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Warning: This put up comprises spoilers for Episode 1 of Dune: Prophecy.
Set 10,000 years earlier than the delivery of Paul Atreides and his rise because the prophesied messiah generally known as Lisan-al-Gaib, HBO’s new Dune: Prophecy sequence chronicles the early evolution of the Bene Gesserit order from a fledgling faculty for presented younger ladies to the superpowered mystical sisterhood that is pulling the strings of the imperial authorities firstly of Dune.
Dune: Prophecy relies on 2012’s Sisterhood of Dune, the primary e-book within the Great Schools of Dune prequel trilogy written by Brian Herbert, the son of Dune writer Frank Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson following Frank’s demise. Showrunner Alison Schapker’s sequence facilities on Harkonnen sisters Valya and Tula (performed as adults by Emily Watson and Olivia Williams and in flashbacks by Jessica Barden and Emma Canning). Born roughly 60 years after the tip of the nice machine wars recognized within the Dune universe because the Butlerian Jihad—a campaign by the final free people within the universe that worn out all machine-based expertise—the sisters are distant ancestors of the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, his nephews, Feyd-Rautha and Beast Rabban, and, as was revealed within the Dune Part II film, Paul’s mom Jessica and Paul himself.
As the Imperium’s historical past books inform it, House Atreides forerunner Vorian Atreides led the people to victory over the machines in the course of the remaining days of the wars whereas Valya and Tula’s great-grandfather, Abulard Harkonnen, abandoned the battle and was branded a coward. This resulted in House Harkonnen being disgraced and exiled to the desolate planet of Lankiveil. However, Valya contends that the historical past the Atreides wrote was constructed on lies and resolves at a younger age to upend the established order by gaining energy via the Bene Gesserit.
A rift throughout the sisterhood
When we’re launched to Valya and Tula as younger siblings in Prophecy‘s premiere, Valya is being primed because the successor to the Bene Gesserit’s first-ever Mother Superior, Raquella Berto-Anirul (Cathy Tyson), rather than Raquella’s personal granddaughter, Reverend Mother Dorotea (Camilla Beeput). Raquella, who was a hero in the course of the wars, initially based the order to coach its members to work as Truthsayers, those that may wield the ability of truthsense and be assigned to the Great Houses to assist them sift fact from lies.
However, as an older Valya explains in a voiceover, at the moment, there was rivalry within the Bene Gesserit ranks over Raquella’s need to create a secret breeding program that the sisterhood may use to foster the correct royal unions and domesticate rulers the Bene Gesserit may management. While Valya was of the identical thoughts as Raquella, Dorotea, whom Valya refers to as a “zealot,” seen the breeding program as heresy and believed the order was meant to information the Imperium, not rule it. (This is identical breeding program the Bene Gesserit are utilizing 10,000 years later to attempt to obtain their objective of manufacturing the chosen one generally known as the Kwisatz Haderach, an unparalleled Bene Gesserit male able to accessing all of his ancestral recollections and seeing all potential futures.)
After summoning Valya to her aspect on her deathbed, Raquella relays a prophecy that makes Valya much more agency in her beliefs. “Red mud. It’s coming. Titan-Arafel,” she says, utilizing a phrase that refers to a reckoning within the type of a holy judgment introduced on by a tyrant. “You would be the one to see the burning fact and know.”
When Dorotea then makes an attempt to destroy the breeding index regardless of her grandmother’s remaining phrases, Valya makes use of a brand new means she’s been cultivating referred to as the Voice—a ability that enables the person to talk in such a means that one other individual should obey something they are saying—to power Dorotea to kill herself together with her personal blade.
Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen
As the inventor of the Voice and Mother Superior Raquella’s protégée, Valya is the pure inheritor to the Bene Gesserit’s high place as soon as Dorotea is out of the best way. And 30 years later, it is clear she’s progressed the order’s maintain on the Imperium fairly extensively.
Having schemed for Princess Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina), the daughter of Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong) and inheritor to the Imperial throne, to come back examine to develop into a sister following her organized marriage to the kid inheritor of House Richese, 9-year-old Pruwet Richese (Charlie Hodson-Prior), Valya is near attaining her objective of organising one of many Bene Gesserit’s personal to rule because the first-ever empress of the Imperium. That is, till the demise of Pruwet—in addition to House Corrino’s truthsayer, Reverend Mother Kasha (Jihae)—by the hands of Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel). Desmond, a previously-presumed-dead soldier in Emperor Corrino’s military who returns from serving on the desert planet Arrakis claiming he has been gifted a “nice energy,” indicators to Valya that “the burning fact” Raquella spoke of is lastly being revealed.
“[Desmond is] tied to the prophecy that kind of sparks the sequence,” Schapker instructed IGN. “He actually is a thriller of the present. And who has empowered him or what has empowered him is a central thriller that our sisters have to seek out out.”
The remaining 5 episodes of Dune: Prophecy will air weekly on HBO at 9 p.m. ET on Sundays, the identical time they develop into accessible to stream on Max.
