recognized a snack bucket of deep fried garbage when they saw it, but instead they chowed down on it, and then swore up and down they’d just eaten a gourmet 3 courser.

They’d attempted to paint Blaine as a villain but because of the sum of his past actions, most didn’t buy it and it simply made him look abandoned and June opportunistic. The fact is you can’t say that Blaine is not a liar and still say that June is heartless. If you want to say the story line is false for one, then by default it’s false for both. Changing Nicks character changes the genuine nature of Nick and June’s interactions and therefore changes her personality entirely in the context of their relationship. Essentially, if Nicks character construct is false, then in the context of their relationship, so is hers.….you don’t get to have just half of the pie. These writers wanted half and it was waaaaay too late, he was intrinsically tied to her as they’d painted them as soul mates from the very beginning. They’d spent seasons and seasons building their bond, demonstrating the constant tether that held them together despite the regime. Then they just simply wanted to get away with cutting it off brutally. These writers created an aura of timelessness between them, so despite their best attempts to sever them later, they remained tied together and the inevitable consequence was that when they attempted to drag him down, she went with him.

This eternal connection is something the season 6 writers never understood, and it’s why they thought they could simply decimate Blaine’s character, dispose of him and walk away with their protagonist intact. I want to be crystal clear to those who think that June is now some horrible ungrateful wench….these writers did these two dirty. Not just Blaine, but June too. These writers back peddled on their relationship and did just about everything to devalue it; they didn’t anticipate that it would make her look opportunistic and heartless, but it was bound to happen once they tried to make their connection look superficial. The end result was that these writers made BOTH these characters look morally bankrupt, they made their relationship look valueless, they destroyed their mutual bond as parents and they ruined an epic love story. It's a fucking tragedy, it could have been one of the great love stories, but they just weren't brave enough. They were cowards who at the end of the day just couldn't bring themselves to deliver on that message of autonomy so vital to any story about feminism. They fell back on two dimensional traditional moralistic narratives that flattened these characters out and bled them dry of any life. On top of it all, they not only mocked their audience for caring for these characters and their bond, but appeared to despise them for it. I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like it. These writers lured viewers into a cruel trap, wounded them and then got pissed off when the audience actually told them they’d been a bunch of arseholes for doing it. I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t really have any qualms about telling them that I fucking hate them for it. It was cruel, surprisingly vindictive and I for one won’t forget it.

Minghella commented that you definitely couldn’t accuse the writers of pandering. I’ve no doubt this statement is actually a politely pointed jab at the writers brutality. It’s atypical coming from a Brit, a razor sharp insult disguised as a cleverly worded complement, that you only get wise to about 3 days after the fact.

The rating difference on this season, between critics and audiences is suspiciously large. They’ve submitted to the Emmy’s, but you just KNOW that Severance and Adolescence are going to take virtually everything so good luck with that. Awards aside, it won’t make one iota of a difference in terms of viewership. The truth is no one really gives a fuck. This is GOT all over again. Current audiences will tell ALL their friends that they loved the show but the last season was shit and it totally ruined everything before it. Then people won’t watch any of it because well, who wants to waste their time watching a show that effectively self destructs in the last season? Yep, fucking no one. Who wants to watch a spin off of that? See previous answer.

[glasskey]

Milan Fashion Week…..someone’s a little fashionista 😎

[glasskey]

I never post these, but yeah….pay attention because ALL of this 👇👇👇👇👇

[glasskey]

Season 6 - Critical Mass

Fuck me. Season 6. Some loved it, most hated it. Episode 9 in particular really brought the whole house of cards down for this season, and left the writers and show runners with nothing but angry fans and a thousand questions to answer. I started making my own list sometime ago and episode 9 just tipped me over into critical mass. Because it involved the death of not one but two beloved characters, fans were let’s say, a little miffed. The choice to off Nick Blaine in particular has drawn considerable heat and there’s plenty of reasons why. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest reasons that Season 6 broke abso-fucking-loutely everything.

Firstly, I don’t think that it’s an exaggeration to say that at times season 6 just felt surreal and not in a good way. Previous seasons had set up the rules and guidelines for this world and season 6 simply didn’t care about any of them. For instance; how were people just waltzing in and out of Gilead now? That place used to be fucking locked down. Spot lights, dogs, guard towers, drones, Eyes….anyone remember how Emily had to swim over that freezing river with Holly to get to freedom and it was scary AF? Baby Holly nearly drowned. Now June Osborne, Gilead public enemy number one is just jumping in the car to go shuttle Lawrence across the border to a completely abandoned aircraft hangar. But season 6 didn’t stop there, it also didn’t respect the laws of gravity when it dangled Osborne from a crane 30 feet in the air and then hurled her to the ground without a scratch. In addition to disregarding the very laws of physics, Season 6 also gave characters amnesia on multiple occasions, cited off screen occurrences as lore as some sort of “fail safe”, sought to rewrite characters very natures, violated original texts, assumed knowledge, disregarded plot holes and selectively altered the basic moral compass by which characters would be judged. In fact, there really isn’t much that season 6 didn’t do in terms of just breaking all the guidelines that keep a world intact. I can only hope that it will be used as an example of what NOT to do by future writers, because quite honestly the disbelief and anger by audiences has been visceral, and personally I’ve never wanted to smash my television more.

This season was meant to be about people showing their true faces and I am STUNNED that somewhere, somehow these writers have justified that a woman who participated in multiple rapes, stole a baby, and had her hand in the conception of Gilead, has a benevolent “true face”. On Serena’s wedding night she was astonished to learn that her new husband, King of all the High Commanders was a die hard loyalist who liked to keep a handmaid on staff. She had a bit of a whimper but next morning she was ready to kiss and make up, and then her new hubby left for a morning appointment to execute her bestie. Despite this, Serena the baby snatching rapist, was afforded a redemption arc. I was and am, horrified.

Show runners have seen fit to state that Serena and June were actually the love story all along and I cannot tell you how much it disgusts me to hear that they would actually think that a victim / abuser relationship should ever be described as such. I am deeply disturbed that the creators of this show believe it is appropriate to describe the relationship between a kidnapper, rapist, physical and psychological abuser and their victim, as a love story. To say that June is able to forgive her abuser is one thing, to say that she loves her is quite another. If Serena had been a man, a father, she would have pushed her aboard that doomed plane. As it was she was a mother and therefore untouchable so she ultimately walked away virtually unscathed. So the writers message was we could be forgiven anything, even the vilest acts against our own gender, as long as we reproduced. If they intended me to feel all supported and warm and fuzzy as a woman, they well and truly missed the mark. Women like Serena Joy are fucking traitors, because they know full well what it’s like to be a woman, to fight for every single tiny square inch of freedom, and yet they seek to seize power by crushing their fellow women beneath their heel in order to get it.

Next in line is Aunt Lydia, who sanctioned and carried out torture, rape and murder. She arranged for Janine’s eye to be ripped out and farmed women into slavery. Suddenly she was pleading ignorance over what actually happens to the handmaids in their retirement? Are you fucking kidding me? This woman was so far up Gilead’s arse there was literally nothing that demon didn’t know about what was happening to those Handmaids. Atwood’s text reveals the aunts kept secret detailed files on all of them, and having Aunt Lydia now whining about her “poor girls” after tasing them for 5 seasons is laughable. She’d chained a pregnant handmaid in the basement and informed June she’d be shot after giving birth, so all of her sudden crocodile tears about the ex handmaids being sent to Jezebels was the weakest bunch of bullshit I’d ever seen for her entire character arc. But she’s needed for The Testaments, so she had a benevolent face slapped on her at the last moment and was given a redemption arc of sorts as well. Writers also failed to explain how Aunt Lydia was going to be embedded back into Gilead society now that she’s blown her cover.

Next victim is Lawrence. Last season Lawrence shot down the rescue planes for Hannah and told Blaine that it was a free for all to use June Osborne as target practice. He’s responsible for inventing a world of slavery and death, and he kept his wife imprisoned for years, but Lawrence has a strong papa bear vibe with some punchy one liners, so he gets a redemption arc and a heroes death. It’s worth mentioning that Joseph was actually the one responsible for dragging Serena back to Gilead and NOT Blaine as the Show runners would have you believe. Blaine actually spoke up for her, asking if “it was really necessary to drag her back into this”, however this was painted as Blaine’s decision to bring Serena back……despite the fact it was Lawrence who suggested it…..and physically went and got her…..and virtually strong armed her into the car. It’s also worth noting that Lawrence was all aboard the Gilead train, chowing down on that delicious power as a newly appointed High commander, until he learned that all the other commanders (except Blaine) were gunning for him. So it’s really not like he gave a shit about Mayday out of some sense of righteous justice, he just thought it might save his own neck. The martyr’s death / self sacrificial death are the highest value character deaths and quite frankly I’m not sure he deserved that quality of death but he’s cuddly and Whitford didn’t want him to die a villain, so there you go.

Finally we come to Nick Blaine. Out of the Gilead four this season, he was definitely the one most deserving of a redemption arc, but you know clever plot twist, scapegoat required….and guess who gets fucked after 5 seasons. Nick Blaine had spent 5 seasons risking his life on almost a bi seasonal basis for the protagonist, was deeply in love with her and had connections in Mayday. But in season 6 the writers decided to transform him into nothing but a greedy, power hungry, little fascist over the course of 3 episodes, and then unceremoniously had the protagonist kill him off as some sort of true measure of her strength. The writers not only made him the villain and had him killed, but gave him a death befitting a coward. I’m not sure who thought it would be a good idea to serve up this pile of revenge to a fan favourite who’d been a benevolent companion to the protagonist for the last 5 seasons….but it hideously back fired. I foresaw this when I viewed the original trailers and I prayed that they hadn’t been so stupid as to destroy both a character and a couple that over 80% of the audience were deeply invested in with a spin off waiting in the wings….unfortunately they were and the backlash has been brutal. It was around the time that they decided to bring it all home, that I couldn’t help but notice that out of all of the Gilead four, they’d actually taken the lowest socioeconomic character and seen fit to make him the sole villain and then grind him into a fine powder. It was one thing in season 1 when they illustrated how the poor and uneducated masses could be easily targeted and recruited, it was quite another to make the statement that because he came from “nothing” he was more likely to turn to villainy. Reality is, the well spring of most of the worlds evil fuckery lies deep in the hearts of those born to wealth and power. They’re used to it, they don’t like to share it, they’re terrified of losing it and they’ll do anything to get more of it. My nomination for most likely villain out of the Gilead Four was actually Serena. She's used to wealth and power and desperate to send her little spawn of Satan to a decent private school.

