Both stories explore the desire for control over women's bodies, and the lasting trauma of sexual violence. Grace is no Offred (Elisabeth Moss), enslaved and forced to give birth to a new generation under pain of death, but the patriarchal forces at work against her are no less terrifying. Long before she's incarcerated and sexually abused in an asylum, she's subjected to her loutish father's drunken advances. After leaving her family, she finds solace in the friendship of Mary Whitney (Rebecca Liddiard), whom she then watches die from a botched abortion. With Mary gone, her former lover, the son of Grace's employer, pursues Grace relentlessly, banging on her door in the middle of the night demanding she sleep with him. To escape him, she takes a job under housekeeper Nancy Montgomery (Anna Paquin), working as a maid for Thomas Kinnear (Paul Gross) on his farm in the middle of nowhere. There she meets James McDermott (Kerr Logan), a surly farmhand who is determined to marry her. When it turns out that Kinnear may want to trade in Montgomery, his lover, for Grace, they both end up dead.