Skip to content

Dune: Prophecy Shuffles Pieces Across the Board in “Two Wolves”

7
Share

<i>Dune: Prophecy</i> Shuffles Pieces Across the Board in “Two Wolves”

Home / Dune: Prophecy Shuffles Pieces Across the Board in “Two Wolves”
Movies & TV Dune: Prophecy

Dune: Prophecy Shuffles Pieces Across the Board in “Two Wolves”

Learning Mother Superior's greatest fear is not as riveting as one might hope

By

Published on November 25, 2024

Image: HBO

7
Share
Mikaela in her Fremen clothes in Dune Prophecy's "Two Wolves"

Image: HBO

It’s not Dune if someone isn’t taking poison to access their race memory, right?

Recap

Tula sitting talking to her sister Valya in Dune Prophecy's "Two Wolves"
Image: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

Sister Nasir (Karima McAdams) arrives from the Suk School to examine Kasha and help Tula figure out what happened to her. The Acolytes discuss Kasha’s death, with Sister Theodosia (Jade Anuoka) saying it seems likely to be an assassination. Valya gets word about Pruwet’s death and means to leave for Salusa Secundus to secure their place with the royal family. Valya leaves Tula in charge and wants her to put the acolyte Lila (Chloe Lea) through the agony so they can access Raquella’s knowledge. Tula doesn’t want to do this as she thinks of Lila as her own, but agrees to do what’s right for the Sisterhood. Valya asks Theodosia to accompany her, and she agrees. On Salusa Secundus, the Empress talks to Duke Richese, who thinks of accusing the royal family in his son’s death. The Emperor talks to Desmond Hart about the death and Hart makes it clear that he believed the Emperor wanted the boy dead, so he took care of it. The Emperor has him locked up in a suspension chamber and advises Keiran Atreides to keep quiet about it.

Tula talks to Lila and explains the reckoning they believe is upon them, and Lila’s heritage: She is Rauqella’s great-great-granddaughter, and they want her to undergo the Agony so that she can access her genetic memory. Lila is horrified at the idea, but Tula tells her that the choice must be hers. Lady Sharon Richese (Tessa Bonham Jones), Pruwet’s older sister, is having a fling with Constantine, and they do a lot of drugs while she pumps him for information; he tells her about Hart in the cells. The Emperor tells his wife what Hart did and that the surveillance footage shows he survived an attack by the sandworm on Arrakis. The Empress suggests that they use Hart’s loyalty rather than casting him aside. Sister Avila (Barbara Marten) asks Tula about the poison she’s preparing for the Agony; Tula knows she’s been sent by her sister to keep an eye on things and insists that Lila will still get to make this choice on her own. Duke Richese hears about Hart from his daughter and demands that the Emperor hand him over. While the two fight, Valya enters unannounced to give her condolences and calm things down.

Richese leaves after being assured by the Emperor that there is no suspect in custody for this son’s murder. Valya lets Javicco know that Kasha has died, and asks to speak to Hart. Before doing so, she tells Ynex of Kasha’s death—the princess is heartbroken, but Valya introduces her to Theodosia, her possible future dorm mate as a distraction. Valya meets Hart, who tells her he was born on Balut, and that faith led him to the Emperor. He admits that he killed Pruwet and Kasha too, because she was unfit to stand besides the Emperor. He claims to serve only the Imperium, and tells the Emperor that Vayla and her kind chip away at his power. Kayla is determined to remind the Emperor of their value to the throne. Lila has conversations with Sister Emeline (Aoife Hinds) about martyrdom and its uses, and Sister Jen (Faoileann Cunningham) about not being used as a pawn by the Sisterhood. Keiran Atreides is scanning the palace structure for a meticulous blueprint; it turns out that he is part of a resistance cell, and he meets up with Horace (Sam Spruell) and Mikaela (Shalom Bruce-Franklin) to discuss their next steps to announce the rebellion on a large scale.