Meanwhile in Mayday central the folks there could do no wrong; Tuello fed civilians into the meat grinder that was Gilead’s highly trained military against Blaine’s advice, and yet remained untouched by any moral judgement from the writers. While everyone cheered as Tuello strode purposefully into the room to find Serena breathless at the sight of her little thirst trap, I ground my teeth and felt my fingernails digging into my palms. I just couldn’t help but wonder why on earth would Tuello trust Lawrence after that little incident with Hannah last season either. He’d just been burnt by Nick and his first response is to go pal up with the Architect of Gilead himself? I also didn’t understand why Tuello was skulking around in No Man’s Land in the first place. All the other diplomats were welcome in New Bethlehem, so why wasn’t he running recon or checking in with why Blaine suddenly wasn’t answering his calls? Why not set up a diplomatic embassy in New Bethlehem? Perhaps because IT WOULD HAVE MADE SENSE. This season saw Blaine give up Mayday’s plan. He’d chosen his side apparently and it wasn’t Osborne….after 5 seasons of choosing Osborne (sigh). So I couldn’t help but wonder why this hideous traitor didn’t just tell the other commanders where Mayday central was? He knew approximately where it was and yet there they were all hopping on a plane to DC to work out some intricate plan to curb the rebel operations. I mean the guy could virtually draw a map with a sign that says “bomb here” pointing to the Mayday camp and yet…..Urgh.

The character transformations have gone from zero to a hundred with nothing in between this season. Luke went from wanting to join Mayday, to planting bombs, to running around screaming with a machine gun and hand grenades. Rita went from not wanting to get involved with Mayday, to poisoning the cake with sedatives, to running screaming down the street shooting wildly. Serena got engaged and married in like a week and went from “I didn’t really think about what happened to the handmaids”, to teary eyed demanding to know the “real name” of her new one. Nick proclaimed his undying love for June, 10 seconds later they had a brutal break up, next episode he virtually skipped down the aisle with his wife singing about his new baby and renouncing the parentage of Holly, then he completely ignored the fact that the love of his life was about to be hung (can we just pause and consider how absolutely unbelievable THAT is please), said some BIZARRE shit about commanders being the winners and promptly exploded. Fuuuuuuuck. I mean it would have been hilariously ridiculous if it wasn’t just so fucking tragic to watch all that potential come to such a pointless end. Like so many things this season, this plot line doesn’t make any sense at all. I mean how were these commanders the “winners”? The rebels had just bombed their city and killed most of them, they were practically an endangered species. Somehow the audience was convinced into believing that if the Boston commanders ever made it to DC, Gilead would win and rule over the earth forever and ever. I guess that must have been where they had been keeping their secret special map room and chanting circle. I mean where is the plot? Is the plot in the room with us now? The trajectory on Blaine’s character arc comparative to other seasons, felt like the pilot had suddenly decided to fly the plane into the mountain (excuse the pun). He’d been building to something huge and both of Atwood’s texts indicated that Mayday was in his future, however it was at this point that the writers took incredible licence and deviated from the source material completely. It seemed a huge violation that Blaine’s character was altered from the version in both texts and while all the other characters were carefully manoeuvred into place, he was killed off. Granted Miller and co. had, had the freedom to fill in the blanks between season 2 - 6, various elements of the texts still acted as a guide for these characters natures, journeys and ultimate destinations and there was just no way around the fact that they’d chosen to completely ignore it. Insultingly I was asked to ignore Blaine’s death on the basis that he “had it coming”. Not only was that NOT an answer as to why such liberties were taken with the source material about his nature, depicted allegiances, and you know the fact that he was fucking ALIVE in the book, but that reasoning was also completely riddled with holes.

Throughout the seasons Blaine had been firmly established as an ally to the protagonist via a multitude of mechanisms which were now being blatantly discounted. For example; ALL of the acts of violence that the audience had been shown that were directly and voluntarily committed by Blaine were all performed AGAINST a member of Gilead to either protect the protagonist, at her request or as a form of righteous justice for her cause. Now I was being told that off screen he’d been sneaking around the protagonists back committing horrendous acts on behalf of Gilead….but we just hadn’t seen it….and didn’t know about it…..and SOMEHOW the writers couldn’t understand how that would be confusing..…or even believable. Urgh. The more I looked, the more holes appeared and the more it all just reeked of rewriting history for the sake of a plot twist and a quickly constructed political narrative. For whatever reason it was done, it was sloppy and completely contradictory to the characters original nature, both on screen and in the texts. Even if I did give these writers the benefit of the doubt and BELIEVED their spiel about this character, I’m not sure it worked in their favour to be constantly pointing out that they had neglected to fill in the audience properly on vital character elements during previous seasons.

For some reason the writers and show runners were now under the illusion that their audience had not actually been paying attention while watching the previous 5 seasons, that they had developed some sort of selective amnesia. They also deemed to give the protagonist amnesia, thus making her seem unempathetic, heartless and deeply unlikeable. Blaine had turned up for her countless times and yet was given no quarter. She had simply developed amnesia about what it was like to try and survive in Gilead after a brief stay in Canada. The writers may have intended to make her look strong and assertive, but her failure to extend any measure of compassion or even seek to dig further, made it seem as though the entire relationship had been transactional. It was as if now that Blaine had ceased to serve a purpose, he was being abandoned. This effectively destroyed any integrity to their former bond, it simply made him look like a liar and her an opportunist. I became a bit suspicious that it was not entirely unintentional that these creators were now seeking to change the very nature of this relationship in retrospect, when June attributed Serena responsibility for their relationship in the first place. It sought to completely discount the fact that these two had been circling one another prior to Serena's interference, or even that they continued their relationship despite her objections and efforts to seperate them later.

It was simply more evidence of an almost desperate attempt by the writers to erase this loving connection and replace it with something convenient and superficial. They’d forgotten that Nick and June’s love was actually an act of rebellion, forbidden, a place where both Blaine and Osborne sought freedom and autonomy. Had they remembered this, they might have understood that for a true depiction of a successful rebellion, Nick Blaine should have joined the underground and the two lovers destinies remained intimately intertwined. His true character narrative was as an Eye with connections to Mayday. June / Offred was unsure if she could trust him, but he remained a source of hope, love and quiet rebellion within Gilead. The Handmaids Tale afterword revealed that he’d risked his life to help June escape and gone on to join the resistance. Gilead had tried and failed to kill him at least once and he was later reunited with June and his daughter. The successful depiction of a rebellion that used their relationship as the intended metaphor, was one that had Blaine subvert Gilead as an Eye turned agent for Mayday. Instead his death indicated the success of Gilead to eradicate collective rebellion….by somehow encouraging rebel forces to self sabotage. It simply made no sense, particularly given the rebellions success in the area where Blaine had been stationed. It was like someone had either failed to understand the metaphor completely OR had simply been so desperate to destroy the character and the relationship, that they didn’t care if it meant tearing apart a central theme. Which was absolutely fucking insane.

Fans had followed the writers cues and had understood the underlying message of rebellion in their bond. They’d waited years for the rebellion to succeed and the symbolic narrative to reach it’s natural conclusion, by having Blaine cross the border to join June and Mayday. So when instead the writers chose to start labelling Blaine as a loyalist and gut this relationship, slaughtering this manifestation of collective rebellion, the audience was understandably angry and confused. His role as an embedded Mayday agent in The Testaments stand as evidence that this was precisely who Blaine was and not some dubious fascist all along. Atwood consulted during season 2, but it was only during season 3 that show runners decided to whack a commander suit on Blaine and start using him for statements about patriarchal power that had nothing to do with his original character construct. He was never a commander, not in The Handmaid’s Tale and not in The Testaments either…..but these writers thought they knew better than the author, so here we are. I think about the potential for this story line had it been completed correctly and I could just weep. I could write a book on why the destruction of this character and relationship was one of the dumbest fucking things I’ve ever seen a writer do to their own creation, and how this is one of the biggest violations of an authors symbolic narrative I’ve ever witnessed, but honestly I’ve got a lot to get through today.

The writers and staff scrambled to provide clarity about who Nick Blaine was all along, but what they failed to understand was that it was utterly irrelevant. If they had to tell audiences after the fact who their character actually was and what their true motivations were, then they’d failed their mission. Writers cited story elements that supposedly occurred off screen, as lore when they either should have been clearer from the beginning or just followed the established on screen character arc through without trying to get clever. Now for clarity I believe the rot started in season 5 but only truly set in in season 6.

Come season 6 Minghella would be lucky to get a few minutes of screen time in 6 episodes, and in that time they had to convince the audience that he’d been a totally different person than the one they’d been shown all along. Consider the characters nature, established relationship with the protagonist and everyone around him….over 5 seasons….now with ALL of that think about how impossible it actually is to flip that character in the space of approximately 10-15 minutes, and how insane you’d have to be to green light that shit. And yet SOMEHOW it was my fault for not believing them. Probably because I’d read the books.

Writers asked audiences to reassess characters 4 episodes from the end of a final season. That’s neither realistic or wise and they shouldn’t be surprised if people feel like they’ve been duped and cheated. The fact is that they told audiences that a character had a particular motivation for the last 5 seasons, etched it into to him like it was the very essence of his being, and suddenly they wanted audiences to believe that he was forsaking it in the last moment. That he would simply give it up at the first sign of adversity. That he’d be just kosher with not only giving it up but destroying the object of his obsession within 2 brief episodes. It’s utterly ridiculous, I don’t believe any of it and these writers shouldn’t be surprised by that. You can’t tell me that someone is deep and sensitive in one breath and then tell me they’re angling for an upper management position in a society that enslaves the vulnerable in the next….particularly if the bottom of barrel is exactly where they come from. It makes no fucking sense.

Because of his core nature as a sensitive, loving and loyal individual, the ONLY parts of Nick Blaine’s character that actually EVER made any sense were the ones attached to Mayday, those that loved June, that “would do anything for me and for Nicole”, that were trapped and tricked into signing onto Gilead, anything else just seemed in direct conflict with his personality overall. Blaine cried over a dead handmaid and refused to call June by her slave name, he had contacts in Mayday that he referred to as “friendlies”. What made the writers think I would believe an individual this sensitive and obviously invested in rebel operations, would seek a higher position in this society for ANY other reason than to subvert it? Ambitious greedy ghouls do not smuggle out letters of imprisoned handmaids and they don’t baulk over sleeping with their child brides. They just don’t give a fuck.

Right now show runners are working overtime to create a narrative in which they write off Nicks damning choices in episode 6 as the result of both full autonomy AND coercive control. If he acted with full autonomy, Blaine was a monster who knew what he was doing, sought power and subscribed to Gilead’s rhetoric of slavery. If he was acting as a result of coercive control he was frightened, abused and controlled with little to no recourse. The reason that the writers couldn’t decide which one it was, was because they wanted it to be the first, but they knew full well it was the second. Season 1 and 2 had already shown that Blaine was indeed stripped of his autonomy and yet in 5 10 Tuello claimed that he could have run away with her while he lived at the Waterfords. They were trying to alter the narrative around how much power he had possessed, but it was too late, we’d already seen the dogs, the drones, the spotlights, the checkpoints and all those guardians. We’d already seen all that old school Gilead terror and we weren’t about to forget it.

