Dune: Prophecy Season 1 ends with everything we know “incinerated,” to quote star Emily Watson during a recent virtual press conference, with the complex balance of power in the universe totally upended.
The revelations of the last six episodes have forever changed the relationship of sisters Valya (Emily Watson) and Tula Harkonnen (Olivia Williams), prompted a power vacuum in the Imperium, and brought the Sisterhood itself to its knees. The Dune: Prophecy Season 1 finale not only wraps up several storylines, but sets the table for HBO‘s second season of the series. A Season 2 that will undoubtedly delve more into the mystery that is Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel) while taking us to the most iconic world in the Dune universe: Arrakis.
**Spoilers for Dune: Prophecy Season 1 Episode 6 “The High-Handed Enemy,” now streaming on Max**
Last week’s installment of Dune: Prophecy revealed that Desmond Hart is actually the son of Tula Harkonnen (Olivia Williams) and Orry Atreides (Milo Callaghan). We learned this week that instead of letting the young, murderous Valya (Jessica Barden) mold her son, young Tula (Emma Canning) secretly swapped her infant son with a stillborn child. Which is how Desmond Hart wound up living up in poverty, taught to hate the Sister who gave him up for adoption.
We also learned last week — or, at least, Tula did — that Desmond Hart’s deadly “powers” are actually a machine-made virus that preys upon the fear receptors in the brain. With this knowledge in hand, Tula decides to leave Wallach IX to save her son before its too late. Valya, on the other hand, still sees Desmond as her primary rival. Naturally, the Dune: Prophecy finale features an emotional showdown between the three characters.
So does Valya defeat Desmond Hart? Does Tula regain her son’s love and trust? What’s going on with Emperor Javicco (Mark Strong), Empress Natalya (Jodhi May), and Sister Francesca’s (Tabu) love triangle? Does Lila (Chloe Lea) take down the Sisterhood? And will Keiran Atreides (Chris Mason) and Princess Ynez’s (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina) love conquer all?
Here’s everything you need to know about the Dune: Prophecy Season 1 finale…
Dune: Prophecy Season 1 Ending Explained: What the Hell Just Happened?
Valya Harkonnen’s main missions in the Dune: Prophecy Season 1 finale are to get to the bottom of the Desmond Hart mystery and to depose Emperor Javicco to put Ynez on the throne, and…well…things don’t go according to plan.
First, she tasks Sister Francesca with killing her long-time lover, Javicco, using an early version of the gom jabbar, a poisoned needle that shows up in the very first chapter of Frank Herbert’s Dune. However because Valya has given Javicco a big humiliating earful about how he’s been a puppet his whole life, the emperor doesn’t let Francesca close to him. Even though it’s obvious Francesca’s own feelings won’t let her kill him, Javicco takes matters into his own hand and kills himself. As Francesca sobs over his body, Natalya uses the gom jabbar to murder Francesca.
“Is Javicco truly dead? Yes,” Dune: Prophecy showrunner Alison Schapker confirmed during the aforementioned virtual press conference.
“Bring back Mark Strong!” Olivia Williams protested. “We love him and we’re very sad about it.“
“Yeah. Mark Strong was like a joy to work with,” Schapker said. “And, yes, I think it’s okay to say that he’s dead. He will be missed and he leaves a big power vacuum.”
While Valya hoped to push Ynez onto the throne, there’s a slight hiccup. When Ynez tries to free lover Keiran Atreides from his holding cell, her own mother puts her in jail. Valya mounts a daring rescue wherein Sister Theodosia (Jade Anouka) calls upon her shapeshifting Face Dancer skills to impersonate first Ynez and then a fallen guard.
In a Friday morning interview with Sarah-Sofie Boussnina, the actress revealed she made co-star Jade Anouka record herself saying the “Theodosia as Ynez” lines. “I wanted to have her rhythm and the way that she speaks. I wanted to try and copy that a little bit,” Boussnina said. “Then I looked at her posture and how she holds herself compared to how Ynez does.“
Theodosia stays behind to strike Desmond Hart while Valya, Ynez, and Keiran fight their way to a ship leaving Salusa Secondus. Eventually, Valya has to face Tula and Desmond while the princess and her sword master mow their way to freedom. Tula reveals the truth about Desmond’s heritage, which Emily Watson compared to blowing “everything up” for Valya during the press conference. Her sister has not only lied to her, but now Valya knows that Desmond Hart has been manipulated by a mysterious foe to be a living weapon.
