Ever since Game of Thrones resulted in 2019 — and what a horrible little ending it was — there’s been a seemingly unending quest to seek out the “next Game of Thrones.” What meaning is two-fold: a sequence that captures Game of Thrones’s intensive, fantasy world-building and the drama of political succession and a present dropping on HBO’s premier Sunday evening spot that everybody desires to speak in regards to the morning after.
Dune: Prophecy feels extra like that than some other present proper now.
Loosely based mostly on the 2012 novel Sisterhood of Dune, Prophecy has GoT trappings: political maneuvering among the many universe’s wealthy households, backstabbing and shock deaths, conniving villains, and sweaty intercourse scenes. The wrestle to carry energy within the Duniverse is simply as troublesome and lethal as it’s in Westeros. And conveniently, it’s airing Sunday nights on HBO.
But what’s gained me over in Prophecy is that whereas it’s formally all these aforementioned issues, it’s primarily gossipy, bold house divas diva-ing ambitiously in house. Granted, Prophecy is one more chapter of Hollywood’s infatuation with IP, but it surely’s additionally yielded a lavish little cleaning soap opera the place Emily Watson is a super-powered chief of an all-female ending faculty for younger intergalactic mages.
Prophecy is about simply how harmful girls in STEM — that’s, sorcery, transmutation, eugenics, and mothering — might be.
Dune: Prophecy is about who will get to be highly effective
Prophecy takes place on the very starting — 10,148 years earlier than Paul Atreides is born.
Played by Timothée Chalamet in Denis Villeneuve’s two Dune motion pictures, Paul Atreides is the anchor for all informal followers. Both Dune movies chronicle his journey — fleeing residence after an assault wipes out virtually all of his household and people loyal to the Atreides clan, after which changing into a refugee on Arrakis (a.okay.a. the desert planet referred to as Dune), the place he assimilates into the Fremen, an indigenous individuals oppressed by the identical Imperium that slaughtered his family members. Paul is, based on premonition by a sisterhood of precognitive, super-powered girls referred to as the Bene Gesserit, a messiah who will rule the universe.
Zooming into 10,000 years B.P. (earlier than Paul), Prophecy takes intention, because the title suggests, on the formation of that essential Bene Gesserit revelation and the Bene Gesserit themselves.
How did these house divas develop into so highly effective? Who are they? What do they imagine in? What’s their objective? Are they all the time kinda imply?
Their purpose for present, like so many different suspicious organizations, is barely based mostly in eugenics. Oh no. Mother Raquella (Cathy Tyson), their founder, has been conserving an enormous archive of DNA of probably the most highly effective households within the universe. Her perception is that people are fallible, feeble creatures that can all the time careen towards their very own destruction. By matching up households based mostly on this archive, Raquella believes she and her sisters can breed leaders they will management and affect — the endpoint being Paul Atreides.
To guarantee much more affect over individuals and their futures, Raquella has created a faculty for future house witches on the desolate planet known as Wallach IX, the place sorceresses-in-training study powers like with the ability to clock when somebody is mendacity or blood magic soothsaying. Raquella calls proteges Truthsayers, and these expertise make them very precious. Soon each ruling household within the universe desires a Truthsayer by their facet.
What these aristocrats don’t know is that although their Truthsayer appears to combine into their homes and customs, their precise loyalty is to the Bene Gesserit sisterhood.
There’s a sure political commentary right here, too, about who’s allowed to rule the good homes of Dune, what roles girls are confined to, and the way the Bene Gesserit flip girls’s social limitations and underestimations to their benefit.
Prophecy begins with Raquella’s demise, discovering a faction of her acolytes who assume the eugenics stuff is kinda icky, whereas her most religious follower, the ruthless Valya Harkonnen (performed by Jessica Barden in youth, however primarily by Emily), thinks it truly guidelines. But though we all know Valya and her sisters succeeded in bending the longer term to carry us Paul, loads can occur in 10,000 years.
Dune: Prophecy is about who actually holds energy within the Duniverse
Prophecy’s greatest achievement is the way it manages to chop by the density of the Dune universe. It’s not a straightforward activity to take all of the complexities of Frank Herbert’s intensive world and make it accessible. But Prophecy does so, primarily, by framing this immense society and all of the relationships inside, as gossip. That makes Valya and her sisters the universe’s gossip ladies.