Show runners claimed that Blaine had full autonomy on the basis that he had many chances to defect, but again there was plenty of evidence to discredit this theory. In season 2 when Blaine took Osborne to the Boston Globe he said "I'm risking my life to save you", indicating he was monitored, restricted and had just about as much autonomy as she did. Had Blaine exercised full autonomy, there was no question he would have been captured and executed. When June boarded the plane to leave, a driver also attempted to sneak on board. He was hauled off the plane and shot by Gilead guards, this heavily implied that Blaine would have died if he’d tried to accompany her. In season 3 Eleanor told June that Lawrence could never leave because he’d be imprisoned for life. In season 4 Fred was arrested at the border and jailed, when he tried to negotiate immunity he was traded back to Gilead and ended up dead. In season 5 Blaine WAS offered a deal from Tuello which he took, but it did require that he remain in Gilead indefinitely. Throughout season 6 the presence of Wharton was inserted specifically to create an environment of coercive control that restricted and monitored his movements. So no I don’t believe he had full autonomy. It also seems incredibly odd for the writers to say that Blaine has full autonomy and THEN have Serena tell June “If he ever thought he had a choice, he would have chosen you”. I mean in what alternative dimension should an audience NOT be confused by this constant mixed messaging?

I was informed through various forms of PR, that the second Blaine knew his relationship was over with Osborne he’d simply sought to lose himself in power, but this was utterly ridiculous. Blaine had been confronted with the reality of losing her many times before and he still hadn’t stuck his face in a bucket of Kool Aid. The idea that Blaine had failed to show up and do anything about June being executed because he considered their relationship over, was laughable. In season 4 he’d strong armed Lawrence into keeping her alive even though he knew she “was never coming back to him”. In season 5 he dashed across the border and signed a contract with Tuello just to ensure her safety even though “she already has people who care for her, I’m nothing”. It didn’t wash. NONE of it washed. Now I MIGHT have been able to swallow that he’d taken solace in Gilead after his relationship with Osborne completely dissolved but there was no period of mourning for the loss of a deep abiding love he’d carried with him for 5 and half seasons. No tears, no despair, nothing….Instead Blaine immediately started rambling on about Gilead like it was Sale of the fucking Century and he couldn’t get enough of those Nazi war spoils. It was utterly baffling. Mid season we all travelled deep into the Twilight Zone when Blaine made some sort of schizophrenic switch from prioritising June to an unquenchable thirst for power. It was impossible to reconcile with his previous manifestation, but somehow this all remained my fault for failing to grasp it, rather than the writers for either not communicating it in earlier seasons or an ill advised quick change.

We were also told that Blaine was a villain because of his role in the original attacks and that well, because you had to be a bad guy to be promoted to a commander. Firstly; scenes of Blaine actually participating in the original attacks were cut and are now being cited as part of the character history, and I’m not sure that works in their favour, as the original ones show him being sick and stunned at the violence anyway. It read more like someone who’d been roped into something that had quickly turned nightmarish and of which he now couldn’t escape. In season 3 Blaine said about the government “they don’t give a shit about us” and “once you get in bed with the government, it’s not so easy to get out”, not REALLY the words of an enamoured loyalist. Secondly; Blaine was promoted from a Eye to a Commander as a form of punishment from Fred for his insubordination, to have him sent to the front to die. These two singular moments should have been definitively painted to follow the writers intention from the beginning, but they weren’t and as a result his characters role in Gilead's conception and growth remained hazy at best. Again, not the audiences fault, the writers. Creators can't keep claiming they had an active loyalist on their hands all along when everything they ever showed their audience said otherwise. They can't keep claiming it in the face of the source material which completely contradicts them.

It’s pretty telling that audiences aren’t so much sad as angry about it. Writers are doubling down because well, they don’t have much choice. What’s done is done and they’re never going to take any of it back or admit any shortcomings. They’re never going to admit they sidelined and significantly altered a character from the source material. They’re never going to admit they out right IGNORED their audience and then proudly claimed to be listening to them. After analysing all of the diatribe and reasoning that the cast, writers and show runners have put forth I’ve come to a few simple conclusions about why Blaine was killed off. Firstly: Certain individuals could not tolerate the idea of a woman leaving her husband for another man, I believe this stems from a deep seated theological indoctrination that is ingrained into American society and consequently into ALL of their writing. It’s most evident in their attitudes to sex and love and these moralistic shackles severely restrict all of their plot and character development. My advice, go and learn from some of our British friends, they know how to write and their final seasons don’t look like a dogs breakfast. Secondly: He was used as a scapegoat for the rest of the Gilead four. Put simply, they had to have at least one bad guy. They needed Aunt Lydia for The Testaments, Serena was a mommy and Whitford baggsied "Not It" apparently. The death of Fred in season 4 created the lack of a necessary antagonist for the protagonist, and these writers simply couldn't use Serena, Lydia or Lawrence. One was a mommy, one was performing a redemption arc and the other was too cuddly. Nick, as the "other man" made the perfect candidate, he was mysterious, inconvenient and could be twisted into a loyalist with some sneaky back tracking. Unfortunately the source material and previous seasons said otherwise, ultimately they should have gone with Lawrence or even Serena as the fall out has been horrendous. Thirdly: they wanted to make a political statement about young males being recruited into neo fascism in America today. They were not concerned about breaking with literary integrity, character construct or even narrative symbolism in order to achieve it. As someone who has taught analysis of media and literature, I can honestly say, they should have been concerned, because it definitely looks fucking broken and it will cost these creators.

I’m still reeling from the fact that so many gossamer threads in this vast story line which could have been pulled together beautifully, were instead clumsily tangled or just abandoned. Replaced instead with plot lines delivered with a clumsy ignorance of how the audience would actually feel. Which sick fuck thought that plane trip into the abyss should be the Casablanca ending they were referring to all along? I’d prefer to leave The Handmaid’s Tale behind me at the end of season 4. Even though some of the constructs of Blaine’s character were already incorrectly portrayed by this point, it was during season 5 that show runners decided to truly begin Blaine's slide from ambiguous ally to Gilead loyalist. One of the biggest appeals of Nick Blaine was his mystery but it seems that during these last 2 seasons show creators were intent on stripping him of it and reducing him to nothing but a 2 dimensional family man who just turned to water at the mere sight of a strong father figure.

Miller’s Wilderness was possibly one of the most amazing television season finales I’ve ever seen, and it just never got any better than that. It set the story line up beautifully to lead into The Testaments, and he could have simply walked straight into his spin off with a few cameos to smoothen the transition. I don’t know why those writers were so afraid of the character dynamic between Nick and June, it was extraordinary and we’ll be lucky to see one like it ever again. From the beginning there was something about these two that the audience emotionally engaged with and if the writers had been smarter they would have truly acknowledged and embraced it. Instead their relationships sudden end, and the death of Nick Blaine, will become the one thing that follows this series around, and sticks in the craw of many viewers for years to come.

[glasskey]

There’s just no excuse for not getting my boy off the plane.

[glasskey]

[glasskey]

Hands up who wishes they'd just cancelled season 6 ?

[glasskey]

So apparently every other character gets maneuvered into place for The Testaments, except for Nick....sounds legit. How disappointing it was that we didn't even get a final face to face scene between Max and Lizzie, this season has just sucked the life out of this show. I honestly have no idea who that character was, the last time I actually saw Nick Blaine was 5 10. That character arc was brutally cut short and just SUCH a disappointing end for an amazing character. Don't EVEN get me started on Lawrence.....I'm also just realizing that I wrote in my last post that by episode 9 Nick would "be ashes". JFC....

[glasskey]

Season 6 WTF!

Am I the only one who thinks this season is almost a complete write off? A season that fucked up great characters and gave redemption arcs to everyone BUT the characters who deserved them? Promised revolution and then sat around doing absolutely nothing for episode after episode, waiting for the last 2 to finally take off? This is the FINAL SEASON….we waited 9 years….Season 6 WTF!

Honestly I can barely be bothered to watch this car crash anymore, they’ve performed a brutal character assassination on Nick Blaine (like I suspected they would) consequently sacrificing THE most engrossing character dynamic they had going for them. To say this was stupid would be underselling it. It was bad enough that they continually focused on comparatively the most bland pairing throughout the seasons, but to actually kill off any kind of connection between Nick and June really did the show no favours. Even watching the two of them fight at The Boston Globe was more engaging, simply because of the combustible character dynamic. As a result, without these two, for the most part unless Lawrence is in the room, I’m pretty fucking bored. They failed to beef out other character arcs earlier on and consequently they act as footnotes or accessories to Osborne. Lawrence remains engaging because of Whitfords ability to convey his delicious snarkiness and he painfulness of his recent nuptials. His interactions with Charlotte have been an unexpected delight. Shifting from demanding she be removed from his study at the beginning of the season, to stealing her away from her lessons to teach her chess, much to Naomi’s chagrin. Naomi is really earning her keep this season; her demands that Lawrence clean out the basement while June and Moira were squirrelled away down there, engaged in acts of rebellion was absolutely hysterical.

In terms of any type of actual character prediction or analysis for the rest of the season; in episode 3 Blaine said he said he couldn’t lose Osborn and now he truly believes he has, leaving him desolate and cold. He already appeared desperate in episode 7, he was mainlining whiskey in episode 8 and by episode 9 he’ll be fucking ashes. Wharton has dragged him under and by the end he’ll either kill Wharton to prove some sort of loyalty once again, be dragged back to Canada by Tuello in cuffs when the revolution goes down, (he’s still an asset even if he’s not embedded), be killed by Osborn as a test of character against Gilead, die like a dog defending her or some such combination of all of the above. I mean how fucking hard is it just to have a character join Mayday? To cross the border and join the underground? It’s pretty easy, they seem to be doing just fine with Lawrence and he’s probably the LEAST deserving of the two.

There’s a multitude of allusions to Blaine being killed off throughout this season, not to mention the litany throughout the previous seasons, and it’s very possible they’ll get Osborn to do it. They’re asking the audience to believe the mother of this mans child would actually kill him, when several episodes prior she was ready to leave her husband for him….it’s all pretty ridiculous and requires the audience to suspend their disbelief, but what would be different from the rest of the season at this point? It’s also a complete violation of Atwood’s text, but they already massacred Blaines character in terms of this, so you know, why stop now? The books state that he’s part of the underground and EVERY other character is being maneuvered into place so you would expect them to do the same for him. However given the ridiculous skewing of his character over the last season, I’m putting nothing past these writers at this point. Given his nonsensical character transformation and the just the ludicrous judgement being passed on such a benevolent character who fucked up once, I’m finding it reeeeaaally hard to get on board with punishing him in the final hours. It all just feels so unjustified after years of service. I’d be more inclined to feel like the writers just did his character really dirty than gave him his comeuppance. Even Osborne’s accusation “you’re just like all the others” seemed more completely unjustified and honestly just fucking harsh, instead of the moment of enlightenment that the writers had intended it to be. The meeting between Blaine and Osborne at the start kind of haunts me as the last time they met in a forest was 4 10 when they disposed of Fred. At that point Fred was expecting a son and Nick had said “for whatever a man sows, so shall he reap. You brought this on yourself commander” and June and a group of women appeared over the horizon. It may be a portent of Blaine’s fate because of the Jezebels, but again this feels horrifically unjustified.

