The Handmaid’s Tale pushed Nick and June even further apart ahead of the series finale.
During the Tuesday, May 6, episode of the hit Hulu series, Nick (Max Minghella) and June (Elisabeth Moss) figured out their future after he sold out her plan to attack the commanders at Jezebel’s. June determined she couldn’t trust Nick any longer while he questioned her disillusion after knowing his place in Gilead the entire time.
While speaking exclusively to Us Weekly, coshowrunners Yahlin Chang and Eric Tuchman broke down where Nick and June go from here.
“People make mistakes under pressure. Nick at that moment was so flooded with stress that he couldn’t think of another way out at that moment other than to tell Wharton the truth. It’s something that maybe in the next day or in the next hour, he may have regretted,” Chang noted. “He may have well made a big mistake doing that, but he was caught just like any human. He is flooded and caught — that’s the path he chose at the time.”
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Chang argued that the show isn’t trying to make a judgment call on Nick, adding, “People aren’t all good and they don’t make all the right choices all the time. People also aren’t all bad and make all bad choices. That what was really guiding me and Eric all along was just trying to tell the truth and to also show all aspects of all these characters this season.”
Elsewhere in the episode, June reunited with husband Luke (O-T Fagbenle) and told him how her decision resulted in a failed plan. Luke had no sympathy for June because she was “pining” away for a “Nazi” for years.
“When Luke refers to Nick as a Nazi with June, that’s the second time she’s heard someone refer to him that way this season. Her mom in Alaska also said, ‘You’re running across the country after sleeping with a Nazi to be with him again.’ So two very important people have pointed it out to her,” Tuchman recalled. “It’s only when she witnesses it firsthand that she understands that they are right.”
Tuchman acknowledged that Nick “revealing his true self” calls his future with June into question.
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“They [have] come to a crossroads and have a choice to make. Some [characters] choose a courageous path [this season] and some of them, not so much. So when we started thinking about Nick, we tried to be very honest about who he is,” he explained. “We knew the audience is kind of like June. They’ve been swept away by this character and didn’t want to think about his other life.”
According to the executive producers, they didn’t know immediately how they would “wrap up” the June and Nick romance.
“We just knew we wanted to really examine it and be honest about it. When we did that, that’s when we knew they had to reach this inflection point,” Tuchman shared with Us. “Moving forward, there’s always hope for someone to make the right move to change their mind and do the right thing.”
He continued: “June has been Nick’s beacon all along. The times he has stuck his neck out and done the right thing has been for June. So maybe this very charged situation is a huge wake up call for him going forward. We’ll have to see.”
New episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale are released Tuesdays on Hulu.
