Sometimes an episode starts a conversation you can’t stop thinking about.
Even in fiction, women have to earn their redemption. Men just show up.
In the penultimate episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, three men were eliminated from the story in one fell swoop.
Two of them, Joseph Lawrence and Nick Blaine, have been among the few male characters over six seasons who seemed to care about June Osborne beyond how her existence threatened their positions of power.
And yet, when the dust settled, they died quietly. Offscreen. Without grandeur or grace.
And honestly? That might be the most accurate ending the show could give them.
Joseph created Gilead. Whatever noble intentions he wrapped around its formation, the truth is that it spiraled into a theocratic nightmare built to control women.
And Joseph? He kept showing up to meetings. He offered half-measures, poetic guilt, and crayon drawings delivered to the mother of the child he kept as his own.
When it came time to make a real sacrifice, he did. But not before decades of women suffered under his pen.
Nick, meanwhile, was never the architect. He was the enforcer. He loved June, yes. Protected her, sometimes.
But when push came to shove — when it meant risking himself to save others — he failed.
He gave up Mayday’s plan to Gabriel and tried to pretend it was survival. He tried to hold onto June without standing beside her.
In the end, he died with the same quiet passivity that defined so much of his arc. He loved June deeply. But he never loved her loudly.
And that’s the point.
June, Janine, Lydia, and even Serena were forced to confront their complicity.
Again and again, in front of everyone. They had to explain their choices, beg for forgiveness, prove their usefulness, and walk tightropes where one wrong step meant the wall, the noose, the end.
But the men? They were allowed to play the game.
Joseph could spin philosophical monologues about reform and still hold a stolen child. Nick could sell out an entire operation and be praised as Gilead’s future.
Even Luke, sweet, helpless Luke, got to fumble his way through seasons of ineffectiveness without ever being asked to account for his distance.
If June had made Nick’s choices, she would have died alongside the others at Jezebel’s. But Nick? He got promoted.
The playing field was never level. So why should their character arcs be?
The Handmaid’s Tale was never just about oppression. It was about how deeply unfair the system is even among the survivors.
And if, in a story designed to show us the brutality of patriarchal power, the men still can’t go all in for the women they claim to love, what are we supposed to expect in real life?
Nick ran into June’s arms, begging her to run away. All she wanted was for him to stay and fight.
Joseph talked about change while reading stolen bedtime stories and keeping Janine’s daughter from her. He wanted to be better. But he never wanted to be uncomfortable.
That’s not heroism. That’s narrative convenience. And in the end, the show stripped them of a redemptive arc because they never earned one. Not really.
Because the truth is, even now, in 2025, women are still trying to be more than mothers while holding up the entire foundation of society.
They’ve outpaced men in college enrollment, they carry the emotional labor, they fight to be seen and heard and paid fairly. And still, when they ask for solidarity, they’re handed silence.
So no, The Handmaid’s Tale wasn’t unfair to its men.
It was honest.
What do you think?
- Did Joseph and Nick get the endings they deserved?
- Can any man in Gilead truly be redeemed?
- Were Lydia and Serena given more grace than the men — or did they simply survive long enough to change?
- How close do you think Gilead really is to our reality?
Join the conversation below, invite your friends, and be sure to return to TV Fanatic after the finale for a discussion about how it all ends.
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