‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Stars Elisabeth Moss and Max Minghella on That Shattering Betrayal

[This story contains spoilers from season six, episode seven of The Handmaid’s Tale, “Shattered.”]

“It was Nick who told me everything.”

The Handmaid Tale‘s June (Elisabeth Moss) first heard those words while hiding in a closet with Nick (Max Minghella), as High Commander Wharton (Josh Charles) informed fiancée Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) that his son-in-law helped him thwart what could have been a debilitating attack on Gilead High Commanders at Jezebel’s, orchestrated by June and the Mayday resistance group.

The fifth episode in the final season of the Hulu series ended on that cliffhanger moment as viewers watched June internally digest what she just heard. This week’s sixth hour, “Shattered,” then picked up in that closet. The episode quickly zoomed over to Jezebel’s to show viewers the devastating consequences of Nick’s betrayal of June: All of the Jezebels (women who are forced to be sex slaves for High Commanders) are brutally shot and killed by Gilead officers. Janine (Madeline Brewer) is the only one who is spared, due to her relationship with High Commander Bell (Timothy Simons).

The massacre of the Jezebel’s women is a scene of shocking violence for the dystopian series, and the execution of so many women is a haunting vision June imagines when she’s then told by Nick what happened.

“Have you ever had a moment where you hear something or learn something about someone and you can’t unsee it? You can’t go back,” asks Moss when speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about this point of no return between lovers June and Nick. “Everything changes in that moment for June. She cannot ever see him in the same way again. I think he completely shatters her.”

Handmaid’s Tale viewers had a big reaction after last week’s episode, “Surprise,” when finding out that Nick had ratted out June’s resistance plan. But Minghella wasn’t bracing for impact heading into season six’s release. “I don’t really mind what they think of Nick morally,” he tells THR. “I just hope [viewers] enjoy the narratives. Whether they have different feelings about me afterwards is not something I have much control in.”

That’s not to say that Minghella doesn’t care deeply for his character. “He’s nothing like me, we’re quite different. He’s much more stoic; I’m a sort of mess of a person (laughs). I don’t talk anything like Nick; Nick speaks and moves in a very specific way,” he says. “But I can relate to this character [throughout the series]. I feel there is some temper between us. I understand him.”

In the episode, Nick quickly clocks June’s stunned reaction, and he confronts her about what she’s chosen to ignore about him all along. He accuses her of turning a blind eye on his elite role in the fascist Gilead regime when it benefits her to do so. When she realizes that Nick is just like the evil men who run Gilead, he responds: “And you love me. So what does that make you?”

June then walks away from Nick. It’s a moment that Nick acknowledges may be for good in a later conversation with Rita, where he leans into June thinking he’s a self-serving monster.

“She’s completely brokenhearted,” Moss tells THR. “She’s also so mad at herself that she ignored all the signs — that she should have seen it, that she should have known, that she should have not fallen for it or believed in him. All of that is going through her head in the same moment. And then thinking about those women and not being able to ever get that image out of her head, and not knowing about Janine and whether or not [she’s alive]. Her mind is going a mile a minute.”

June has been free from Gilead since escaping in season four. She’s now a refugee and rebellion fighter who has reunited with husband Luke (O-T Fagbenle), friend Moira (Samira Wiley), former Martha Rita (Amanda Brugel) and the Mayday resistance fighters trying to take Gilead down, as she and Luke continue to fight to get her oldest daughter, Hannah (Jordana Blake), back. When June returns and tells Luke that Nick knew about the plan because of her, Luke finally expresses his true feelings about June and Nick’s Gilead affair, which led to the birth of June’s youngest daughter, Holly.

“Don’t be in love with a fucking Nazi, how ’bout that!” Luke tells his wife.

Fagbenle has been carrying around his own feelings about the love triangle at the heart of The Handmaid’s Tale for some time. The actor accepts there is a trauma love bond between June and Nick, but as far as he’s concerned, “It’s pathological on many levels,” he says. “It’s so blindingly obvious that Nick is part of a fascistic regime and this entire time, the only time he’s acted against that was for his own selfish interest because he was in love with a woman. That doesn’t erase the fact that you can’t get promoted up the ranks of Gilead unless you’re doing some really dark things. You don’t get promoted up the ranks because you’re baking nice pastries!”

It’s something that June, as well as viewers, have been guilty of overlooking, thanks to Minghella’s performance and the chemistry between the pair as June and Nick’s love story has unfolded over six seasons. “Just look at her performance in that scene,” Fagbenle tells THR of Moss. “It’s brilliant, the look on her face. I’m always blown away by her.”

After this, things can’t be the same for June when it comes to Nick, says Fagbenle, who thinks it’s about time.

“This entire journey for Luke, and myself as a person, I’ve been so surprised that more people don’t see that,” says Fagbenle of Nick’s role as a Commander. “It’s an interesting quirk of humanity that we’re willing to whitewash a bunch of things around a person because we love them and we think they’re hot or we think they’re the person we want to fall in love with. I think it’s really interesting on both the political level and a psychological level.”

Co-showrunners Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang have also compared June’s relationship with the two men in her life. “With Nick it’s more lusty and passionate, and with Luke it’s the love of a super strong attachment to a husband who has stood by you,” Chang tells THR.

Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) channels some of these confronting feelings in the episode, when he accuses June of being blind to trust Nick because of his “smoldering” gaze.

“There are certain things about Nick that June is blind to and that our viewers — and we as writers — are blind to because we’re invested in this romance. And that is that Nick is a Commander in Gilead, that’s the truth of it,” says Chang. “Because for Nick to have risen up to be part of the Gilead power regime — to be an Eye from the beginning and then all the way through to becoming a Commander — he has done some bad things, and we haven’t shown them and so it was convenient to forget. But one of the themes in our story the season is that there is no such thing as a good Gilead Commander. If you’re a man and you’re powerful in Gilead, it means you are touched by some of that Gilead corruption. You just are.”

When June returns to Mayday headquarters, it’s Moira who comforts her and who understands why June fell in love with Nick — a romance, as Fagbenle has previously pointed out — that was borne out of and bonded by trauma. Perhaps that’s why Luke stops short of leaving June and their marriage. If anything, the Nick betrayal and June’s revelation afterwards bring the husband and wife closer, as they vow to never lose sight of what they are fighting for: their daughter Hannah, who is now a wife-in-training and still living under Gilead tyranny.

The episode later reveals that Janine is now a handmaid for High Commander Bell, who has been sexually abusing her ever since she arrived at Jezebel’s, and that even Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) can’t get to Janine. “Nick is not the person June fell in love with, and as much as she can mourn the loss of the person she fell in love with, it won’t trump the loss of the women at Jezebel’s,” says Moss of June’s turning point. “But there is pain there, too. I’m not going to say that there isn’t complexity there.”

Instead of pulling away in misery, however, the events push June to plan an even bigger Mayday coup. She plots their biggest resistance ploy yet — with the help of Lawrence, their Canadian ally Mark Tuello (Sam Jaeger) and Mayday — to enlist every handmaid and ally to use the upcoming Gilead wedding between Serena Joy and High Commander Wharton as a cover to slyly attack every Gileadean person in attendance. “Those Commanders and those Wives are going to be so busy eating and dancing and having the time of their fucking lives that they will never see us coming,” says June at the end of the hour, ushering in what is sure to be a blessed evening for episode eight.

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The Handmaid’s Tale releases new episodes Tuesdays on Hulu. Follow along with THR‘s final season coverage.