This post contains spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale Episode 8, “Jezebels.”

Perhaps one of the most quietly pleasing aspects of The Handmaid’s Tale is just how long viewers can watch before running into a story told from the male perspective. Sure, there are men in this world, but this is a story primarily concerned with women—and how they interact with the dystopian world they call home.

This might be why it was a little jarring when, at the beginning of Episode 8, viewers found themselves launched into a flashback into Nick’s past. He’s a trusted servant in the Waterford house—one whose thoughts are inscrutable, given his stolid demeanor. That makes sense, since he’s also one of the Eyes—spies who keep watch over everyone, including the powerful male Commanders, to make sure no one is misbehaving. But how, exactly, does one become an Eye? Answers to that and other questions about Nick are what viewers start to uncover through the flashbacks—all of which culminate, in Episode 8, in one of Nick’s most emotionally revealing moments yet.

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“I feel like his role on paper is as a guardian and a lawn boy to the Waterford house,” actor Max Minghella said of his character’s role in this society—a somewhat complicated one that finds him privileged because of his sex, disadvantaged because of his class, and paradoxically powerful because he's an Eye. “It’s a submissive position,” Minghella said of Nick’s gig with the Waterfords—although Fred and Serena Joy clearly trust Nick a great deal, which perhaps gives him some breathing room.

To Minghella, the episode afforded him the exciting opportunity to expose a vulnerable side of Nick—“the human side, which he is very careful to bury for all sorts of reasons,” the actor said. “His humanity is no longer something he can wear on his sleeve.”

In the episode’s flashback—which, like other installments, adds backstory to a character who was left mysterious in the book—viewers watch a struggling Nick attempt to land a job at a career-counseling center after several short-lived stints in various gigs. It doesn’t go well, and when the person waiting behind Nick pesters him to move on, they get into a fight—and Nick punches the counselor in the face. That counselor, it turns out, would become a key player in staging the revolution that brought about Gilead. He takes Nick out for coffee, where Nick reveals that he and his brother’s misfortune began when the steel mills shut down—a struggle that led his brother to give up, forcing Nick to care for both of them. Following his successful meeting with the career counselor, Nick started out as a driver before landing with the Waterfords after the coup—and, eventually, becoming a spy whose job is to keep tabs on everyone, powerful and powerless alike.

Plot aside, perhaps the most fascinating part of this look back into Nick’s past is how much the world of Gilead has transformed him. He might have been emotionally volatile before the takeover, but by the time we meet Nick, he’s thoroughly buttoned down—figuratively and literally, as he consistently wears a uniform of navy-blue button-down shirts. (As Minghella points out, “I don’t think it would be in Nick’s personality to be concerned about his physical appearance.”)

“He is not this guy,” Minghella insists. “The Nick we see in our contemporary narrative is, again, extremely militant and reserved. I don’t think it’s who Nick is. I think it’s a performance that is very kind of restricting. One of the very real challenges for me . . . he’s not a verbose person; he’s not a gesticulator. So you’re working with this sort of quite muted physicality and lexicon to try to demonstrate quite a lot.”

Indeed, as viewers can clearly see from this installment—especially from the heated exchange between Nick and Offred toward the end—Nick, like pretty much everyone else, is complicated. The character reminded Minghella of some of his friends who hail from the East Coast—people who are incredibly kindhearted but will also “throw a punch in a heartbeat.” People like Nick have shorter fuses, Minghella said, than people like him—“a conservative and very boring British person.” But in the hushed powder-keg that is Gilead, such tempers must be concealed. Everyone behaves with practiced formality—from the Commanders, all the way down to their terrorized handmaids.

Which brings us to, perhaps, the most revealing moment of the episode. After engaging in an illicit affair with Offred for a while, Nick breaks it off. Offred, for whom the relationship had become a lifeline of sorts, presses him to give her a reason. After driving Offred and the Commander to a brothel called Jezebels, it appears that Nick has suddenly decided that his and Offred’s relationship is too dangerous.

“I don’t know anything about you, you know,” Offred says. “Nick, you won’t tell me anything. So I don’t know anything. I don’t know who you are.” She demands to know if his life—tending the Commander’s house and occasionally trying to get one of his handmaids pregnant—is enough. He insists their relationship is too dangerous, saying, “You could end up on the wall,” where criminals’ corpses hang. Offred’s response? “At least someone will care when I’m gone. That’s something.”

As she walks away, Nick stops her, pulling her near him. “My name is Nick Blaine,” he says with an air of gravity in his voice. “I’m from Michigan.”

“Well, under his eye, Guardian Blaine,” Offred can’t help but snark as she walks away. It’s a telling moment for both characters: it reveals a dopey side to Nick, who clearly thought he was giving Offred a moment of intimacy, and it further enforces Offred’s role as a relentlessly strong character who, even in the face of a massive power imbalance—Nick could have her arrested any time he wants—can’t help but quietly call bullshit when she sees it.

“There’s an arrogance to him, I think,” Minghella said of his character’s thinking at that moment. He said that the funny moment was discovered “on the day” during the shoot, and noted that Offred’s response does, indeed, amount to “Who gives a fuck?”

“He feels delusional enough to think that’s a very generous [gesture], Minghella continued. “It’s a very masculine mistake—a very male mistake to think we’re that important. ‘You’re welcome.’ ”

That seems to be the mindset of every man in Gilead—from the Commanders all the way down to their glorified garden boys.