If you needed to attract a comparability between this HBO fantasy present about politics, energy, and a throne and HBO’s beforehand, vastly standard fantasy present about politics, energy, and a throne, Prophecy is like if Game of Thrones was advised by the eyes of Varys, Littlefinger, or Olenna Tyrell — gamers with no specific energy however who know the way the sport is performed.
Prophecy is about how the whispers can affect the world, and about who highly effective individuals take heed to. And that the politics of Dune — and politics typically — might be rather more riveting if you understand a lot of it’s about who’s trash-talking who.
Heavy spoilers for the primary episode of Dune: Prophecy comply with.
Whether it’s half princes who don’t have any proper to the throne or the messiness of House Corrino — the rulers of the Imperium — with their shaky grasp on the manufacturing of spice (probably the most precious useful resource within the Duniverse), every episode boils all the way down to Valya and her girlies speaking about everybody else, and the way they intend to govern them.
At one level within the premiere, Valya and her sister Tula (Olivia Williams) have a non-public bitch session. Like evil sorority sisters, they coldly go up and down their checklist of acolytes, stating their strengths and faults, usefulness and uselessness. Brows furrow, lips purse, and side-eyes are flicked — deliciously. Valya and Tula want to determine which sister to match with Ynez Corrino (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina), the princess they wish to sway to the Bene Gesserit. In the method, they’re more than pleased to checklist off all of the hopefuls who gained’t make the reduce.
Watson imbues Valya with the heat of gazpacho and the allure of a cursed porcelain doll. Unwavering from Raquella’s mission, Valya has the items in play to maintain all the system working. Thanks to her loyal truthsayer Kasha (Jihae), she has a maintain on House Corrino, and has simply signed a deal to carry Ynez to her faculty. She’s additionally used her connections to dealer a wedding between Ynez and a boy — a literal 9-year-old — from House Richese, a robust household that guarantees Corrino the artillery they should hold spice manufacturing intact. The Bene Gesserit are little question banking on that future inheritor to be favorably malleable.
But Valya’s plan appears to be going up in smoke with the arrival of Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), a Corrino loyalist and survivor of what’s supposedly a Fremen assault on Arrakis.
As Hart tells Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong), the stories coming from the area aren’t all the fact. Since there aren’t many survivors like Hart, Corrino has to depend on secondhand tales that pin the casualties on Fremen. Hart tells the Emperor that nobody — together with Corrino’s loyal Truthsayer Kasha, Valya, and their sisters — might be trusted. As Corrino decides whether or not to weigh Hart’s phrase versus the loyalty Kasha and the Bene Gesserit have pledged to him, somebody — the episode doesn’t present us who — offers Corrino surveillance footage of Hart on Arrakis that exhibits him surviving the assault but in addition, and extra intriguingly, being swallowed by a sand worm. The episode ends with Hart assassinating 9-year-old Pruwet Richese (Charlie Hodson-Prior) by roasting him with thoughts powers. He seemingly burns Kasha to demise as nicely.
Hart’s arrival and pyrokineses appears to be what Raquella refers to (earlier within the episode) because the Tiran-Arafel, a “holy judgment” that can demolish the sisterhood. But at this level it’s unclear whether or not Hart represents the massive unhealthy Bene Gesserit destroyer that Raquella had visions about, or could also be linked to Bene Gesserit’s different enemies. As my colleague Patrick Reis defined when Dune: Part Two was launched, the Bene Gesserit have counterparts referred to as Bene Tleilax, a patriarchal set of genetic splicers and cloners who’re additionally itching to manage the universe. It’s not that far-fetched to imagine that they may exist on this universe too.
No doubt, for Valya and her sisterhood to thrive, Hart must be squashed. He’s clearly a risk. The nearer he will get to Javicco, the more serious it seems to be for our house witches. We simply want a bit extra time, some gossip, and possibly a number of extra episodes to determine if he’s the massive unhealthy Raquella dreamed about, or simply one other piece of the puzzle that leads us to it.