Plus, they describe what it was like getting to use that Taylor Swift song.
The explosive (literally!) penultimate episode of The Handmaid's Tale fittingly starts off with Taylor Swift's iconic revenge track, "Look What You Made Me Do," setting the stage for the bloodiest, most shocking, and most cathartic addition to the show yet.
Rebellion has taken over Boston -- first with the handmaids murdering commanders, then with the crowd at the would-be hanging of June (she survives, thanks to the rebels), and finally with the American planes dropping bombs on Gilead strongholds. In response, the commanders decide to meet in Washington D.C., and Serena (Yvonne Strahovski) finally chooses a side once and for all and gives up their plan to June (Elisabeth Moss) and the fellow rebels.
June then convinces Lawrence to put a bomb on the plane with the commanders, which includes Serena's husband, Commander Wharton (Josh Charles). She drives Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) to the hangar and watches from afar as he gets on the plane with the bomb. At the last second, Nick (Max Minghella) shows up and gets on the plane, too, much to June's horror. Lawrence and Nick have a very sweet conversation about June -- Nick only wants to know if she's all right -- and Lawrence prophetically tells him, "Can't keep a good woman down." From June's eyes on the ground, we see the plane with all the commanders explode mid-air as the episode comes to a close.
Ahead, Entertainment Weekly talks to co-showrunners Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang about why it was time for Lawrence and Nick to die, that emotional final scene between them, what it was like getting that Swift song for the episode, and what to expect from next week's finale.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let's start with "Look What You Made Me Do" -- the perfect needle drop for this episode. Was that the first choice of song, and what was it like getting the rights to use it?
ERIC TUCHMAN: Well, the song was a surprise for us when we first saw the director's cut. Elisabeth Moss, who directed the episode, and Wendy Hallam Martin, our editor, put the song in with that sequence. So we weren't expecting it. And it fits so beautifully, and it was sort of a placeholder because we didn't imagine we'd actually be able to get the rights to the song. But when Lizzie [Moss] is behind something, she usually works some magic. And Taylor Swift and her people embraced the idea, and we were thrilled, absolutely thrilled that she gave us permission.
It's perfect. It's literally perfect.
Well, you should know that so many people are Swifties on our show. The cast in particular all went to Taylor's concert in Toronto while they were filming, and there are pictures online if you want to see. So it was equally exciting for them.
Let's get into the big deaths right away, of Lawrence and Nick. From interviews Max Minghella has done, it seems like he was surprised and maybe a little sad with Nick's arc this season and his death. How long did you guys know this was where Lawrence and Nick would end their stories?
TUCHMAN: We knew pretty early on when we first started breaking the season, when the writer's room got together at the top of season 6, and we were talking about each character. And for me and Yahlin, it was really important that this season would be about testing and challenging these characters and having them reveal who they really are. What have they learned or not learned over the course of this series? And that made Nick and Lawrence, no exception. And for Nick, I'll just say we know it's a polarizing fate for him and that many of our fans are upset about it, but we understand that that comes from the love that they have for this character and the relationship he's had with June. And we love Nick for those reasons too. Max is an incredibly charismatic and compelling actor, and Nick has been June's savior and oasis for such a long time on the show. But we have to remember that she's not the only thing in his life, and that he's a commander in Gilead. And if there's one thing the series has shown is there's no such thing as a good commander. No matter how wonderful you may be to our main character, he has still been a willing full participant in Gilead.
YAHLIN CHANG: And I would just like to add, too, because I've seen comments about how could they turn him from such a wonderful guy into a villain, and I would say that he was never either of those things. I actually have a lot of sympathy for Nick. I mean, he was a guy who did wonderful things to save the woman that he loved. While at the same time he had this job as a commander in Gilead, and I don't see him as an evil villain. I think that he was under a lot of pressure. I have sympathy for him in that moment when Wharton, his father figure, came after him and said, "You'll end up on the wall. Your son will be left without a father." Nick made a split-second decision that was a mistake. He made a mistake. He didn't think it through.
He did not know that all these women would get murdered as a result. He wasn't thinking. He was really stressed out. So in that split second, he made the wrong decision and a terrible mistake, but who doesn't make bad decisions and terrible mistakes under stress? But it had this huge consequence. But I think all of that just makes him really human. Like Max has said, he was not interested in a character who's heroic. He's interested in a character who is complex, because all human beings are complex. So the idea that he suddenly went from white to black or from hero to villain is just that we would be doing a disservice to our characters by painting them as just one thing or the other. They're all embodied in shades of gray because that's what humans are.
That final scene between Nick and Lawrence -- obviously Lawrence knew about the bomb, and Nick didn't, but it kind of felt like he did, and was almost making peace with his death in that moment. Is that a weird way to interpret that scene? What was the subtext there, for you guys?
TUCHMAN: I could see how you responded that way. They're so good, those two actors. I'm going to leave your interpretation up to you. I think you could certainly see that Nick has a spidey sense that something is not quite right in what Lawrence is saying to him, that he is suspecting something, but I don't know if he's thinking there's a bomb in a briefcase on the side of the next chair. I'll leave it open to interpretation.
CHANG: I think a part of him has died and is dying. So I think that you're right there, that the June part of him is dying, and so that is a big part of him.
So much of this episode is, as you mentioned earlier, seeing everyone finally revealing who they really are. We see it with Aunt Lydia [Ann Dowd] finally losing it at the gallows, and yelling in the face of the commanders about their wickedness, and of course with Serena betraying all the commanders. What was it like crafting this final arc for her to pick the right side, once and for all?
TUCHMAN: Well, we find Serena a really fascinating character. She's just such a complicated person and she's got a history of taking one step forward and two steps back. She's always trying to improve herself and to make amends, and then she'll do something horrible again. And here we are in the penultimate episode of the series. She's finally, it's now or never, do-or-die time, where she has to finally make a choice. Which side are you on? And June very smartly persuades her by invoking two things, God and their children. And if anything is going to enlighten Serena, it's that she has to serve God because he's entrusted her with the welfare of her child and of all children. So I think she ultimately sees that if there's to be a future filled with love, as they say in the show, that she's going to have to give up her husband and the other militant commanders.
What can fans expect from next week's series finale?
TUCHMAN: I think they can expect a really emotional, beautiful, moving experience that because Bruce [Miller, series creator] is the writer and Lizzie is the director, really feels like classic Handmaid's Tale in its vibe and in its impact. So I'm very excited for people to see it. I think the resolution of various stories feels honest and organic to the storytelling that we've been doing.
CHANG: Well, I think what was so brave about Bruce's storytelling in episode 10 is that he really didn't want it to suffer from series finale-itis. So there is for sure a temptation, and I myself would totally give into that temptation. I have a real kind of pander-y, feel-good vibe, and Bruce can hold that at bay, but he didn't want to tie up every single thing in a bow. And I think the power of the show is that it doesn't feel like a TV show, but it feels like real life. So the kind of rhythm and the structure of this season was that [episode] 8, and then twice as much [episode] 9, were sort of these big, epic, kind of little mini films with huge climactic explosions. And then 10 has the feeling of denouement -- the fun of it is what happens the next day? So you really can't beat [episode] 9 for an execution and the plane exploding. There's just huge, huge moves, and then 10 returns to a sense of that quiet realism of like, well, what happens the next day, and that feeling that we're just dropping in on this moment.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.