The plot line to bust Nick and June apart was like watching a 3 stooges act put into motion by Luke and June themselves. How I was meant to feel sorry for the protagonist when all of this was just a comedy of errors as a result of hitting her favourite errand boy up for yet another favour, I’ll never know. Particularly when for the last 3 plus seasons I’d watched her sacrifice innumerable innocents for the sake of her own personal vendettas. It’s so clear to me that Tuello got greedy and should have just whacked the cuffs on Blaine by 6 03. Blaine had already gone dark and had basically told him point blank that he couldn’t fulfil his part of the deal because a fucking demon had moved into his house. June could see that he was fraying, she knew that he was in danger when he killed those guards and yet once again she let him walk away. This really was the point at which June should have said “Come with me” and not “See you later”, because ultimately she may as well have said goodbye. Sure Tuello would have tossed him in the lock up but hey, Fred got immunity from all that juicy intel all the way in Canada so why couldn’t Blaine? Plot hole, plot hole, plot hole. As it was they let him go, so ultimately these people are pretty complicit in what went down with the Jezebels. I, and everyone else for that matter, couldn’t help but notice that Mayday and the Nighthawks hadn’t given a fuck about them before, content to see them as collateral damage. They could wax lyrical all they liked but the fact was it was merely semantics, they were less concerned about them dying, than they were about the purpose for which they’d died. Had they died in the service of killing a bunch of commanders, Mayday would have valued their deaths, but because it was Blaine they saw it as a waste and a missed opportunity.

The hypocrisy throughout this season has been absolutely rampant, and I’ve found myself scoffing in disbelief constantly, at the double standards everywhere. Over and over I was told to accept that every one of Blaine’s decisions that brought about his demise was all his own fault, whereas other characters involved were absolved of their culpability in any way. I refuse to see the decent of his character as entirely his own fault, Blaine has spent over a decade being mentally conditioned by Gilead, with it just about to sink it’s claws in for good with a newborn child. Meanwhile Tuello wanted to send him back in there for fuck knows how long, all because he let him visit his girlfriend in the hospital for 5 minutes. It was stupid and greedy and he should have taken the intel he could get, by taking Blaine into custody at the border in season 5.

The writers have tried to use him to point out the soft fascist in the room, leaving it until the very last minute and seriously it’s not good enough. You can’t cast characters under a totally different persona for 5 seasons, then suddenly come out in the last season guns blazing for them and not expect your audience to get whiplash. This sort of thing results in that season being the one that gets purposefully shelved simply for it’s lack of character consistency. His transformation has also been ridiculously swift with the change between episode 6 and 8, the equivalent of a cartoonish reveal.

There was far too little Lawrence this season, I’m at a loss as to why they didn’t just send Lawrence back for those letters, I guess because it would have made sense….but no, had to go and call the boyfriend and consequently fuck up everything. Lawrence has been given far too much leeway this season, all of a sudden he and June are pals again after viciously fighting at the end of last season. I mean I know they wanted to switch things up and insert some exciting plot twists, but it really has been at the cost of any believability whatsoever. Truth is she and Luke would have been gunning for him after that shit went down with Hannah, but nope nothing. Just, here are all our secret plans Lawrence, promise you won’t fuck it up? Urgh.

Now, can someone please tell me who wants to watch Serena blather on about fertility centres (episode 8 and still nothing happening there btw) and weddings? How she could be so dense as to marry the King of all High Commanders, and not expect to be right back where she started, I’ll never know…but there you go. This all could have been avoided if Serena had just sat on the porch in her nice peaceful little commune, shotgun in hand, and when the Wheelers or Lawrence showed up, told them to just keep driving. I suspect Serena will actually end up a handmaid herself by the end but with the leniency the writers have shown her despite her horrific past deeds, who knows. The wedding itself in episode 8 was meant to be absolutely mental, and instead we all sat around and just wondered who’d eat the cake, and if Serena and Nick would spot June at the wedding.

Luke seems to be pretty MIA for someone so motivated to get shit done this season, but we’ll probably see him pop back up in episode 9 and 10. I recently saw in a clip OT saying he was looking forward to the part that he gets to take a swing at Blaine. I predicted this would happen earlier on and it really is just so trite of the writers to have the two objects of the protagonists affection engaging in fisty cuffs like fucking children. Luke’s already shown evidence of a sensitive ego in previous seasons, and this really doesn’t help to restore an image of security in his own masculinity. I was hoping to see some personal growth but it seems that even though he wants to be more pro active in retrieving Hannah, his ego remains an issue and has resulted in some ugly confrontations with June. Regardless of the outcome, the fact is that Blaine is an experienced Military commander, so asking the audience to believe that Bankole would actually manage to beat Blaine up is just sheer fantasy. Maybe if they’d squeezed in a montage of Luke doing drills I might be able to buy it.…but they didn’t, so we’re going to have to add that to the list of things I need to suspend my disbelief for in order to accept. I’m also at a loss as to why he’d want to beat the shit out of the man who is responsible for keeping his wife alive, and then saving his life as well. Certainly he thwarted their Mayday plan, and yes they fell in love (he should understand that better than anyone after that whole thing with Annie) but seriously he’s got a LOT more to be thankful for than he has to be pissed off about. Essentially his wife wouldn’t be alive and he’d have no idea where his daughter is, so yeah seems a bit fucked.

Overall this season I’m really getting the vibe that the writers have had to work overtime to make audiences dislike Blaine. They’ve essentially back pedalled their brains out and rewritten not only his character but also the nature of his relationship with the protagonist in order to do so, which should demonstrate exactly how desperate they were. All it’s really done is make me detach from the entire storyline because of my distrust in them to convey an accurate picture, or one that they wouldn’t completely dissolve at will in the future. It was an inevitable consequence. The hypocrisy throughout the season has been crazy and it’s most evident when it comes to this character and his relationship with the protagonist. We also didn’t get nearly enough Moira and with episodes coming in at 40 minutes long, it’s not like they didn’t have ample time to fill out the full hour with a proper character arc for her. If they’d used the full hour they could have had better character arcs for Luke, Moira, Janine, Lawrence, Nick and Rita. And seriously it’s a final season, episodes should BE the full hour long. Apparently there will be a lot of character deaths this season and the only way that has real impact is if you actually give a shit about them which requires proper character development. Right now Rita doesn’t have even close to the amount of character development that Lawrence has, so as a result the audience will care a lot less if she dies….and that’s regardless of whether that character “deserves” it or not. She was in charge of the cake soooooo yeah, probably not looking good for her. Apparently episode 9 is meant to be for the fans, so I guess they’ve worked out some way to magic Nick and June back together again, Blaine to finally go underground with Mayday, Serena to die a horrible painful death, Lawrence to get a massive amount of one liners and Janine to escape with Charlotte. Anything else tells me they’ve been living in an echo chamber failing to check in with their socials.

[glasskey]

Episode 6 - "Love Letter"

To say the recent bust up of Nick and June was seismic would be completely underselling it. From the beginning these 2 were no ordinary tv couple and this break up has a litany of facets to it, making it far more complex than most. I’ll be honest the mechanics that were employed by these writers left me vacillating between nauseous and enraged ever since it occurred. For those lining up to criticize the emotional investment in this romance, stay with me. I’m not arguing whether or not associated issues of fascism and patriarchal power are legitimate, my beef is HOW and WHEN these were made, why the fuck it wasn’t done earlier and WHY they dressed this character and connection up as something completely different.

These last few weeks have been a flood of what I can only term “damage control” in the press due to the episodes of The Handmaids Tale regarding Nick and Junes break up. Clearly the writers underestimated the audiences attachment to the couple and complexities involved in breaking them up. They clearly underestimated the brutal response that they would receive at trying to villainise one of their fan favourites in the final hours, and they deeply underestimated the anger which would be levelled not at the character but at themselves for it. Years of experience should have told them that sudden changes / reveals in beloved characters, in the final hours are received poorly. This type of character change was similarly lambasted in GOT, and for some strange reason they had not learnt. These writers also misjudged greatly the intricacies of this romance, and the consequences of the mechanics that they used to bring it to a close.

The writers and show runners bear full culpability for the audiences devotion to these two and the ensuing tsunami of disappointment at their break up. They bear the entirety of the blame for the damage that has been done and the anger they have received. They used every possible mechanic to construct an exquisite and epic love story, fanned the flames of it’s popularity right up until the last possible moment, dragged it out for ratings and then ended it in possibly the most callous way I’ve ever seen. They cast the participants as star crossed lovers separated by the regime for 5 years and then tried to swiftly rewrite the underlying mechanics of their relationship entirely in the final season. They used the slaughter of vulnerable women as an excuse to sever a relationship with a brutal finality, under the guise that it was a statement about soft fascism. By placing the murder of these women at such a quintessential moment in the series history, they lost all hope that any constructive dialogue would be undertaken about these women’s sacrifice for patriarchal power. They stole away its space as viewers became fixated on the seismic occurrence between the two after years of waiting. How could the writers be so shortsighted? We’d been told that this relationship would be brought to a “satisfying conclusion” during the course of this season, is this what they meant? I was horrified. In the following weeks writers then had the audacity to act surprised that audiences would feel angry and betrayed by a needlessly drawn out love triangle and the accompanying press that had baited them for years. What the fuck did they think was going to happen? These people either knew what they were doing for years, or they entered into this season having changed course radically. No matter which way you slice it, the method of this take down, made them look either incompetent, ignorant, cruel or all of the above. I think about the pages and pages of romantically laced PR released by writers and show runners to actively encourage the belief in this union and I feel physically ill that they would actually construct something so emotionally manipulative.

Lines of dialogue used by characters during the final analysis of this relationship, contained references to the fact that they’d reduced the character of Nick and Nick and June’s relationship to one of simple necessity, lust and physical attraction. This was after years of firmly establishing a loving, emotional connection with a fully fleshed out character. It turned the writers exercise in “enlightenment” about soft fascism, into a pointed thinly veiled accusation of superficiality. Fans of the two who were ENCOURAGED to believe in the genuine nature of both this character and their relationship, were now being accused in the most underhanded manner, of being nothing but pathetic “fan girls”. For years writers had delivered Nick and June’s love story as one of “love between the barricades”, but they were now suddenly stating that both the protagonist and the audience were blind to soft fascism as long as it came in attractive packaging. It was the equivalent of luring the audience with a genuinely beautiful love story and then accusing them of condoning fascism, simply because they had been naive enough to BELIEVE them and become entangled in it. The fact is, you don’t get to package something up like a Hallmark greeting card, and criticise your audience for appreciating it, when you decide you want to rebrand the whole thing. It is little wonder that audiences were seething with indignant rage.

