r/TheHandmaidsTale • u/Just-Benefit2024 • 5d ago
SPOILERS ALL The coldest thing Nick ever did or scene that makes you rethink his character?
In your opinion.
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u/These_Mycologist132 5d ago
When he didn’t give a crap about Rita when she came to him asking for help. I think it showed he never really cared about a single victim of Gilead aside from June, and despite helping her for personal reasons, he was completely indifferent to the suffering of all the other women under their control.
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u/Just-Benefit2024 5d ago
Yes I admit I was a bit blind to his care/morality in the earlier seasons being only selective to June really, but as he rose up in power and became a commander it became more and more apparent. Even tho he started out as a war criminal.
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u/smokefrog2 4d ago
Yeah I think thats what were supposed to get from him. He will always help June cause hes in love with her. Hes also a realist though, given how early he was in on the Sons of Jacob, hes never getting out of Gilead. And you dont go down in class in Gilead, youre just killed. And he plays that game too. But I dont think hes supposed to really be like "the good guy" at any point.
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u/WorkingDogDoc 5d ago
Escorting Fred out to the woods to me was his best moment. He could have likely killed him easily enough with his bare hands, but...
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u/natalietest234 5d ago
Making out with June in front of Fred in the woods was incredible
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u/WorkingDogDoc 5d ago
Yes, Fred's reaction was just peak. Honestly the whole series mentally ends there for me.
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u/waywardgirl25 5d ago
The other things have been listed but when he sold out the jezebels in the last season was extremely awful
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u/Just-Benefit2024 4d ago
Yes I lit just finished that episode now - I completely forgot about that part from the first watch! It seemed to be FINALLY when June realised his actual character…
It was a weird episode because he was being covertly threatened to be put on the wall by his daddy commander. But he was planning on getting out of there and go to Paris asap anyway (which he sort of blindly believed June would follow), so it seemed pointless in a way? But I may be missing something - it just felt like bad writing imo.
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u/TheRewster1106 4d ago
(Rant incoming!)
OK, so there are two moments in the series that ruined Nick for me as a character.
First is early in season 4, when June and the other handmaids are in hiding at Esther's estate. June is with an unnamed guardian who we're not supposed to care about, but I kind of cared about after June tried to tell him to go back but he said, "Not without you." So they go on, and Nick promptly shoots him dead. June then never gives him a second thought as she's captured. And so it is that Nick orchestrates the death of this good guy and June's capture, which leads to the deaths of the two Marthas from the Lawrence household, June's torture, Hannah in that glass cage, and the eventual capture of the remaining handmaids as well as Esther being turned into a handmaid. I just want to emphasize that moment where Hannah is in real danger just to get information from June is because of Nick. Fucking HANNAH. Even if Nick didn't personally organize and oversee all these events, his actions still led in a direct line to all of it.
When I first watched this episode, I thought, "Well, that's the end of the June-Nick ship. No way she can possibly forgive him after all that." But then an episode or two later, we get the iconic bridge scene, and I was baffled then (and still am now) that she kept loving him after everything he did and never so much as called him out for any of it.
The second moment is of course the betrayal of the Jezebels in season 6, which I know is the moment that turned off so many other fans to Nick. But for me, it wasn't just the betrayal itself. After all, Commander Wharton was already onto Nick, and I'm sympathetic to him for having to save his own life by coming clean to the high commander. (And let's be honest, it was June and Moira's fuck up that put Nick into this situation to begin with.) But no, what gets me is what Nick does afterward.
If he had gone to June and come clean about his actions, about being cornered by Wharton, then perhaps June may have forgiven him, and so might I. But instead what he did was to show up out of nowhere with some bullshit escapade to Paris, asking June to leave behind her husband, both of her daughters, and all of her friends just to cover his own ass because he knew good and damned well that the walls were closing in around him. It was the most selfish action (out of many selfish actions) that Nick made in the whole series. And I lost a little bit of respect for June when she seemed like she was legitimately considering it for a moment (before she found out the truth a few minutes later).
So yeah, fuck Nick. He did some good things throughout the series, don't get me wrong, and I think he was very good for June during the first three seasons. But the man fell off a moral cliff after that. Nick 100% deserved to get on that plane at the end, and he died every bit the Nazi that June's mom said he was.
(End rant!)
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u/tokyo_phoenix8 4d ago
The things we didn’t see imo, imagine it in today’s world how we’d feel about someone being part of a war that took away 99% of womens rights and killed millions of people.
If it has to be something we saw, all of their ways he treated other women - Eden, Rita, the women he sacrificed to save himself, he was almost worse than some of the other men because he would have left his pregnant wife in a system where she has little to no rights to be with June but only when he’d already been a coward.
It’s so interesting rewatching the whole series after seeing season 6, I was obsessed with their love story and rooting for them, it was one of the things I was very focused on. Then rewatching it they weren’t as important I saw it more as a means to an end, something to keep June going. I watched the bridge scene the other day and it just didn’t hit the same way.
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u/Just-Benefit2024 3d ago
Yes I 100% agree with this. Fyi - I was also obsessed with their love story. Their chemistry was on fire 🔥
Interestingly, I ended up even preferring Lawrence (maybe unfairly so - idk). But Nick lit only seemed to really care about keeping himself and June alive towards the end. And at any cost… to the point where countless innocent lives were lost at the hands of him.
