Did Nobody Wants This Season 2 Take a Swipe at The Handmaid’s Tale? The Link You Missed
Nobody Wants This season 2 sneaks in a sly Handmaid’s Tale wink, as Timothy Simons and Jackie Tohn’s onscreen couple clash over his mother’s baby pressure in episode 3 — a meta jab that lands with bite.
If you were watching Nobody Wants This Season 2 and thought, huh, did they just poke The Handmaid's Tale? You did not imagine it. The Netflix comedy sneaks in a meta wink midseason, then spends the rest of the year quietly pulling Sasha and Esther apart in a way that feels painfully human and, yeah, probably inevitable.
The Handmaid's Tale nod you clocked in Episode 3
In Season 2, Episode 3, Esther (Jackie Tohn) and Sasha (Timothy Simons) argue about Sasha's mom pressuring them to have another kid. Esther, over it, drops this line:
"She is f***king nuts if she thinks she is in charge of me having a whole ass baby. Is this The Handmaid's Tale? I never saw past season 1, but I don't think it gets any better for the gals."
It's more playful than mean, but the irony is doing cartwheels: Timothy Simons actually showed up in The Handmaid's Tale's final season as Commander Bell, a bad guy who meets an ugly end. So yes, the show is absolutely winking at his resume.
Where Sasha and Esther end up by the finale
Season 2 tracks a slow, quiet drift. Sasha leans into his mom's advice and the idea of expanding their family; Esther is unsure about motherhood and increasingly unsure about the marriage. It doesn't explode so much as it frays.
By Morgan's engagement party, the distance is unavoidable. During a slow dance, Sasha admits he sees how far apart they feel and says he's been trying to spark things again. Esther, crying, says it still isn't working. He hears her. It hurts.
Later, Sasha tells Morgan he'll probably wait for Esther if she ever comes back. The season closes on that bittersweet beat: two people being honest, even if honesty means stepping away.
Why the breakup was baked in, according to the showrunner
Creator Erin Foster says Esther leaving wasn't a twist so much as the only honest ending for where Season 2 took her. In a 2025 chat with The Wrap, Foster put it plainly:
"It wasn't going to feel right to us after the season we had built for Esther to want to stay with Sasha."
Esther's doubts weren't passing nerves; they were identity-level questions. As Foster explained:
"When you have that much doubt in your relationship and wonder of what's on the other side, who you are without this person, I think that usually that person feels like they need to explore what that looks like."
And the goal wasn't shock value. It was emotional truth:
"We wanted to be true to what felt right for them, and it really felt right for her to be honest with him and walk away."
Quick stats and credits
- Showrunners/creative leads: Erin Foster, Craig DiGregorio, Jenni Konner, Bruce Eric Kaplan
- Production companies: Fatigue Sisters Productions, Double Wide Productions, Levitan Productions, Mr. D Productions, 3 Arts Entertainment, Dunshire Productions, 20th Television, Jenni Konner, BEK Industries
- IMDb rating: 7.8/10
- Rotten Tomatoes score: 95%
- Streaming: Nobody Wants This is now on Netflix
Did Esther make the right call by leaving Sasha? Or was there still a version of them that could have worked if they pushed a little longer? Personally, the season makes a strong case that sometimes doing the kind thing looks like letting go.