Does Nick Die in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale'? Shocking Season 6 Development (SPOILERS)

Spoiler Alert! This article contains spoilers for Season 6, Episode 6 of The Handmaid's Tale.

Fans of Hulu’s hit series The Handmaid’sTale have been on the edge of their seats to find out how the award-winning show will wrap up after six seasons — but in the penultimate episode, many shocking twists, turns and surprising fatalities occurred, but was Nick one of them?

The Handmaid’s Tale, starring Emmy-winning actress Elisabeth Moss, is a dystopian drama series following the second American Civil War where the totalitarian society forces fertile women into child-bearing slavery.

Yes, Nick Blaine, portrayed by Max Minghella, along with Joseph Lawrence and Gabriel Wharton all die in the episode titled “Execution,” which was directed by Elisabeth. At the last minute, Nick decides to join Joseph and Gabriel on a plane of High Commanders with an altitude-triggered bomb.

Before June watches the plane explode in the sky, Nick and Lawrence have one final conversation about her. “She told me to give all this up,” Nick says to Lawrence of June. “You should have listened to her,” Lawrence replies mere moments before they both die.

The Handmaid’s Tale writer and showrunner, Eric Tuchman explained when it was decided Nick (and others) would meet their fate in the show’s final season. “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,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.

“I was in Paris shooting The Veil when they pitched us the whole season, outline by outline,” Elisabeth chimed in. “I hung up from that meeting, and I said, ‘I have to direct Episode 9.’ I humbly requested and they very kindly said yes. If Nick and Lawrence are going to go, it has to be me.”

Speaking in an exclusive with Variety, Max broke down Nick’s final moments on the show. “It felt very poignant — and consistent with the character and how he’s functioned in the show,” he said. “He’s really been driven by that relationship. It also was lovely to finish with Bradley, who has become such a dear friend outside the show. That felt right to me, too.”

Max also addressed Nick’s shocking betrayal of June earlier in the season which proved to be a turning point in their relationship moving forward. “Transparently, I was very surprised by where they were going to take Nick in Season 6, because it was quite different to how he served the show previously,” he told the outlet.

“Not to get too macro about it, but the Nick and June relationship has been a reprieve from the more tense thematic elements of the show,” Max continued. “And so to ground that relationship, then, into some of the darker, more nihilistic points-of-view that we have to explore in The Handmaid’s Tale, I was surprised by it — but interested in it as an actor. And certainly nobody could accuse them of pandering.”

He continued, adding “I don’t know that I would have played everything the same in the past had I known that was where we were going to land. But that’s probably just naiveté on my part.”