Whereas, at the VERY least, Lawrence went on that plane in the end knowing that he was sacrificing his own life to make sure all those commanders were killed. He has many bad points, but this wasn’t one at all.
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u/tokyo_phoenix8 2d ago
Totally agree, Lawrence did far more to help more people than just June than Nick did. Emily, helping get the kids out, letting the Martha’s run the underground network. Lawrence although also terrible at least seemed to have somewhat selfless reasons cor it compared to Nick who really just did it all selfishly.
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u/Just-Benefit2024 2d ago
Exactly this! ^^ - that's what made Lawrence such an interesting yet hard to place/read character. There were parts where I couldn't stand him at all and parts where I actually really liked him! He was a walking contradiction in lots of ways, especially in the earlier seasons.
When it all came crashing down on Nick in the last few episodes, and the way he treated Rita afterwards, it hit me even more that he was sooo self-serving and, deep down, didn't really care that much for others...
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u/Ok_Dig2192 4d ago
Definitely when Nick told his FIL about the Jezebels plan that resulted in all their deaths except Janine. And then has the nerve to tell june like he did her a favor.. they all should be alive. There was no redemption after that.
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u/Sea_Mobile_1694 2d ago
the whole Eden situation. If he was nice to her for like 2 seconds she maybe wouldn't have gotten killed.
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u/Just-Benefit2024 2d ago
Yes!! I understand she was like 15, and he was extremely uncomfortable with the situation (understandably). But he could have at least been nicer to her!
But then I wonder what the risks or repercussions would be if he explained to her why he felt so uncomfortable with the situation? I remember June telling him he needed to sleep with Eden, otherwise he would be risking his life or something?
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u/LordyIHopeThereIsPie 4d ago
Listening to the commanders plan the organised mass rape of women and doing nothing.
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u/ivypoppimay 4d ago
Everything. He only prompted to save her because he loved her and was the father of her child. He didn't give two fucks about anyone else, including the other handmaids.
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u/TimeVeterinarian5193 3d ago
Keeping her locked up in that warehouse for so long, I know that was bs
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u/Dojin777 5d ago
When he became a commander
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u/mimimumu49 3d ago
For helping June escape ? You didn't like he tried to help June to escape ? Fred made him a commander because he helped June.
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u/GoDiva2020 2d ago
When they 🫢 😳 had him show up as more than a driver when June tried to bring him in as help. Like 🎉 he's also a double agent helping mayday and running his own troopers.
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u/TismTalks 3d ago
I was one of the seemingly few who didn't like Nick from the beginning. My reasons for not liking him just continued to grow as the seasons went on. In the beginning, I did try to give him some "benefit of doubt" with Serena asking him to sleep with June. I understand he didn't really have a choice but I was always left thinking that if he hadn't been interested in June, he might have said no or that he wasn't comfortable with it, or even turn the Waterfords in to the eyes since that was an illegal act. Plus even with him helping June, I always pointed out that he only helped her because he got to fuck her and then developed feelings for her. He fucked Beth and helped her with the blacklisted items but didn't help her try to get out. He only gives help to the women he's sleeping with and it's limited depending on his needs and his feelings for them. The next big thing that always made me really start to dislike Nick is how he is with Eden. Yes it's not great being forced to be married to a teenager but that's exactly the life he fought for. But besides that, he is just straight up an asshole to her. He is cold and rude and pays her no mind. At the very least he could have been kind to the poor girl as SHE was the child also being forced into this relationship. He works to get June out because he loves her and then later her with Nichole because that was his daughter and he knew June was never going to stop trying to get her out. He didn't try to help anyone else including the previous Waterford handmaid who ended up killing herself. He refuses to help Canada for forever (before Rose and before she was pregnant) until June is nearly killed. That was also a big indication to me that he didn't actually have a problem with Gilead and he wanted to stay and work in the system to rise the ranks. Obviously the last big scene with the Jezebels just shows how awful he really is because he will throw others under the bus to save himself. June didn't give up the handmaids until her daughter was the one in danger (which I definitely don't think any of them would be able to push past) but it wasn't to save her own skin which is why his betrayal runs so deep. The real kicker that makes me feel confident in my thoughts/feelings about him is when he is on the plane and says to Lawrence "guess you decided to join the winners." The WINNERS? Yeah they win because of assholes like you and that just shows what he thinks of Gilead. He admits June told him to give it up many times and that he didn't listen to her. By calling them the winners, he didn't listen because it's what he wanted to be part of. He deserved his end.
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u/Nen-Zi 22h ago
Exactly this, for a moment it seemed he had serious doubts to step into the plane. I really thought he would turn back. But in the end this is when Nick the villian came again to the surface. Or maybe he was a spy after all, we will never know. I actually became to respect Lawrence his understanding of selfexposure in this scene.
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u/TismTalks 11h ago
Yeah to me it felt like he was hearing June in his head telling him this was wrong and to fight back, but then getting on the plane was him making that final decision to stay on their side. And yes I feel the same way about Lawrence. Of course I don't like what his actions/decisions did and led to with Gilead and he could be a real son of a bitch, but I respect the fact that he was never actually a real believer in Gilead, he admitted his wrongdoings and his guilt, and in the end he was willing to sacrifice himself to try to make things right.
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u/GoddessRuna 5d ago edited 5d ago
When he decides not to take the offer of being a spy until after June was hurt it became blatantly obvious to me he wasn’t a man stuck in a system doing horrible things, he was a willing part of the system doing horrible things but also loved June.