“I think there’s a conflict there because she knows that he’s Tula’s son and the betrayal of that is very painful,” Watson said. “But the part of Valya that is in a way the strongest is already going, ‘I saw his memory and I saw that somebody is using him. And I want to find out who that is. That’s what I want to know.’”
“I think a huge thing for Tula is the moment when I say, ‘Please don’t kill my son. Trust me. I’ve got this,’” Williams said of that climactic showdown between sisters. “But that moment between the sisters where finally Tula is entrusted with with something, when all these years she’s known that she is highly capable and highly effective and has been treated as maybe the lesser Sister.”
In facing Desmond Hart, Valya finds herself also facing the effects of the machine virus that attacks people’s fear centers and forces them to spontaneously combust from within. Tula helps guide her sister through her worst nightmares, most of which focus on brother Griffin (Earl Cave) and the role Valya may or may not have played in his death.
“This machine virus is operating in a certain part of the brain that is triggering people’s fears to manifest,” Schapker explained. “Valya, when she goes to transmute this machine virus, Tula, thank god, is there to tell her that the key is actually to let go. The work that Valya has to do on a cellular level is to let go of fear, kind of to transmute the fear as opposed to the virus and to let it go.”
“Valya’s held on for her whole life to fears that she caused her own brother’s undoing, fears that she would amount to nothing, fears that the family would be forever denied, or that the loss would be interminable.” And she finally lets it all go.
Hardcore Dune fans will likely recognize that the process of transmuting the machine-made fear virus asks you to let the fear pass over, or through you. It neatly echoes the words of the “Litany Against Fear” that Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), and other Dune characters recite in moments of tension. You know the one: “Fear is the mind killer. I must not fear, etc.”
While Schapker didn’t want to tease clues as to the identity of who created the machine virus, she happily revealed an Easter egg that was meant to connect Desmond with his birth mother from his very first scenes in the show.
“When Desmond Hart appears on Salusa and walks up to the palace, he’s got this black cloth and that is really his sort of token of his mother,” Schapker said. “Finally he meets her and is clutching her actual dress and realizing what once was a piece of his baby blanket that she swaddled him in, is the Sisterhood cloth that he’s held on to.”
Of course, Desmond promptly has his mother arrested.
Valya, meanwhile, has managed to escape Salusa Secondus with Keiran Atreides and Ynez Corrino. Their destination? Arrakis.
Meanwhile, while all this was going down, the Sisterhood underwent another reckoning as Sister Dorotea (Camilla Beeput) took control of granddaughter Lila and revealed the bloody truth about Valya’s ascension to Mother Superior status. Flashbacks show how Valya and her core group murdered all of Dorotea’s acolytes save for Mother Avila (Barbara Marten). Dorotea-as-Lila wins Sister Emmeline (Aoife Hinds) and her clique to her side and dredges up the dead bodies. Then they destroy the secret breeding computer known as Anirul. Only Sister Jen (Faoileann Cunningham) seems on Valya’s side.
So is the Sisterhood done?
“That’s exactly the question you should be asking,” Schapker said. “And I think that’s something that remains to be seen.”
Schapker teased that Season 2 will explore whether or not these changes in the Sisterhood are “irrevocable or not.”
Will There Be a Dune: Prophecy Season 2 on HBO?
Yes. HBO revealed on Thursday, December 19 that Dune: Prophecy has been picked up for a second season. Top of everyone’s mind? Exploring Arrakis.
“I am beyond excited to get to go to Arrakis,” Sarah-Sofie Boussnina told Decider.
“It’s really exciting and I genuinely have no idea what’s going to happen,” Chris Mason said during a Friday morning interview. “You know, obviously Season 2 was announced just yesterday for us and we’re really excited to see what Alison’s got cooking for us already.”
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