‘Dune: Prophecy’ Episode 6 Recap: “The High-Handed Enemy”

It’s the season finale of Dune: Prophecy, so it won’t take a subtle click of Sisterhood fingertips to know that epic deaths will be telling their own truths. Like Emperor Javicco Corrino, for example, for whom true initiative is his final act. But we’ll get to that. Lila is a better example. Lila, still as a vessel for Foremothers. Plural. Let’s hear it for Chloe Lea, who plays Lila, and who has carefully nuanced her interpretation of these different other memory visitors within her. Because this time around, it’s not Mother Superior Raquella speaking and acting through the post-Agony, stasis-freed acolyte. Instead, Reverend Mother Dorotea is back from the dead. And she’s ready to fill in the present-day Sisters on some past Harkonnen truth.

It’s nice of Max to announce that it’s already booked a second season of Dune: Prophecy, because nowadays nobody ever knows if a show we like will actually continue, or be consumed by a content-devouring sandworm. Ep 6 of Prophecy, “The High-Handed Enemy,” has everything you want in a sci-fi cliffhanger, with religious order schisms, main character snuff-outs, and planet-hopping fights that are sure to become bigger battles down the road. 

With Dorotea inhabiting Lila in the present, we learn more about the past on Wallach IX. And basically, when Young Valya used The Voice to induce her suicide, that is not where the power grab ended. Valya and Young Tula, together with Young Francesca (Charithra Chandran) and Young Kasha (Yerin Ha), ended up Voicing out Dorotea’s entire crew of Butlerian followers. “Choose!” they screamed, and many Sisters slit their own throats. Sisters who, like Emeline in the present, believed not in Valya and Raquella’s use of forbidden thinking machine tech, but instead their main Butlerian mantra: “the mind of man is holy.” Through Lila, Dorotea reveals the skeletal remains of the followers Valya and her own true believers killed. And with the support of Emiline and Avila and others, Mother Dorotea takes a pry bar to the physical systems of Anirul, down there in the Sisterhood’s secret basement. It’s official. The Order is now on diverting ideological paths. 

Where was Tula during this revolt? Traveling alone to Salusa Secundus to confront Desmond Hart, her long-lost son. With Anirul’s assistance, Tula determined that Desmond’s power derives from a micro-sized thinking machine. Technology inserted into human beings at a molecular level, designed to be awoken through fear. And for Desmond, this wasn’t a miraculous transition. We see how he was targeted, then physically operated upon – the blue “eyes” of his victims’ shared dream, revealed as the tracking beam of a robotic surgeon – but we also learn that Tula still has love for her child, despite his trail of destruction. “My son was not born a weapon – he was made into one!” The question of who or what did the making? Still undetermined. See you on Arrakis, Dune: Prophecy season 2! In the meantime, on Salusa, Desmond Hart has Tula Harkonnen arrested.

Javicco Corrino, you flew too close to real power on wings of uncertainty. The emperor learns about Natalya and Desmond’s new alliance when the empress has her own daughter put in chains for trying to free Keiran Atreides. “You foolish, lovesick girl,” Natalya says to Princess Ynez. “I wanted to teach you about power. Let this be a lesson.” And the empress furthers her palace coup by murdering Sister Francesa with a cyanide-laced needle, the same one Valya meant for Emperor Corrino. Francesca fell onto the chest of her dying lover, who had already stabbed himself. It was a real blow, learning he was just a Sisterhood project, groomed from birth to represent the Mother Superior’s preferred ruling bloodline. He drove his blade into his abdomen because it was the only act he could personally control. Now, the ambition of Natalya has won the throne. And her seduction of Desmond secures access to his mind-burn app.

Is that Princess Ynez, or is it Sister Theodosia? With all this chaos in the halls of power, Valya has her shapeshifting, Tlulaxan genetics-bred acolyte assume the form of the heir to the throne. This gives Valya and the real princess some cover – along with Keiran Atreides; Nez refuses to leave her boyfriend behind, despite his wishes for rebellion – which they use to escape Salusa Secundus on a cargo ship bound for Arrakis. 

It’s a pitched battle en route to the spaceport, with Ynez and Keiran cutting down palace guards as they fight back to back, and Valya briefly reuniting with Tula before another Desmond disruption. A vision reveals to her the source of his power. How his optic nerve was upgraded and weaponized by mysterious mechanical beings, beings who have apparently been observing Valya and Tula Harkonnen since their youth, and who are now linked with the spice-producing desert planet. “If the shadows are where they want to fight, then that’s where I’ll go,” Valya says. And once their ship arrives on the windswept crust of Arrakis, it’s with a determination that Valya sees as the best-possible resolution of her grand plan for Imperium control. Sure, there were major hiccups along the way. But she has saved the one true heir, the royal daughter the Sisterhood’s genetic library declared as most suited to rule. Ynez, Keiran, and Valya look across the expanse of desert. “The path to our enemy begins here.”

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.

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