(Spoiler alert: Please do not read ahead unless you’ve seen the Season 2 finale of “Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Word.”)
Phew! It looked like Bradley Whitford’s character was actually going to kill Emily (Alexis Bledel) for a minute there during the Season 2 finale of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” didn’t it?
Alright, maybe you knew Commander Joseph Lawrence, the architect of Gilead’s economy, was actually a good guy all along. Or a bad-guy-turned-good-guy.We think. Either way, we discovered that he was not as horrible as we thought when it seemed like he was taking his new handmaid to her death — or worse — after she stabbed Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd), but was actually dropping her off at a rendezvous point to meet June (Elisabeth Moss) and her baby Holly/Nicole to help them escape the dystopian society.
And while Moss’ character ultimately decided to stay behind, Emily got out with the little girl and is on her way to safety.
Joseph notes he might be getting himself into trouble for this, and we’re probably going to see whatever trouble comes, as creator and showrunner Bruce Miller says Whitford will return for the next installment of the Hulu drama.
“Yes, Bradley is coming back for Season 3,” Miller told TheWrap during a conference call Monday. “He was exactly the kind of character we wanted to start building in Season 2 and we were hoping his schedule would work out so he could come back for Season 3.”
“I think we’re gonna learn a ton about him,” Miller continued. “I think the fact that he’s, you know, our Oppenheimer character, the man who designed an atomic bomb and then saw what it could do. I mean, he is a designer of Gilead and now he is seeing what it can do. So he is a mass of contradictions and dangers. So you know you never know what he’s willing to do, what he’s not willing to do.”
“You know he’s been protecting himself for a very long time and his adventure to keep himself alive certainly is not always an adventure that’s meant to keep the people around him alive,” he added. “But now that June crossed paths with him, she’s gonna cross paths with him a lot more in Season 3. ”
Read more from our interview with Miller about the Season 2 finale here.