Warning: Contains SPOILERS for The Handmaid's Tale season 4, episode 9, "Progress."
The Handmaid’s Tale season 4 has dropped its biggest sign that June Osborne and Nick Blaine are meant to be together - but that it can truly never happen. Romance has rarely been the focus of June’s Gilead story, given all the horrors she has had to face and how much she’s survived. But it has been a crucial element of it as well; her romance with Luke led to their daughter, Hannah, which gave her something to fight for. June's relationship with Nick is more complicated, given its origins, but it bloomed into something genuine and led to Nichole, who, like Hannah, gave June a renewed purpose.
Nick and June’s romance has long been a difficult one because of both of their standings in Gilead, and now that one of them is standing outside of Gilead it’s even harder. That isn’t just because of distance or the danger of even seeing each other, but because of June being reunited with Luke. Now that she is back with her husband, there’s an expectation of her resuming married life and raising Nichole together, and that is likely what will continue to happen, but it doesn’t mean Nick is completely out of the picture.
June has a lot to deal with, from her simmering anger that’s ready to boil over, to attempting to resume married life after such great trauma, and, of course, trying to get Hannah out of Gilead. The latter leads her to the Maria Magdalena Academy and back to Nick, and the hope that he can get her out of Gilead. He can’t - or so he says - but what’s more telling is how The Handmaid’s Tale frames this meeting. Nick and June spend their reunion bathed in golden light, smiling, fussing over Nichole, and for the first time in a very long time, looking genuinely happy and peaceful. Removed of context, it’s a seemingly blissful moment that confirms June and Nick is the show’s great romance.
It’s not just that the two star-crossed lovers, divided by position in Gilead and now position on the globe, are clearly madly in love. This is June - and Elisabeth Moss - as she’s rarely allowed to be seen; smiling, glowing, free. They are framed in this moment as the picture of a perfect family, even if the truth is anything but. For a moment, though, the lie is enough, and audiences are allowed to experience it too. June and Luke will always have their own connection, and are presumably the show's endgame as far as couples go, but there’s a separation that is hard to close. Nick understands a part of June that no one else does, and she him. They were once all they had, and The Handmaid’s Tale suggests that, in another time and place, that might’ve been enough.
Unfortunately, though, they’re not in another time nor place. June is in Canada, where she must now face the fact that Fred Waterford and Mark Tuello are working together, her testimony be damned. And Nick is in Gilead, married once again - though he hides it from June - and seemingly resigned to his fate. He may say that getting Hannah out is impossible, but the implication is that it’d be child’s play compared to extricating himself from the Republic. Whether Nick and June meet again remains to be seen - there is still a chance that Nick will help Hannah escape, even at the cost of his own life - but this felt like a goodbye scene, for them and for viewers. It’s clear that Nick and June were meant to be on The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s even clearer they never could be.