Another day, another Dune: Prophecy episode going where no Dune movie went before. After killing off its youngest character on-screen in the pilot, the latest episode shows the most formidable power in both Dune movies being thwarted more than 10,000 years earlier.
When it comes to Dune and Dune: Part Two, all of those poison-filled fake teeth, laser beams, and atomic missiles are deadly, but The Voice is almost godly. Used by the Bene Gesserit, The Voice is an almost gargled modulation of one’s natural voice that can make almost anyone do whatever they’re told. Lady Jessica Atreides (Rebecca Ferguson) made a soldier slice his partner’s throat, and made Chani (Zendaya) feed Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) a mixture of her tears and the Water of Life to revive him. In Dune: Prophecy, young Valya Harkonnen (Jessica Barden) is revealed to be the creator of the powerful skill, first using it to force Reverend Mother Dorotea (Camilla Beeput) to stab herself in the neck in order to protect the Sisterhood’s genetic index established by Reverend Mother Raquella (Cathy Tyson).
Until this latest episode, we had never seen someone immune to The Voice’s influence. Then, again, we also hadn’t seen someone burn another person from the inside out by blowing into their mouth until Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel) came into our lives. In the climatic moments of the second episode, Valya aims to reassert the Bene Gesserit’s influence over the ruling family Corrino following the death of Reverend Mother Kasha (Jihae), the Truthsayer and confidant to Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong).
Her initial attempt to do so over a private conversation with the Emperor was thwarted when Hart appeared in the Emperor’s place. That’s when she tried resorting to her go-to contingency plan for those times when people start doing silly things like using their free will: making anyone in her way kill themselves. Plus, she’d be avenging Kasha’s death—two birds with one voice. After it appeared as if her powers were working on Hart, making him take out his blade and put it to his neck, her final command for him to drive it into his throat fell on ears she never thought would ever exist. Not only did Hart not kill himself, he delivered the coldest lines ever said to a Bene Gesserit on camera:
“I always wondered what your greatest fear would be. Now I have seen it. It’s not that no one will hear you. It’s that they’ll hear you and just won’t care.”
As surprising as Hart’s defense against Valya may be, it reinforces the fact that Shai-Hulud has been around longer than The Voice. Fremen revere the sandworms as divine beings, and Dr. Liet-Kynes (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) famously said in the first part of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune saga that Shai-Hulud is the only master she serves. Bene Gesserit can’t become Reverend Mothers unless they ingest the poisonous bile or a dying sandworm, referred to as the Water of Life. It would make sense that the only way to overpower the Bene Gesserit’s strongest trait is to use the one entity responsible for them ascending to their highest position.
Remember, Hart was swallowed by Shai-Hulud and supposedly imbued with his deadly powers. Even though Hart explicitly tells Valya that his mission is to wipe out any trace of the Bene Gesserit, we know from the Dune movies that they remain as influential as ever 10,000 years later. What Dune: Prophecy just did was introduce the idea of there being people out there that could be imbued with Shai-Hulud’s powers that are threats to the Bene Gesserit. Also, it makes you wonder how the Bene Gesserit adapted to this existential threat in order to survive for as long as the have.
One thing is clear, Dune: Prophecy is here to shake up everything you’d learned about the Dune world from the movies. Have fun!