From season 1 we’d been told that Blaine had forsaken his own happiness to care for his family, was loyal and caring and was manipulated and targeted for this regime. We’d been told repeatedly in the press that he was a “good man” riddled with regret. A Blaine that was made to perform heinous acts (often at June’s behest or for her benefit), surveilled and entrapped. A Blaine that had endangered his own life to help others, a man who had to sneak around for the chance to HOLD HIS OWN CHILD…… and I was now being asked to believe that this same man had full autonomy all along. Writers had constantly labeled Blaine the only “Good man in Gilead” with Tuello calling him an “honorable man” in the final moments of season 5. NOW I was being asked to accept that he’d actually been an ambitious ladder climbing fascist the entire time, refusing to leave, dripping in Nazi war spoils. A free man does not have to marry a child bride while the woman he loves watches on. That's just not a fucking thing. I always enjoyed Blaine as the noir drenched assassin, slipping into no mans land covertly to visit Osborne, trade intel and slaughter the odd foe. But this weak, pathetic, greedy, dutiful yes man was just a sad shadow of his former ambiguous complexity. After seasons and seasons of building him to be nuanced, writers reduced him to nothing more than a 2 dimensional, egomaniacal, self indulgent, spoilt brat and claimed he’d just been keeping it well hidden all along. Fucking please.

The sudden twisting of Blaine’s acts of sacrifice into one’s of selfishness defy belief. Suddenly everything he’s ever done has been simply to possess her…..including helping her escape….twice….and that file about Hannah….which he never thought he’d give to her in person. I mean at least make this shit believable. Instead of the “good man” we’d been led to believe Blaine was for the last 5 seasons, I was now being asked to believe that there was nothing he wouldn’t do to save his own skin. Worse still, the writers actually thought it would be believable that Osborne had the right to judge him for the death of any innocents on the path to survival. Excuse me? In season 2 June demanded Blaine sleep with his 15 year old child bride, because “I can’t lose you”. While Eden had given consent, she was a minor and technically this constituted rape at Osborne's behest, for the sake of keeping Blaine alive. In season 4 when Osborn poisoned a swathe of commanders at a Jezebels, she was well aware, from former experience that Gilead would clean house. She did it anyway. She handed over the handmaids to ensure Hannahs safety, even though the idea that a High commanders daughter would actually be sacrificed was utterly ludicrous. The audacity of Osborne now stomping her feet self righteously, forsaking Blaine after previously ordering him to rape and murder for her, was absolutely unbelievable. June has more blood on her hands than most and quite often the casualties of her personal war are innocents. The multitude of Marthas and Jezebels killed in the course of Osborne's crusades caused a Martha to warn Blaine in season 4 “you’re better off without her, everyone who helps her ends up on the fucking wall”. He’s ignored repeated warnings not to get sucked into cyclone Osborne and doubtless he’ll end up paying the price. In season 2 Blaine recited Corinthians to Osborn as a reassurance that he loved her, in season 4 he recited The Armor of God to her to give her fortitude as she underwent torture. At the end of episode 7 Osborn recited Psalm 23 as a pointed message about having the fortitude to kill Blaine. It’s just one in a swathe of examples of how writers have made a swift about face in this character relationship, and I for one will not sit idly by and have it fed to me as though it was some sort of pre determined natural progression. I remain unconvinced that Blaine would have ever chosen Gilead above June, and I’m basing that opinion on years and years of plot lines, character information, and press releases that were FED TO ME by the writers. I am not alone. I also don’t believe that spilling the beans to Wharton about Mayday’s plot when cornered and terrified, constitutes making a free autonomous choice about loyalties. Um no. That’s like saying that coercive control equals full autonomy, and that's just not a thing I’m afraid. Nick Blaine is by nature a planner and honestly, I’m a bit fucking sus about the whole thing given that Blaine had passports and papers all good to go for he and Osborne to leave permanently……call me crazy but fleeing the country doesn’t really scream loyalist. He also dropped everything on the one day he was meant to get up and perform for Gilead, in 6 03 to come running to her. The fact was he chose her, and ultimately she’d chosen him too, they were a breath away from leaving, but yet again Gilead fucked them.

June returned to Luke after the horrific incident in episode 7, having had her autonomy in the decision between these two men completely stripped from her by a mans actions. Once again nothing more than an archaic love triangle. In episode 6 she was a breath away from dumping said hubby and running off with Nick, and any “Team Luke” fans should actually be pretty pissed off, that the best that these writers could serve them was some paltry left overs after everything with Nick went sideways. It was also all a bit distasteful and pathetic that she practically crawled back to him in the same episode, after an ugly and humiliating confrontation. In front of a room full of strangers Luke had yelled at her for being “in love with a Nazi”. Ironically not several episodes prior Luke had called Nick “bro” and hugged the man for saving him. Now he was actually berating his wife for trusting and loving a man who had cared for and ensured her survival for years. I was stunned by the hypocrisy and quite frankly I was just utterly confused as to what the writers message was. Was he a fascist or not?

The majority of the audience have not viewed this marriage as a realistically sustainable nor healthy bond for years. Despite the writers efforts to reconnect them, most audience members have viewed their efforts as less like rebuilding and more like constant attempts to resuscitate. The fact that Luke and June had failed to discuss June still being in love with Nick for years, did nothing to testify to the health of communication in their marriage. These writers seem to be confused between what exactly they are trying to depict; a thinly veiled reflection of reality or a fictional scenario, because in the real world the chances of June and Luke’s marriage being intact, statistically are absolutely fucking zero. You combine the loss of a child, separation for nearly a decade, the love for another partner and deep trauma, and the math is clear. In reality Nick would not be running to and fro across the border either, he’d have been discovered and shot by Gilead for being a traitor years ago. Luke and June’s marriage is a rampant fantasy legitimised as somehow an actual reality, if it has merit, then so too does the scenario where Nick and June get to run away to Hawaii, and that’s been painted as a complete daydream.

In the end if the writers intention is that June be alone, I’ve no doubt it will be framed as her “finding the strength to stand alone”, but given that these two relationships are being whittled down to such pathetic options, it’s hardly a “feminist” outcome to give her little recourse.

After the disaster with Nick it seemed unbelievable that the actual Architect of Gilead was then paraded out to scold her for her poor judgment. Ironically he seemed pretty buddy buddy with the person who’d admitted involvement in the death of his beloved Eleanor (oops there’s another body Osborne). June composed herself and joined forces with THE most complicit individual in the construction of Gilead, responsible for the murder and enslavement of millions of women, happily rearranging her plans without hesitation. This not only put a gaping hole in the protagonists (and writers) reasoning for cutting ties with Blaine, but also proved his point entirely and almost immediately, about her not giving a shit about the dirty side of patriarchal power, as long as it served her purposes.

Meanwhile Mayday and Luke, not 15 minutes earlier, having unleashed scorn on Osborn for being stupid enough to trust a commander, allowed Lawrence to calmly stroll into their camp and were now gathered around detailing their next super secret mission to him. The SAME commander that had foiled their attempt to retrieve Hannah in season 5 and told June point blank that he wasn’t giving her daughter back. The SAME commander who had told Blaine that it was okey dokey if they took pot shots at her. This was a fucking joke right? Osborn seemed happy to selectively kill commanders leaving Lawrence as the last man standing, but what did she think Lawrence was going to do with New Bethlehem? Was she actually naive enough to think that he wouldn’t go straight back to his old world building ways? Did Holly’s words “They’re all like that!” just apply to Nick when scolding her naivety about the nature of commanders? Exactly how selective was this messaging to audiences going to be? This character arc of Blaine’s feels personal, and how could it not when he seems to be being held up to an entirely different moral standard than all the others in the room? I couldn’t help but suspect that the entire thing was simply a manipulation to correct previous character construction, while disposing of a contender in a love triangle of their own making, who was persisting to dog the writers.

If the characters relationships weren’t consistent, why on earth would I believe that character constructs were? Particularly when all of a sudden out of the blue the writers were claiming the right to cite character information that they’d neglected to mention for years. If the character construct of Blaine, a central character in the protagonists life, wasn’t consistent, who’s to say any of the others were? Why would audiences accept these schizophrenic maneuverings as cannon? I watched as the audiences disbelief rippled outwards, calling into question all of the characters and their plot lines and inevitably causing the 4th wall to crumble. Suddenly they wanted answers, and as well they might.

What’s to say that Naomi wasn’t about to suddenly sprout horns and start running around her parlour room giggling manically? Perhaps Serena could start inviting June and Rita over for scones and tea…..oh hang on. Apparently Luke came out of jail magically transformed from essentially a bookworm to a wannabe revolutionary. Certainly it’s very valid that he actively wants to be involved in the retrieval of his daughter but the fact is for the last 5 seasons the man never dipped toe over the border. He had to be extricated from his house in Canada under threat of arrest, still refusing to take the impending threat from Gilead seriously even after his wife was run over right outside the front door. Now suddenly he’s tinkering with explosives, something he has no experience with and shown absolutely no aptitude for. I would have bought it if they’d just given him a chart, a map or some authority to delegate because by nature he’s clearly a very capable strategist. It would have also gone a long way to establishing him as an individual with some inner strength, instead of merely June’s shadow. Now here we have Nick vaulting from dark guardian to a self interested traitor lurking under the protagonists nose…despite all evidence to the contrary….for 5 long seasons. Yep, sounds legit.

