Warning: contains spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale season 6 episode 9 “Execution”.  The wages of sin is death? You got that right, Wharton. In “Execution”, the wages of the commanders’ sins were a glittering firework of a death thanks to Joseph Lawrence – economist, loving father, freedom fighter and part-time James Bond.  Talk about laying low the arrogance of the terrible (“Guess you decided to join the winners,” crowed Nick, just before they were all blasted into bitesize BBQ chunks). Amid calls for cigars, Lawrence and his Mayday bomb laid the whole plane approximately 30,000 feet lower than planned, ensuring that his epitaph would read more than: Designed Gilead, Good at Sarcasm. Lawrence’s poignant sacrifice was the best part of this penultimate episode. Nobody could ever think that noose would really tighten around June’s neck this close to the end, making that scaffold scene much more perfunctory than its histrionic tone suggested. Ann Dowd’s Aunt Lydia already has a job lined up in sequel series The Testaments, which effectively took the rope from around her neck too even before Mayday struck. Moira, Janine… They were all bound to get out of it somehow – a sentiment that’s has been this show’s curse for seasons now.  Every arrest, every blocked escape route, every cage, we’ve been able to calmly wait through instead of holding our breath in terror that this could be the moment we lose someone important. We never do because The Handmaid’s Tale is too protective of its main characters – a crazy thing to type considering what this story has put them all through. What were the words to the Taylor Swift song that soundtracked this week’s opening scenes? “I rose up from the dead. I do it all the time.” That could have been this show’s theme song. It’s certainly June’s. Finally, though, finally, we’ve lost somebody. Two somebodies. Joseph Lawrence and Nick Blaine aren’t coming back for the sequel, and the work done in this final season to explain their inner workings paid off handsomely.  Unlike June, I shed no tears for Nick, who made his choice and now has to live – or rather not live – with it. After his Jezebels betrayal and the “Forget it, Rita, it’s Chinatown” moment that followed, we understood that Nick was no heroic double agent, but a lost kid who’d sold out his ideals for survival. Well, look how well that ended up. June may have silently howled as he climbed those steps into the jet, but I was mentally ushering him up them with a cheery ‘byeee’.  Lawrence, however, hurt. There hasn’t been enough screentime developing his redemption-through-love-of-a-child arc this season, but what little we’ve seen has been effective. Joseph thawing over little Angela – whose future he must have been picturing when he chose to follow Wharton and co. onto that plane – has been a beautiful final path for a complex character. The grouchy, wry loner melting under the full-beam affection of a child is a storytelling classic for a reason, and here it gave us that wonderful goodbye scene with his copy of The Little Princess. Even Naomi seemed human for a millisecond as she took on board Lawrence’s plea to ignore one of Gilead’s ugly edicts and to teach their kidnapped child to read.  By the time that Lawrence, blindsided by the early arrival of the other commanders, made his brave choice and paused momentarily to put his hand on his chest in a goodbye gesture to June, I was feeling well fed. After years of asking where this brilliant, evil mind stood morally, Lawrence’s ending put him firmly on the “one of us” side.  The doubly widowed Serena’s place there is fixed too, according to June. Like Lawrence, Serena gave up the commanders to right her past wrongs, but more importantly, she did it for this episode’s theme of love. That’s what June exhorted Wharton to choose instead of revenge. That’s the plea June made to Serena about the world they both wanted for their children. Those were the words June, Janine and Moira exchanged as their leader was led away yet again in cuffs. (7 minutes 45 seconds, by the way – the amount of time between June and the Handmaids running triumphantly towards their freedom at the end of last episode, and them cowering at gunpoint under a bridge in this. This show is an abusive relationship.)  Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Setting up love as Gilead’s opposite is an unbeatable argument, as June found in her appeals to Serena, Wharton and last episode, to Aunt Lydia. What really sold those appeals though, and particularly to those audiences, was June’s Christianity. Making her character a theist has been a masterstroke on the part of this story’s creators, because it broadens the argument base. June, who can quote scripture with the best of them, can’t be dismissed as ignorant and godless. Her belief negates any accusation from the religious right that this show’s messages are anti-faith. They’re not. They’re anti-oppression, pro-love, and, in the right circumstances, all for taking out the bastards who grind us down. The Handmaid’s Tale concludes with “The Handmaid’s Tale” on Tuesday May 27 on Hulu. Season six airs on Channel 4 in the UK.