Tula and Lila speak again, admitting that they feel bonded to each other like mother and daughter. Tula tells Lila that her mother died in childbirth, giving Lila another reason to go through the Agony. Mikaela meets with Valya at night—she’s a secret member of the sisterhood, working in the shadows. Valya wants to burn the whole resistance cell she’s looking out for in order to regain the Emperor’s trust, and she begins by naming Keiran, which catches Valya’s interest. Ynez has another sparring match with Keiran and tells him about her father facing another rebellion when she was a child, the Broken Chain. She was kidnapped by them, and Constantine insisted that they take him as well so he could look after her. They kiss, but Ynez insists that they stop now that her future is uncertain. The Empress takes a moment to speak to Hart alone, asking why they shouldn’t give him up. He insists that he can show her how much help he would be to their family.

Lila chooses to undergo the Agony, and finds the place within where her ancestors reside; Raquella is there and tells the sisters that the key to the reckoning was born twice, “once in blood, once in spice.” She begins to seize and thinks she sees her mother, but the person speaking to her is her grandmother—Dorotea. She tells Lila that her mother isn’t there, and shows Lila her own murder at Valya’s hand. Tula encourages Lila to get out, but it’s too late: Lila has died. Back on Salusa Secundus, Duke Richese threatens to tell the Great Houses about what happened to his son, but the Emperor introduces Hart, who begins burning the Duke. The Emperor tells him to keep quiet about these events. Valya arrives at the palace to be confronted by Hart, who tells her that her services are no longer needed by the royal family and her privileges to the palace have been revoked. Valya uses the Voice to try and get Hart to kill himself, but he resists. Hart says that he’s finally learned her greatest fear: “It’s not that no one will hear you. It’s that they’ll hear you, and just won’t care.”

Commentary

Desmond Hart in Dune Prophecy's "Two Wolves"
Image: HBO

There’s on the nose and then there’s on the nose. By which, I mean, there’s on the nose, and there’s “let’s make the final line of this episode a description of the thing that most women in the world are afraid of because that’s very deep of us, don’t you know…”

Sorry, that was incredibly hamfisted for my tastes. And it also didn’t feel much like it belonged to this universe in terms of dialogue? I wish it had ended on stronger terms.

But we’ve got to talk about the oliphant in the room: Desmond Hart and his strange murdery abilities, supposedly granted to him by Shai-hulud.

There are two probable options here on where this is going. First one: Desmond Hart is an expert conman who is working hard to convince everyone that he has powers beyond comprehension. We will eventually discover what creates those powers and why he’s really here. Second option: This is all real and Desmond Hart has been chosen by the Great Worm to be some sort of faith-based emissary that is here to try and wipe out the Sisterhood. (And he will, per our knowledge of the future, fail in this task.)

The trouble with option two is massive: The conceit of Hart’s powers and where he received them makes absolutely no sense in terms of storytelling or Dune’s worldbuilding. Yes, there are plenty of “magic”-seeming abilities in this universe, but it’s all explained in jaggedy pseudo-scientific ways. There are reasons for the Voice and extreme control the Bene Gesserit exert over their own bodies; and, very pointedly, the fact that they are still called “witches” by most men denotes the heavily ingrained sexism of their society, not the suggestion that the sisters are using actual magic. What Desmond Hart is doing—if it is truly a power granted by Shai-hulud—doesn’t remotely fit the universe’s mechanics.

Option one is still on the table, and I hope that’s where we’re heading. But we’ll have to wait and see, and at the moment, the success of the story is riding solely on this choice.

There’s a lot of treading water in this episode, a lot of characters getting into place for the rest of the action to work, and little reveals being planted all the way through. Yet again, we’ve experienced no flashback sequences after a promise that we’d been getting a story told in two timelines. So that makes the pacing ungainly, but at least we’re getting to know some of the characters better, particularly the acolytes.