Minghella recently gave an interview stating that now he felt as though he’d been playing his character incorrectly all along given his current transformation. It’s extremely telling that the actor themselves has been completely blindsided by last minute character developments that re alter their perception of the character they’ve inhabited for years. The character that they were given meticulous direction for throughout the last 5 seasons. The evidence of which lies in detailed scripting notes for the entire world to see. I don’t believe these writers when they say that this was always their intent to deliver this transition all along, and neither should he. I don’t know how emotionally invested he was in this character but I do know that if you feel that after years of effort and work, you should have done your job differently, it must fucking hurt. I’ll say this right now, this won’t be any failing on his part. If they planned it and didn’t entirely fill him in on character aspects, then it’s on them, if they changed his character in the final hours, then it’s on them. A large portion of the audience seem to feel betrayed and I wouldn’t blame Minghella for feeling the same. Like any actor would, he’s dutifully towed the line about what “a bold and interesting choice” this all was, I think that’s being incredibly kind, which seems on brand. A self confessed romantic, he stated that he’d always viewed the romance as a source of light but now he viewed it under a more nihilistic lens. This really was the most polite way I’ve ever heard anyone say that something beautiful had been turned it into a smoking fucking wreck. The image of Blaine and Osborne holding their child together at the end of season 2 and in 4 09 will be burned forever into my psyche. The shot of them standing in that golden window naming their daughter, dreaming of a better life, is forever suspended in amber. And I’ll be fucked if I let them snatch it back, all the while mocking me for ever believing any of it was real. Not on my watch. If they wanted me to see a weak willed, duplicitous, monster, then they shouldn’t have draped him in loyalty, love, righteous justice and yearning for years. They built him over 5 seasons, and now they want to hastily reconstruct him over 10 short episodes? Well it’s too late. These writers should have known better than to simply think they could rewrite history and get away with it. Personally I’m not surprised that fans circled the writers like a bunch of vicious handmaids at a Salvaging. I’m not debating whether or not Nick has benefited from patriarchal power. He has, that’s just a fact. You’re a man in Gilead, you benefit, it’s a patriarchal society…..and so is ours….which is kind of the point. See the difference here is merely in degrees, and we’re having a mirror mashed into our faces. Just a shame that they failed to truly establish that image of him in earlier seasons, in fact they made pains to edit out parts of his persona and instead constructed a portrait of the dark, romantic protector. Now they’re wondering why people are confused. The fact was that he’d moved well beyond his role as merely a driver and an eye, a simple cog in the wheel, and was now acting as the hand that turned it. He’d been a commander for years, yet writers continued to label him as “a good man in Gilead”, insinuating that he was the exception to the rule. Now in the final season they wanted to undo this entire image, giving the majority of the audience whiplash. They wanted to backtrack and say “we know we called him a Good man in Gilead for FIVE SEASONS, but here’s all this other shit we forgot to tell you about”. It’s just not good enough. Suddenly the writers were screaming phrases like “Nazi” and “fascist” about a character they themselves had painted as extremely benevolent throughout the years, opening fans of the duo to online “Pro fascism” criticism, when they’d simply been following the writers own cues about the character for years. What the actual fuck?

This relationship has established itself as a thematically timeless love story, over 5 seasons and now they expected audiences to detach from that in the space of 4 short episodes. In the process they have also in effect poisoned this entire, beautiful love story that they worked so hard to construct right down through the seasons, making rewatches excruciating if not impossible. They were like a port in the storm and with this one act, they took it all away leaving nothing but death, darkness, betrayal and PTSD. I also sensed that writers would not be content with the brutal severing of this relationship, they were seeking to convince audiences that Blaine’s love for June had never actually been genuine. Instead it had been a selfish desire to posses her, much like Fred’s. Blaine stood up and declared in episode 6 08 at Serena’s wedding that Rose’s child was his “mine own child first and forever”, effectively relinquishing his parentage over Holly. I was disgusted. These writers would not be content until the last vestiges of this union were dead. This cold severing of any parental bond served the writers as a "deal breaker" for the relationship. With Blaine now having disowned his own child, writers would be guaranteed that the audience saw him as a monster and easily hop on board with the protagonist trying to kill the father of her child, whom she’d loved for years. This will of course be presented to the audience as “a final test of strength” but it’s not, it’s a disturbing depiction of domestic violence being justified under the guise of righteous justice. At the beginning of the season the writers and show runners had claimed this season was “for the fans” but they knew full well that at least 80% were invested in this character and duo and THAT is entirely on them. I don’t know how they convinced themselves that the majority of fans would want to see these two broken up because they couldn’t have been clearer about it for years and years. Fans have also been begging for Blaine to be moved underground for years as well and I seriously doubt that’s ever going to happen. So no, it’s not for the fans, it’s for the writers. The writers who’d fucked up and decided at the last minute to try and fix their mistake. It’s for the writers, so they could console themselves in the last few short episodes that they did their duty of pointing out the soft fascist in the room after feeding their audience the very opposite of it for years. It’s for the writers so hell bent on covering up their mistake that they want to erase it entirely by rewriting history. I have no doubt that they thought they were being “edgey” and clever by having the two pitted against one another this season, but let’s face it, it has simply served to highlight some serious fundamental shortcomings. This is not a “love letter”, this is not even the apology they owe their audience for this incredible campaign to gaslight them, this is more like a finger in the mail. I'm a pragmatist so I actually never expected the two of them to end up together, but neither did I expect this absolute annihilation of their relationship and ridiculous character assassination in the eleventh hour.

[glasskey]

Episode 6

After last weeks episode, some press releases and exchanging comments with Tuchman online it’s now become abundantly clear that these writers have done something so incredibly cruel to their audiences that I can’t even. After 5 1/2 seasons and 9 years they have crushed the hopes of 90% of their fanbase.

I’m still processing, but I’ve really tried to articulate this as best I can. 

In episode 2 Holly called Nick a Nazi, setting him up for a monumental take down and of course here we are….subtle? No. Predictable? Of course not. For years now, show runners have made a huge effort to construct an intricate and utterly gorgeous love story the likes of which we’ll be lucky to ever see again….and then they poisoned it in the eleventh hour. They spent years building up trust in a character who for all intents and purposes shouldn’t be trusted…..and then they stabbed the audience in the back. It’s vicious and cruel and after viewer loyalty through Covid and writers strikes, you get to hate them for it. After having the audacity to call this season a “love letter for the fans” you absolutely have permission. 

To say I’m surprised they did this would be an understatement, the fact is I never thought they’d be this stupid. Any social media posting could have told them the math on the price they would pay in terms of ratings and profits, but it’s more than that, they’ll pay in trust. From now on their audience will never trust them again, they’ll pay dearly for it with The Testaments because well, who’s going to watch a show with their name on it, when audiences have already been so brutally kicked in the face? These writers can try to justify this all they like but the fact remains that they withheld character information until the last moment only to pile it on, expect their audience to lap it up and emotionally detach from a character that they’d loved for years and years. It doesn’t work like that. In the absence of complete character transparency, people construct their own history and from the small amounts they were given they developed a portrait of Nick Blaine that was deeply sympathetic and grew to love him. To expect an audience to emotionally detach from a character and “re evaluate”, as Tuchman said, in the final 4 episodes is insane. It demonstrates exactly how out of touch these writers are with how much their fanbase has bonded with these characters and this duo in particular. People don’t simply change over to Team Luke, they just turn off. This love triangle was dragged out for years simply for viewer engagement, but worse than that it was heavily romanticised, reeling audiences in and cutting them off at the knees brutally after a bait and switch in the last season. I’m particularly mortified by the inclusion of such scenes including Blaine reading Corinthians, given their ultimate intent. What the actual fuck? They could have performed their villain reveal years ago but they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. To add insult to injury it completely negated any autonomous choice the protagonist would have to make about this love triangle, to bring it to a close. Once again a mans actions determined the outcome of a relationship. By revealing a character as an “illusion” of the protagonists mind, they will also in effect completely poison the ENTIRE existing love story as being nothing more than a cheap deception. It’s one of the most toxic things I’ve seen a writing team ever do. 

Unfortunately it doesn’t matter if they suddenly have Nick Blaine sprout wings and fly out all the fucking Handmaids, the damage is done. They’ve effectively cast doubt upon him and he’s already had to work overtime to earn that trust. The only noble thing for him to do now is for him to die and that’s probably what they have planned. I mean fuck it, they’ve completely violated all of the rest of the text so why not go the whole hog? 

I’ve heard about fans crying over this, LITERALLY crying and I can’t say I blame them. This show feels like PTSD and these two were the only bright thing in it. What struck me was that they weren’t crying that Nick had done something awful or that Nick and June had broken up, they were crying that the writers had done this. And that really is the point; they won’t hate Nick Blaine for it, they wont REALLY believe that he betrayed June after this long….they’ll just hate those writers for ruining something so beautiful. I know I will. 

[glasskey]

Episode 5

The Handmaid’s Tale is not a comedy, but this week there were a bunch of moments that were so darkly funny I couldn’t help but laugh. Let’s just run down this weeks highlights.

First victim this week was Lawrence. Poor Lawrence; he told Bell that no one liked or respected him and then found out that it was actually the other way around. To add insult to injury Lawrence finally learned that New Bethlehem was being used as a trap. Lawrence has done it again built a world that he believed would be better, only to have it corrupted by these black hearted little fuckers. Pretty sure that Lawrence will be happy to help Jezebels go boom boom once he squeezes the details out of June and Moira. These bombs at Jezebels are giving me a very season 4 vibe. Given that Blaine delivered those in Chicago, we’d all better hope that he continues to stay away from Jezebels in the future

Janine showed up to be reunited with June and Moira, with June asking her to come along and Moira saying no. It all seemed very reminiscent of Moira sneaking June back from Chicago. Just like Chicago, I’m not sure our Janine is going to be making it out. The fact that the letters got locked in the safe, speaks to how these women's voices are silenced once again.

June and Moira had a spat over who has the most PTSD and then almost on cue a beligerent rapey guardian walked in to bust up their discussion, giving the two of them the opportunity to work their shit out old school. Cleansing.

Turns out Serena will sell out her principles, and her eternal soul to the Prince of Darkness for a library. Guess all Tuello really ever needed to do was get her a voucher for Barnes & Noble and the whole thing would have been done and dusted season 5. Live and learn.

Last but not least, Nick Blaine stopped by the hospital to tie up some loose ends. Highlights for me included Blaine being called “an angel” (wrong kind of angel hun), and Nick talking about the little fellas doggy. They really cranked the volume up to 11 on this one. Apparently he’s just an innocent little guardian, who REALLY admires Nick and the first thing he wants when he wakes up is to see his dog. This was so obvious in it’s efforts to convince audiences that Blaine was now just murdering random innocents, that I laughed out loud. Is this The Handmaid’s Tale or Old Yeller? Fuck that stormtrooper. My black little heart can’t wait for the day that Blaine burns the whole place to ash.

This will obviously have wider repercussions, but I can’t help but notice that ALL of this is the direct result of Luke and Moira’s decision to lie to June and fuck off to Mayday. Once again Nick is left to clean up the mess, he’ll get no thanks of course and end up paying the price. But honestly, what would you have him do? Tuello won’t let him leave across the border, he had to protect June, Luke and Moira, and last but not least, if he’s found to be a rebel not only he, but all the members of his household will end up on the wall. So yeah. Not really feeling the villain vibe here.

As a side note, this episode kicked in at less than 40 minutes which is pretty poor, especially for a last season. Fans have been buttered up by the PR machine for over a month about how jam packed this season was going to be and how this was Nick and June’s season. Here I am watching ridiculously short episodes with milked sections of dialogue tying up precious time and once again crammed with Luke and June trying to resuscitate their long dead relationship. It was bad in season 4, it was worse in season 5, now it’s just torture. Blaine is a fan favourite, where is he? Nick and June and Serena and June are fan favourite character dynamics, where are they? Exactly how is this a season designed for the fans? Apart from June reuniting with her mother and episode 3, the season so far has been somewhat lack lustre. Perhaps it would have time to get off the ground, but with episodes this short, it barely stands a chance.

