‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: OK, Let’s Talk About Nick Blaine

We’re 9 episodes into the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale now, and in some ways it’s like Hulu reached into my brain, stole my plot wishlist, and then made it happen. I have watched a few clips from episode 9 on repeat more times than I would care to admit. We’ll get into all of that after the series finale, but there’s one part in particular that requires a deep dive. In season 6, Nick’s transition from Nearly Pointless Nick to Actively Terrible Nick has apparently taken a lot of people by surprise, and having given him a lot of stick for eight years, I take no pleasure in the canonical establishment of the ‘Nick Sucks’ club.

That is a massive lie. Spoilers are ahead!

My smug jubilation started in episode two when Holly yelled at June for romanticising the fact that she’s “f-cked a Nazi” and it only grew from there. Now, the great love story between Nick and June is over; he was metaphorically dead to her when she found out that he’d betrayed her and the American mission to save himself, leading to a slaughter so bad that it radicalised Aunt Lydia. AUNT LYDIA. Now he’s literally dead to her; she had time to stop him getting on that plane, but she chose the mission, and now he’s ash falling from the sky.

Nick-stans are so mad! I’ve seen people crying that Nick and June weren’t endgame and complaining about character assassination. There are lots of ‘Nick would NEVER’ and, like, are we watching the same show? Nick has always been a disappointment!

I’ve also seen lots of people talking about how Nick was Mayday, and the show version deviated from the book in this regard. Yeah, no. That, my loves, was an optimistic reading of chapter 46. Here’s what happened. At this point, Offred is waiting in her room for Eyes to take her away. Guess who shows up?

I expect a stranger, but it’s Nick who pushes open the door, flicks on the light. I can’t place that, unless he’s one of them. There was always that possibility. Nick, the private Eye. Dirty work is done by dirty people.

You shit, I think. I open my mouth to say it, but he comes over, close to me, whispers. “It’s all right. It’s Mayday. Go with them.” He calls me by my real name. Why should this mean anything?

“Them?” I say. I see the two men standing behind him, the overhead light in the hallway making skulls of their heads. “You must be crazy.” My suspicion hovers in the air above him, a dark angel warning me away. I can almost see it. Why shouldn’t he know about Mayday? All the Eyes must know about it; they’ll have squeezed it, crushed it, twisted it out of enough bodies, enough mouths by now.

“Trust me,” he says, which in itself has never been a talisman, carries no guarantee.

But I snatch at it, this offer. It’s all I’m left with.

[Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale]

The ambiguity is the point. All we can say for certain is that Nick knows Mayday, and probably isn’t one of them. He doesn’t say ‘come with us’; he doesn’t say ‘we’re Mayday’. It’s much more likely that he’s an Eye with contacts who can play both sides where it suits. This is where Nick lives, in the gaps. When we look at Nick’s defining characteristics, his ambiguity has always been right up there with resplendent eyebrows and constipated expression. It serves him well, making him a trusted figure for both sides, with everyone projecting their own expectations on that taciturn blankness. We snatch at it. It’s all we have. It’s non-committal enough to allude to the possibility of hope. But that’s as far as it goes, and that’s not enough.

We’re in the final season now, after all, and ambiguity won’t cut it anymore. Everyone else around him is choosing a side and standing up for what is right. Sitting on the fence might have looked revolutionary in season 1, but Nick’s consistent failure to do anything productive with the power he has gathered up for himself is inherently bad on its own — how long can someone stand idly by before we judge them for inaction? — and it also reveals more starkly that the power is the point. He has been showing his true colours all along. Dirty work is done by dirty people.

His redeeming feature was his love for June, and he has been involved in helping her over the course of the show, but when we dig in to those examples, he has only ever helped her, never a wider cause, and his actions have always ended up restoring the status quo along the way. He has had ample opportunity to get out but hasn’t. He committed treason when he was part of the terrorist uprising that made Gilead happen. He’s incel culture ‘working class economic angst’ personified. Gilead has been good for him! He has power, status and respect. He looks just sad enough at times that less powerful people don’t see him as a threat, and he is compliant enough that his superiors don’t suspect him. He has become so comfortable on this fence that he has ascended from Eye to Commander. The most overtly rebellious thing he ever did was punch Lawrence in the face. He served Fred up to Handmaid Justice in No Man’s Land as a favour to June and to get rid of someone who could undo him. He is not the hero. He has been occasionally useful, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. Look at what happens when Rita asks him for help; he tells her to sod off. There’s nothing in it for him with Rita.

He only hates Gilead when it interferes with his love life (if we’re being kind) or his ‘access to June’ (if we’re not), which tells us he probably thinks it’s fine otherwise. This is not the work of a nice person. They don’t make nice people Eyes. They don’t make nice people Commanders. Nick is well connected enough as an Eye to know Mayday and be able to contact them, but he is not part of their inner circle. He was not trusted by them even before he got all the women at Jezebel’s slaughtered. Holly and Luke both refer to him as a Nazi and really, the arcs of all the other characters show Nick up even more.

In the end, Nick’s bad choices lead him to blunder into the final trap. His wife, Rose, asks him to ‘end’ June, and that’s the path he chooses, with his Commander Bro Club. That’s his redeeming quality gone. He betrayed America for a second time when he sentenced hundreds of women to death to save himself, and he finds himself next to Commander Lawrence and a beeping briefcase. Lawrence made the right choice; a tougher one, and a braver one. Even Serena and Aunt Lydia made the right choices in episode 9. Nick, clearly and officially a cowardy cowardy custard, makes a pithy comment about choosing the winners, and like that, poof, he was gone.

How will the revolution cope without him, eh?

The Handmaid’s Tale finale is available on Hulu on May 27th.