And I do love Vayla’s control freak nature making all of her relationships incredibly harsh. It shines the most with Tula, but she has no patience in reserve for anyone. Eager for that to get some use down the road, as things are clearly not going her way by the end of the episode.

One turn that I’m enjoying more than I expected is the reveal that Keiran Atreides is part of the current rebellion against the Emperor. It serves as an excellent example of how ruling classes keep power by giving smaller amounts to the people who might overthrow them. We’re seeing this in the push and pull with the Richese family, and get a much deeper sense of this struggle watching an Atreides working in a resistance cell to bring down the Imperium… all while knowing that this resistance is nowhere to be found ten millennia down the line. The Atreides will once again be a powerful Great House with everything to prove and to lose, firmly in the Emperor’s pocket.

I’m also curious as to whether Lila is entirely dead? Technically you can get subsumed by your ancestral memory in this process, but I don’t think it’s ever been shown without said ancestral memory getting the person to do something that ends their life. Olivia Williams’ drives Tula’s heartbreak into the viewer regardless, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a miraculous recovery. Somewhere down the line.

And props again to Mark Strong for being the universe’s most ineffectual Emperor. His waffly uncertainty manages to project the inverse to swagger, and it’s enjoyable to watch him founder while all the women around him try to make up for his failings.

Truthsaying and Visions

Lila dressed in her nightgown looking worried in Dune Prophecy's "Two Wolves"
Image: Attila Szvacsek/HBO
  • These openers really are kinda similar, huh. Between this and Wheel of Time and Rings of Power, I’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart.
  • I did like the rendering of the place where Lila accesses her ancestors, particularly because Dune: Part Two undersold that experience cinematically. You get a sense of how suffocating it can be, which is dearly important for other characters in this universe (namely Paul’s preborn sister, Alia.) And, of course, the fact that Lila’s mother wasn’t there means that it’s likely Tula lied and her mother is still alive. Who do we think she could be?
  • The choice to reveal Dorotea’s relation to Raquella like that was extremely effective. That’s how you do it.

Next week: Same spice time, same spice channel… icon-paragraph-end

About the Author

Emmet Asher-Perrin

Author

Emmet Asher-Perrin is the News & Entertainment Editor of Reactor. Their words can also be perused in tomes like Queers Dig Time Lords, Lost Transmissions: The Secret History of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction. They cannot ride a bike or bend their wrists. You can find them on Bluesky and other social media platforms where they are mostly quiet because they'd rather talk to you face-to-face.
Learn More About Emmet
Subscribe
Notify of
Avatar


7 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
wiredog
2 months ago

” And, of course, the fact that Lila’s mother wasn’t there means that it’s likely Tula lied and her mother is still alive.”
That’s new. Alia and Ghanima could both access memories of Jessica (up until they were born) and Jessica was still alive. For that matter, Leto could access memories of Paul while Paul was still alive.

Avatar
2 months ago

There is a third option, which is that Hart does have powers, and he believes they are a gift from the Great Worm, but they’re actually coming from somewhere else. I have no idea what that somewhere might be, but it’s possible. However, I do prefer “option one,” just because I think that would make him more interesting and would give Travis Fimmel something to do other than staring creepily at everyone with whom he shares a scene.

Avatar
EFMD
2 months ago
Reply to  David-Pirtle

To stare creepily AND discuss horrible, horrible deeds with schoolboy innocence, to be fair.

Avatar
2 months ago

I’m probably committed to watching the whole series, but this wasn’t particularly good. It’s a given that an adaptation has to transform things, but so far this series feels weirdly lacking in anything that makes Dune distinctively Dune despite efforts to desperately cram in Dune trappings like a Cone of Silence and finally name-dropping the Spacing Guild (and look, there’s a random heighliner, even if travel still feels very Star Wars-ey, we’ll get there at the speed-of-plot instead of having to work through and around a persnickety monopolist).