[glasskey]

What Did Nick Do?

Or rather, what is Nick gonna do? there’s been a lot of talk this season about just how Nick is going to betray our young June and I’ve been giving this some heavy thought as well.

Mark Tuello - Nick has made a deal that he’s having trouble fulfilling and Tuello is now straight up threatening to expose him for it. We all know what Nick will do to survive, and if you think he’s going to let some bratty little diplomat with a knife to his throat undo him, well think again. He made that deal to see June and he got what he wanted. Blaine has been living in Gilead for a decade or more and has no illusions about his future, as much as Tuello would like to have him believe that he will be able to leave and make a life with his daughter, Blaine knows he’s now firmly in Gilead’s stranglehold. The scene in the forest between Nick, June and Tuello had a considerable sense of foreshadowing about it; one of them would end up dead and out of the two of them Nick’s the killer. Tuello is his figurative bridge to a life with June and Holly, if he sets fire to it, you can say goodbye to that forever.

Holly - So writers are cueing up everything really well that is contained in The Testaments, give or take a few details and one of those things is the demand for Holly to be returned and for her to be hidden as a result. I’ve become a wee bit suspicious about how convenient the connection is between Nick, Serena, Wharton and Rose. If Wharton becomes aware of the existence of Holly and her true parentage, he may demand her back and strong arm his son in law into doing so. It would not be a hard stretch of the imagination that either Serena or Rose would make Wharton aware of it. I imagine it may become an even greater possibility should Rose lose her baby. I’m not saying Nick would WANT to do it, I’m just saying that once that genie is out of the bottle, he’s going to find it really, really, really hard to say no. It’s particularly telling that we had that whole little scene at the beginning of the season where June argued with her mother about how much Nick loved Holly and wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. Trust me, she’ll NEVER forgive him for this one.

The Red Dress - ANYTHING that Nick does that results in June being put back into that red dress. If that happens, that’s it, it’s all over. This speaks volumes about what he as a member of the patriarchy will do to a woman to hold onto his position of power. Even if he doesn’t do it directly, the point will be that he is a passive facilitator and believe me, THAT is the writers true intent. Throughout the seasons we’ve seen Nick identify June as an individual and make concerted efforts to help her escape, so the action of now placing her back in that dress is huge. It’s also something that will “open her eyes” and tell her that mummy dearest was right all along. I believe that writers may have changed course to de romanticize this character and include him as just another member of the patriarchy that the protagonist was previously blind to. It’s a sharp turn from the sole male character amongst the swamp who recognized her autonomy and acknowledged her identity.

Mayday - He saved Luke and Moira at the start of the season, shooting two guards in the process, now Wharton is not impressed with the violation of security and he’s already not convinced at all about New Bethlehem. New Bethlehem was Lawrence's idea and already Nick isn’t listening to Lawrence anymore. If Wharton wants to go old school Gilead and shut off the escape routes for refugees, will Nick play along? What happens to Rita? What about June, Luke, Moira and Janine once they go in through the trade routes and can’t get out? Last season we saw Nick tell June that he had to protect his family any way that he can and last episode Rita said she’d do anything for her family and he agreed. So just what exactly would he do for his son?

I'm really hoping that whatever it is, it happens sooner rather than later, because at least we'll have some leeway to turn this thing around. With some of these it's easy to see how once it's done it's done, so let us all form a chanting circle, it’s time to start praying for his soul.

[glasskey]

Season 6 Track 1 - 4 Breakdown

Season 6 is here and I’m going to kick this off by dismantling the first 4 episodes and throwing in some season 6 predictions as well. I’m not candy coating any of this, I’m just going to rip it open and tell you what’s inside. Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m sure Miller and co. have insta pages so go nuts.

There’s an eery and almost supernatural quality to some of the shots this season. It’s a dream, a memory and as such the light glows ethereally, the leaves swirl and dance and conversely a veil of sinister darkness descends.

Season 6 is in effects a replay of season 1 and 2 where everyone gets a second shot at past mistakes, a do over that comes in various familiar forms. We’ve got a bit of switcheroo happening in parts as well, with Nick as the town mayor, in a big house, with a wife as opposed to “low status, lives above the garage, hasn’t even been issued a woman”. Serena is set to hook up with Fred 2.0 and start Queening it up in New Bethlehem. In episode ONE she snuck off with Holly on the train, possibly foreshadowing a return her old baby snatching ways. Nicks once again been buttered up by a creepy old guy, after a bout of fisty cuffs and everyone will now have to run the gauntlet of past regrets, mistakes and missed chances. Wharton appears as a major player in both their lives so where will Nick and Serena land because of his influence once the dust clears?

This season is a journey that both Serena and June will take down opposing roads, and on closer inspection you will see the comparisons right from episode 1. While June is reunited with her mother in reality, Serena dreams of her father. While Holly speaks of Nick with disdain, Serenas father asks to be introduced to Fred. Where will these paths ultimately end? This week we saw Junes bond with Luke slowly separate as she spoke about the loss of Hannah breaking them apart, while Serena drew closer to Wharton. Luke had refused to return to Alaska to Holly and become a family, while Serena and Wharton will soon marry and do just that. The subject of Nick and Fred was also raised in conversation with their respective partners, with Luke accusing June of “wanting to go back in to fight” a veiled allusion to her reconnecting with Nick. Meanwhile Serena referred to Fred as “an albatross”, an obstruction to her success. If Serena continues her thirst for power and her association with Wharton it’s very likely we will see June break ties with Luke and go their separate ways, while re establishing a connection with Nick.

Our initial shot of Blaine is in cuffs, set free at the family home where his dour wife and sinister father in law are waiting for him. Gilead was making it clear from the get go, if he behaved like a good little boy, he’d get out of his bonds. Let’s not get confused, Blaine wasn’t actually getting out of prison, it was just more luxurious. Rose is not June, the beach that Blaine gazes out on is not the illusive Hawaii, its empty and isolated. Wharton's waiting for him already, it’s clear Rose's worded him up about Osborne and here comes the speech about “putting away childish things” Blaine turns his back to the beach view, Hawaii is always just out of reach, a part of Blaine can’t bear to look anymore and Wharton is making it clear it’s best forgotten.

I’ve now come to know Miller as the evil genie in the lamp, tell him your wish and he’ll give you the very worst conceivable version of it. From the moment Nick walked into Lawrences office and quipped that he “didn’t have the power or the capability” to have June killed I could tell this was not going to be a cozy Nick and June season. So who did have the power Nick? We ended 5 10 with the young commander so full of gusto, to take who ever was responsible in hand and now nothing? No follow up? Perhaps it was the imposing father in law now bunking in his house, who was constantly surveilling and timetabling his day to day. Blaine was rightfully scared and it was only a matter of time before he ditched his deal with Tuello. Josh Charles is brilliant this season as the quietly menacing Wharton. Silver tongued and super creepy, he seems to know exactly what everyone wants and offers it to them like a juicy deliciously cursed apple. His ability to disarm his victim with grovelling self effacement, slide under their radar and acquire power over them with velvet stealth is truly awe inspiring. While Serena was flattered by his advances, I’d never felt more inclined to unleash some mace. It takes all of a nano second for him to start slobbering sweet nothings into Nicks ear, about being “full of potential”. Potential for what? With a C.V. like Blaine’s I could only imagine.

Personally I’m really not keen on this look for Blaine, it’s a world away from the Nick we’ve known in previous seasons and a wee bit too. Dante’s Inferno for my taste. This swing around profile shot demonstrates the beginning of his descent into darkness, figuratively turned by the imposing figure of his father in law. Blaine essentially looks like a demon which I found a touch heavy handed, but never mind, he’s now decided to go dark on Tuello and off to Hades we go. The whole scene is a call back to S4 03 when Lawrence asked Nick to let Osborne go and he refused. His actions here represent a loss of hope of a chance at a life with Osborne, it’s something he never expected anyway “a pipe dream”, and besides Gilead wants to give him more of that delicious power. He hasn’t seen her in months and something is always better than nothing at all. It seems that Gileads never done trying to tear these two apart. In episode 4 we saw Nick being pulled between Lawrence and Wharton at the High Commander ceremony with Wharton winning the bout. It’s only 4 episodes deep and Blaine seems to be falling in line already. Lawrence built New Bethlehem with the idea that a brutal regime be dismantled, but Wharton's no moderate and he has no intention of losing a very effective enforcer. Blaine’s brutal, clinical, determined and best of all malleable.

They’ve already given him a new car thats pretty much the equivalent of the figurative “pale horse” that death rode in on. Pitch black, sleek and designed to slip away stealthily at breakneck speeds, it’s headlights glowing like demonic eyes. It’s the essential accessory for every aspiring villain.

Unfortunately for these writers, this seasons Nick “fresh from the lock up” Blaine, oozing with fuck off and complete with hot new wheels just keeps scoring points. If they were trying to make the resident bad boy look even badder, hotter and simultaneously more disarming then mission accomplished. Blaine was now noir flavoured cat nip. There were signs that Blaine wasn’t exactly keen about his deal with Tuello from the get go, because of the amount of untrained civilian rebel fighters that Tuello was calmly throwing at Gilead military forces to be slaughtered. June expressed similar misgivings and while I could see their perspective, Tuello was not about to lay down and let his country be taken without a fight.

“Devotion” makes it clear that while Nick may run to June’s beck and call, he won’t come for Tuello or anyone else. His devotion was to her and her alone. He had no loyalty to Mayday and the words “I had to, I had to see you” about his arrangement with Tuello, told me that he’d been driven into his deal for no other reason than Osbornes safety. While she was touched, it fairly raised the question about how Nick actually felt about Gilead itself? He’s become very comfortable “staying out of trouble” doing absolutely jack fuck all about the Handmaids until now so in the final analysis, what WAS he actually prepared to do about it? It’s a larger question the show is circling about male complacency and facilitation in the act of violence against women. Blaine pick up your feet.

Nick and June meet in the forest in a glorious golden light, there’s an aura of peaceful seclusion and I was reminded of that majestic wooden bridge in 4 03. Previously their solitude had been broken by a Gilead van creeping down the drive, this time Tuello was waiting. These two would get no peace from either of their countries. “Why would they do that? It’s dangerous” Blaine commented when Osborne made him aware of Luke and Moiras trek across the border. The statement itself revealed that he thought the rebellion risked too much. After a bit of to and fro Blaine finally offered to go and retrieve the two himself, “I’m coming with you” June says, a callback to her and Luke’s expedition into No Man’s Land in season 5. This time I had to chuckle when Blaine wearily told her to “get in the back”. “I know, I know” June replied….here we go the old team is back together.

