"Offred" is the premiere episode of the American television drama series The Handmaid's Tale. It was directed by Reed Morano, and written by Bruce Miller, adapting material from the 1985 Margaret Atwood novel The Handmaid's Tale. The episode debuted on the streaming service Hulu on April 26, 2017. The Handmaid's Tale is set in a near-future dystopia in which a mysterious epidemic of female infertility spontaneously affects women worldwide. 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. The viewers follow a woman named June, more commonly known as "Offred" because she has been assigned to a man named "Fred" to bear him children. Fertile women such as June are known as "handmaids" and are forcibly conscripted to bear children for childless couples. Storytelling in the series is routinely non-linear as June has flashbacks to the time before Gilead's rise and a possible resistance movement. "Offred" was released along with the second and third episodes of the series and the entire first season received widespread critical acclaim. Imagery from the series has also influenced political protests to the presidency of Donald Trump. Plot 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. Punishment is severe and strict for these women but also any other dissenters: academics, doctors, religious minorities (such as Catholics), and homosexuals. In the present day, June is assigned to a new family and given the name "Offred"—all handmaids' names change to a construction "Of __", named after the male head of a household. Commander Fred Waterford is a powerful member of the ruling insurgency in Gilead. 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. Any time she is in public, she must wear modest clothing and refrain from eye contact with men; she is constantly accompanied by another handmaid called "Ofglen", whom June despises for Ofglen's piety. The streets