Commander Lawrence's Shocking Decision In 'The Handmaid's Tale' Has Fans Reeling

Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers for the final season of The Handmaid's Tale.

As The Handmaid's Tale winds its way toward its ultimate conclusion, the show's body count is starting to climb. In the penultimate episode of Season 6, the show killed off Bradley Whitford's Commander Lawrence and also dealt a major blow to the leadership of Gilead in the process.

Following the revelation of Lawrence's death, many wanted to better understand why he decided to stay on a plane when he knew there was a bomb on it. Here's what we know.

Lawrence did not intend to be on the plane when it took off. Instead, he was planning to place the bomb on the plane ahead of time and then sneak off before it took off with the rest of Gilead's leadership. When those leaders arrived early, though, he realized that there was no way he could get off the plane without signaling that something was amiss. And so, in order to take down Gilead's leadership, he sacrificed himself in the process.

He shared a tearful, silent goodbye with June and let the bomb blow him and the rest of the men on board to smithereens.

Even though Lawrence was one of the original architects of Gilead, he began to realize that the reforms he had made to the country were being used to lure refugees back into the country. When those refugees returned, Gilead's leaders planned to return to the oppressive state that had existed before.

Lawrence ultimately aligns himself with the Mayday resistance as a result, although he never planned to give his own life for the cause. In the moment, though, it seems that Lawrence decided to atone for his own role in this oppressive state and sacrifice his life to bring down the rest of Gilead. It might not have been the choice that he wanted to make, but it's one that he was ultimately forced into.

In an interview with Elle, Bradley explained that filming his character's final scenes was a strange experience for him.

"It was the second-to-last thing I would shoot," he said. "It was a fraught day on the set because, as lucky as I’ve been, it makes me more acutely aware of what kismet it takes for a show to work. So, to say goodbye to one of those experiences, it’s this very weird mix of gratitude and sorrow."

Lawrence's sacrifice will never fully atone for the role he played in building Gilead in the first place, and his relationship with June and the rest of the resistance was always a complicated one. In giving his life to bring sanity back to a country he once destroyed, though, Lawrence does what he can. Bradley is already a politically active actor, and Lawrence perfectly aligns with much of what the actor behind the character believes.