Offred (The Handmaid's Tale episode)

The ensuing chaos results in a Dominionist Christian cult overtaking almost all of the United States, renaming it "Gilead" and enforcing a strictly patriarchal theocracy.

In a flashback sequence, June's family is pursued in the woods and armed men arrest her, kill her husband Luke, and abduct their child Hannah.

Throughout the episode, viewers see subsequent flashbacks to June's detainment in a facility with other fertile women who are beaten and indoctrinated to believe that their destiny is to please God through being "handmaids"—women who are chosen to bear children for powerful couples who are infertile.

Offred is assigned mundane chores such as grocery shopping, and is periodically raped in "The Ceremony" wherein Waterford attempts to impregnate June while his wife Serena restrains her.

Atwood serves as consulting producer, giving feedback on some of the areas where the series expands upon or modernizes the book[1][3] and has a small cameo role in "Offred".

The website's critical consensus said, "Elizabeth Moss' expressive eyes speak volumes to unspeakable horrors in 'Offred,' an effective, if allusive, introduction to the bleak world of Gilead.

[27] Women's rights activists began dressing as handmaids for political protests within three weeks of "Offred" airing[28] and the trend has continued for subsequent events such as Brett Kavanaugh's 2018 Supreme Court nomination hearing[29] and it had become a viral phenomenon by 2019, similar to Guy Fawkes masks used by Anonymous protestors several years prior.