The deserted waterpark was desolate and abandoned and yet Nick and June’s conversation took place once again in a sheltered area covered in greenery so reminiscent of S2 12 and S5 09. Previously Blaine had been stitched closed with loyalty, but the edges were fraying and now he just seemed desperate. He was feeling isolated, lonely, used up and worst of all abandoned. I had sensed in S5 09, a deep pain in Blaine that she had a life outside of him and he’d been left behind in Gilead to rot. And rot he did. The glimmer of hope from her constant distant glow, just out of reach was utter fucking torture and to be honest he couldn’t take it anymore. ““Do you even know what it’s like to be in love with you?” Was she ignorant to his pain or did she simply not care?

It’s obviously incredibly tense at home and he’s getting a lot of shit because of June. “If I even think about you, Rose can smell it on me”, the pressure at home was enormous, even his thoughts were being monitored. Rose could sense Osbornes constant visceral presence and there was a quiet desperation that Blaine could barely contain any longer around June. He was utterly obsessed, even Tuello knew that he would drop everything and come running on the one day he was meant to show up to perform for Gilead. His preoccupation with June was starting to cost a lot, and it was all beginning to wear thin. He felt forced into his agreement with Tuello because he had to see her, he HAD to see her. His compulsions had him cornered, she may not want to put him in any danger but the fact was it was irrelevant, he could NOT help himself.

Now she was here to ask him to rescue her husband of all people. “You have a whole life” “Do I? Cause I’m not so sure I do when I’m around you” he said. It suddenly became clear, he believed she’d chosen, she appeared in his life so very briefly so infrequently, if she would just go away and “stay safe” he’d stop losing pieces of himself over and over and over again. As it was, her bi annual reappearances were a reminder of the smallness of his life, no sooner had he drifted off to a submissive slumber, than there she was again to wake him. Osborne the waking dream and nightmare all in one. I suspected this season he would try and cut her out of his heart for his own self preservation and it would break him.

I sensed an argument blossoming. Aside from the hopeless romantic something lies deep inside of Blaine, the pain of being abandoned over and over and a quiet desperation to silence it no matter the cost. With creepy Wharton waiting in the wings to adopt his new protege, dip him in the buttery goodness of Gilead power and bake him for 40 minutes, I could only guess at the monumental struggle Blaine had before him to not be swallowed whole by the monsters that dwelled within. I wasn’t so sure he’d be able to truly make it through the fire. “I can’t lose them, they’re a part of me” June had said about Luke and Moira, a call back to season 2. “I feel that way about you, I only feel that way about you” Blaine had replied. This is a callback to S2, when Blaine had first told her he loved her, and here we were again.

This episode makes a point of wheeling out the heavily pregnant Rose on New Bethlehems open day. It’s a boy and nothing is more precious to Gilead than their sons. This child itself symbolised a generational commitment by Blaine to Gilead. Which is exactly why June could barely choke out the words that he had another child on the way. Nicks been made the “mayor” of New Bethlehem, the version of Gilead that conveniently lets you live in denial of what the realities of Gilead are. He’s the spokesperson for Gilead Lite who up until now has been towing the line but on the one day he’s meant to show up and perform for them he’s bunked off with Osborne and Co. Oops. While it was abundantly clear that Disney + was inserting some sort of weird product placement into the script, I still felt a bit robbed we didnt get at least a couple of bars of “Circle of Life”. I suspect Disney’s just getting fired up though, so maybe next time.

In season 2 the heavily pregnant June almost miscarried, so would his child die this time or birth a healthy son of Gilead? What happens when he holds his son for the first time? He’d left Rose alone today for Osborne but what about next time? What about Holly? He’d had the chance to choose her, to choose a free life with his daughter, and because of Wharton he was turning his back on it. What’s the statement here? Hatred’s generational, lost fathers, wayward sons….”Children look to their fathers” June had said so what did that mean for Blaine and his future? For Nick and June? It’s telling that June is now calling their daughter by her “real name”, her mothers name, that Holly’s staying with her mother, that Blaine’s expecting a boy and Wharton keeps calling him son….it all matters. Blaine is much more chatty this season but it was immediately apparent writers were determined to make him seem distant, cold and unlikeable, with his tone now combative, surly and arrogant. In previous seasons we’d seen a softer side of him, right down to his tone of voice when approaching June but now it was gone. He never called her name, he never brushed her hand, she barely fluttered her eyelashes and the descriptive phrasing for this character went from a “Good man in Gilead” to “a Nazi” in the short space of two episodes. Fuck, that was quick work.

In one scene Blaine switches into trademark psychopath mode, shooting two guardians dead in a quick, casual fashion. Moira and Luke are horrified, who the fuck is this guy? June seemed ridiculously shocked for someone who had herself shot guardians, encouraged Mrs Keyes to gut one like a pig, beat a commander to death at Jezebels, poisoned a whole swathe of them and hunted Fred down in the forest and eaten his face off. Even Moira had stabbed a commander to death at Jezebels. Never mind, seems legit. It was a moment obviously designed to impress upon the other characters Blaines ice cold brutality, but I wondered if they would have preferred to have ended up as just another body on the fire, as Blaine so eloquently put it. Still I was expected to believe this lot were shocked at the sacrifice of two stormtroopers. Fucking please. Story wise, it’s important that June didn’t witness Blaines act of violence here. She’s aware he’s trained to do so, but she’s never seen him actually go full death dealer and I’m fairly sure they’re saving that one up. Similarly it’s just as important that Luke did, he knows now exactly how effective this man is at completing the task given, what June meant when she said “he’d do anything for me and for Nicole”.

There are signs in episode 3 that Nick and Luke will come to blows in the future, one second Luke’s waving his gun around, the next the bro vibe is just way too hard. Luke is up to his old insecurities and macho bullshit; lying about running off with Mayday just to score cool points with June, and telling Moira that he should’ve never let her come along with him. And if it wasn’t bad enough being collected from the waterpark by his wifes side piece, he also had to watch Nick clean up his mess and then had to ride home in the back seat of THAT car. It’s intimidating to say the least and in episode 4 we see Luke all the more desperate to prove himself.

Blaines direct action of rebellion against Gilead will have consequences, but as usual to protect Osborne he did it without hesitation. It’s just another sacrifice he’s made, one that may be his eventual undoing and ultimately you have to ask yourself, when is June going to show up for Blaine? If she keeps asking for more and more, it will be easy for Wharton to convince him that the cost is simply too high. He's already attached himself to Blaine like some sort vampiric gargoyle and if Osborne doesn't kick him off her boyfriends throat soon, he'll drain him dry. As Nick and June bid each other goodbye it’s clear that Osbornes had a gut full. The whole thing was useless, she couldn’t stay away from him and he’d dumped his pregnant wife AGAIN to come running. Who did they think they were kidding?

As in season 1 and 2 you can expect to see Nick and June hooking up and as usual it’s going to get fiery, but with Wharton pulling the strings, ultimately they may not prevail. Personally I’m gutted, I love them as a deadly Mayday couple and Luke and June just seem like such a watered down version of it. I’m most heartbroken about what seems to be happening to Blaine. Instead of a carefully nuanced character walking a tightrope, I’m seeing Nick being not so subtly, transformed into a believer. Watching season 1 and 2 again, it’s disturbing to note how the lines are blurring between Fred then and how Nick is evolving. It’s not a mistake and neither is the fact that Fred was expecting a son and now Blaine is too. It’s not hard to see why audiences would rightfully be concerned about Blaines ability to make through his final tests. Miller keeps going on and on about characters revealing their true faces, and it’s not hard to see where they’re going with this. There's a lot of talk about those simply concerned with self interests being the bad guys this season. In episode 4 Rita commented on Nicks transformation since season 1, and he replied that being a commander in New Bethlehem was the safest thing to be in the safest place. In season 5 Nick told Lawrence that having Osborne in New Bethlehem was “Full of risks”. The fact that Nick was scared enough to break with Tuello so early on in the season and began his trial by fire, shows promise.

It hopefully demonstrates an arc where he finally steps out of that constant looming father figure shadow and demonstrates some bravery. I’m wary though, this season seems to be running in reverse. In season 1 Nick could be trusted, this time we know he’ll betray her. In season 2 Nick chose June over Fred, this time he might not choose her over his father figure. If he’s to be reduced to a true believer, I now expect to see some backtracking through the seasons and revelations of sufficiently unforgivable acts, coupled with his act of betrayal just to bring it all home. I saw this distinct possibility unfold before my eyes with perfect clarity as soon as I heard the words “fucking a Nazi” come out of Hollys mouth. Her mothers horror that Nick had been an Eye and was now a Commander, combined with June’s denial of any malignancy in his nature, solidified him as nothing more than a fascist that had somehow slipped under her radar but not dear old Ma’s. This moment is a call back to season 1 when Holly had warned her not to take her energy and give it all to a man and June had married Luke nevertheless.

Holly’s warning indicates Nick will probably reveal himself to her as such over the course of this season. It was such a bold call out that it completely negated any other future story line or character developments. It had about the subtlety of a sledgehammer, for the writers to have the most prominent feminist, matriarchal figure, in the protagonists life, yelling it in her face. This show loooooves mothers and as such the protagonists mother occupies the highest position of authority when it comes to wisdom. Serena too was called a Nazi in the first episode, and June saved her from a train carriage of angry handmaids. It made me wonder if June would ultimately feed Nick to an angry pack, if she finally resolved that he was simply no different to all the rest. Moss constantly calls June and Serenas relationship “The Love Story” of the show. That’s not love, it’s abuse. I will be disgusted if they actually give Serena a redemption arc this season. She has expressed the most meagre level of regret and committed horrific acts of abuse.

If they have resolved to drag audiences through seasons and seasons of a love story only to turn the ENTIRE thing to poison in the eleventh hour then they can expect their audience to be understandably hurt. The reality is, it’s cruel and it comes at a cost, one that writers better be prepared to pay. I can only conclude that they’ve either waited THIS late in the piece to strip the love interest of any possibility of redemption OR that was their plan all along. At the end of the day both are a great big fuck you, if you really think about it. I’m also a bit horrified that they would also take a clear socio economic underdog, and ultimately grind him into a fine powder. Comparisons began between this show and the current politically charged climate several seasons ago, and I guess they felt somewhat cornered by it so now they’ve decided to run with it full tilt. As a result Blaines personal history acts only as an asset to demonstrate the vampiric nature of powers that promote gender violence and discrimination. The self cannibalising consequences as those that benefit are polluted with power and lose their humanity. His past wont be used to draw any quarter, it just acts as a tragic exhibition.

Don’t get me wrong, I get why they’re doing it, it’s a valid commentary, but it doesn’t mean I don’t get to hate them for breaking my heart and it DEFINITELY doesn’t mean that I don’t get to be pissed off they waited this long to do it. I honestly hope I’m wrong, I hope that instead Blaine will finally demonstrate the required fortitude, that he’ll decide that “staying out of trouble” was always just a life half lived. I was assured that this season was a love letter to the fans and I hope to God I won’t want to send this one back.

[glasskey]

❤️ 🌴