Herbert’s novels were full of ideas, even if some were problematic; the Lynch movie was awful but at least it was weird; and the Villeneuve movie at least felt like it wanted to say something about White Savior Narratives and push back against some of the sexism in the novels. Prophecy feels very generic so far; as if you could do a find-and-replace on the names and load in a few different backgrounds to CGI onto the greenscreens behind the cast and, oh look, it’s Game of Thrones or some other SF/F IP now.

Avatar
EFMD
2 months ago

I’m not going to lie, the key reason for my being willing to give this show a second chance to hook me was Mr Travis Fimmel bringing absolutely impeccable Rasputin vibes (Well, that and an extremely strong cast), so one is very glad to report that Second Time WAS the charm and I am now committed to this series for at least the duration of it’s first season.

I’m not saying this is entirely due to Mother Valya visibly reminding herself that she is a big, grown-up anti-villain and that cackling like the Wicked Witch of the East is therefore beneath her dignity right after hearing that one of those d*** Atreidies has put his neck, his honour and the reputation of his House on the chopping board – after all, we get the Classic Herbert Trip in all it’s eerie splendour, the Empress being a lioness married to a tabby cat and Mother Tula & Sister Lila being tragically adorable (Amongst other goodies: getting a clearer sense of the younger sisters as personalities, rather than as a chorus, definitely helps sell the series) – but that was a particular delight.

Somehow even more delightful than seeing Mother Valya visibly deliver whole reams of silent profanity after she doesn’t QUITE manage to Voice the Empire’s new Merlin into a self-inflicted tracheotomy (On the nose or not, it’s always nice to see a sinister and terrifyingly powerful individual be reminded that they can’t control EVERYTHING).

Anyway, the only thing I can seriously quibble about in this episode is that the opening credits are poorly put together – honestly, it seems deeply unfair to lump THE RINGS OF OOWER in with them, because I’ve never had difficulty passing those credits (and actually find them one of my favourite elements of the show, with the strong hint of the Music of the Ainur playing out in front of us – since they come across as a jumble of images that don’t really convey any sense of time, place or plot.

Hopefully they will become easier to interpret as the show goes on, but I’m not entirely confident that this will prove the case.

Avatar
EFMD
2 months ago

Oh, and I would be denying an important part of myself if one failed to point out that the line “… and they do a lot of drugs while she pumps him for information.” from this very review didn’t make me giggle and giggle.

‘On the nose’ doesn’t necessarily mean BAD, after all.😉

Avatar
2 months ago

“The Atreides will once again be a powerful Great House with everything to prove and to lose, firmly in the Emperor’s pocket.”

It’s been a while since I read the earliest of the Brian Herbert & Kevin Anderson books (the early ones where they were still relying heavily on Frank Herbert’s notes) – but I seem to remember that the Atreides remain large inconsequential until Leto’s father (Paul’s grandfather) who did something significant enough to be honored by the emperor and given the duchy of Caledon. I think that was even the cause of the Atreides and Harkonnen feud because the Harkonnens had their eye on Caledon. But I could be misremembering.

In line with Emmet’s theories on Hart I’m thinking it could be something pharmacological – since that is a huge part of the Dune universe. But I also got to thinking about a group that plays a rather significant but shadowy role in Dune Messiah that we have not seen mention of in the films or show yet – the Bene Tleilax. Hart makes mention of losing his eye (Fimmel just can’t get away from the allusions to Odin, can he) and I wonder if that is the source of his power – especially since he seems to have headaches on that side of the head. It could be a creation of the Tleilax to try and counter the rise of the Bene Gesserit.
Using Dune: Prophecy to introduce the lore of the Bene Tleilax would help ease the exposition Villeneuve needs to do in order introduce the Duncan Idaho ghola. He can have some throwaway explanation for the people who don’t watch the series, but for folks following the film and series we can get deeper lore.

Last edited 2 months ago by FSkornia
reCaptcha Error: grecaptcha is not defined