‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Kills off 2 Major Characters Ahead of Series Finale

After six seasons, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale is getting ready to go out with a bang, but not before adding to the show’s gruesome death toll.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale Season 6.

In Tuesday’s penultimate episode, “Execution,” the long-running series, based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name, said goodbye to two major characters: Commander Nick Blaine (Max Minghella) and Commander Joseph Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) in the latest sacrificial act of rebellion targeting the Republic of Gilead.

The targeted attack came after June (Elisabeth Moss) and her fellow handmaids, as well as Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) and Aunt Phoebe (D’Arcy Carden), who is actually a CIA agent named Ava, nearly escaped execution following their massacre of 37 Commanders. After the U.S. Army finds a foothold in Gilead, June and U.S. representative Mark Tuello (Sam Jaeger) request Lawrence’s help to bring down the High Commanders with a bomb planted on their plane as they head to Washington, D.C. Lawrence reluctantly agreed, and headed to the airport with June.

However, things took a turn for the worse when the other Commanders arrived early, forcing Lawrence to make a life-or-death decision: turn away and live, or join the commanders on the plane and die with him. He chooses the latter, taking his seat on the plane, with Nick in a shocking moment later joining him, ultimately giving his loyalty to Gilead rather than June.

“Execution” ended with June staring up at the sky as the plane exploded, killing both Lawrence and Nick, as well as all of the other commanders aboard it.

“We decided on Nick and Lawrence’s deaths when we were first breaking the season. Once we decided on Nick’s betrayal midway, that led to his fate — and Lawrence’s combined with that,” writer and Season 6 co-showrunner Eric Tuchman told The Hollywood Reporter. “When you’re going to kill off characters, you want them to go out with a bang. You want to have it land in a big way. Literally, in this case, Max and Bradley — and Josh Charles also explodes — all three of them have a very memorable end.”

Whitford added of those final moments, “I was very happy that Lawrence made the choice that he made. I think as he’s listening to Nick and sitting on the plane [in the final scene] he’s thinking, ‘This poor kid is another victim of this hellscape that I created.’”

The Handmaid’s Tale wraps its six-season run on Hulu with its series finale next Tuesday. A sequel show, The Testaments, based on Atwood’s novel of the same name, is currently in the works.