Maybe it was all Denis Villeneuve’s fault. Maybe he’d set such a high standard when attempting to untangle Frank Herbert’s worm worshiping universe of Dune, that anything that came after would unavoidably seem vastly inferior in comparison. It’s certainly seemed that way for the first half of HBO’s Dune: Prophecy that tried to ride on the coat tails of the movies while trying to tell a story set generations in the past. It certainly felt Dune enough on the surface, with intergalactic political power plays, vast amounts of secrets and weapons grade plotting happening all over the shop, but large sections of the story simply wasn’t hooking my attention as much as, say, Game Of Thrones did back in its earlier days. Adding to the issues was a flashback episode plonked right in the centre of the show that essentially wiped out any forward momentum the show had manage to build.
Yep, I’d pretty much given up hope of Dune fulfilling any sort of prophecy, let alone it’s own – and yet, out of nowhere, the fourth episode has seemed to pull off a miracle. Could it be that the worm has finally turned?
It seems that the plans and machinations of certain power players have finally come into focus and are even on the verge of bearing bitter fruit. With the return of Mother Superior Valya to he family of House Harkonnen, she finally makes her move, getting her nephew, Harrow, placed in the Landsraad and taking her place as his truthsayer. Her plan is thus: to get Harrow to accuse Emperor Javicco Corrino of having a vendetta against other houses that resulted in the murder of young Pruwet while the resistance (which she has allowed) smuggle an explosive device and try and assassinate the big cheese. All that’s left for Valya to do is thwart the very attempt she’s allowed and thus raise the standing of House Harkonnen while finally getting one over on Javicco’s mysterious right hand man, Desmond Hart.
Meanwhile, back with the Sisterhood, many of the younger members suffer the same horrific nightmare and in an effort to decode it, Tula has those afflicted take Spice in order to relive and control these visions. However, all she’s left with are numerous scribblings of Arrakis, blue eyes and the giant worm creatures known as Shai-Hulud which raise far more question than answers.
Meanwhile, when the time comes for Valya’s plan to finally come to fruition, she finds that she’s beaten to the punch when Javicco’s own daughter, Ynez, steps up and attempts to accuse Hart of murder. However Desmond, has somehow outmaneuvered everyone by not only flat out admiting to killing Pruwet, but he maintains that he did so under orders of the Emperor as a zero tolerance policy on the use of outlawed thinking machines. Furthermore he also reveals that he’s already thwarted the assassination attempt, had those responsible arrested ahead of time and executes them in full view of the Landsraad.
But as troubling as all this is, Tula gets a shock when the formally comatose Lila awakes and Valya finally gets to vent her frustrations on her uncle.
I have to be honest, I was starting to wonder if I’d ever get caught up in Dune: Prophecy at all as all the complex machinations were simply failing to hook me in a way that should have had me virtually begging for the next episode. I don’t want to keep banging the Game Of Thrones drum to make my point, but as both shows share quite a lot of similarities, it’s just the quickest way to get the point across and by the third episode of GOT, I was pulling my hair out to get to get to the next episode whereas I feel I’ve been working through Dune out of a sense of duty. Well, the good news is that episode four has finally picked up the slack and matters are starting to pay off as the fruit of everyone’s labours are actually coming to a head and the show continues to pile on the pressure.
After the revelation that a teenage Tula was responsible for the murder of a bunch of Atreides men, Olivia Williams is disappointingly mostly on foreshadowing duties, but thankfully Emily Watson’s driven Valya has plenty to do as she dives headlong into her plan to reverse the lowly fortunes of House Harkonnen no matter the cost. We’ve already known the lengths she go to to get what she wants, be it using her persuasive Voice to force a rival in the Sisterhood to slit her own throat, to minapulating everything it stands for in order to follow her own beliefs and yet Twice Born manages to find news ways to highlight how fucked up she truly is. She’s willing to place the Emperor himself at risk from resistance members that she herself have allowed to flourish just to ensure that the Harkonnens finally get their due and she’s also more than happy to maneuver members of her own family into positions of power in order to puppeteer them more ably than Jim Henson on a hot streak.
Obviously the fact that Valya is a nasty piece of work who will stop at nothing has already been established, but the end of the episode really shows us some stuff. Allowing her uncle (played by Mark Addy no less) to die from his ailments is pretty much a given considering that there’s no love lost, but the reveal that her acolyte, Theodosia, is actually a shape-shifter who is utilised by Valya to take the form of her long murdered brother, Griffin, in order to give the Mother Superior pep talks to keep the faith.
It’s these reveals of Valya’s worrying mental issues that helps keeps this episode moving along as well as it does, and while it means that the majority of the other characters are merely a backdrop, it works because most of them – Mark Strong’s Emperor in particular – are being taken for a massive ride. This leads to the Dune: Prophecy’s most gripping aspect that’s been steadily building since the show started – the fact that Desmond Hart’s plans are constantly colliding with and often winning out over Valya’s. In fact, his constant one-upping of virtually everything that everyone else is doing to thwart him has finally crested into a fairly exciting plot. First Javicco pleads with him not to reveal his powers to the Landsraad in order to play it safe, then Javicco’s own daughter spills the tea concerning Pruwet’s murder and all of this plays out over the top of Valya’s plan to thwart a terrorist attempt. But once again, the trippy ex-soldier with the power to roast people alive somehow manages to pull through, essentially telling the absolutely truth about everything and somehow managing to make him and his Emperor come out of it not only smelling of roses, but in a far stronger political position than they were before.
Will only two episodes to go, the inevitable clash of Valya and Duncan has not only finally got Dune: Prophecy moving, but I’m now totally invested after three episodes of slight interest and it’s cool to see very small pieces sliding into place that will eventually cumulate in Villeneuve’s universe (the gradual rise of the Harkonnens into a universal superpower starts here folks). Can the show manage to hold the interest its taken four episodes to build? Only Shai-Hulud knows; but I’m hoping it can.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 