Ever since Game of Thrones ended in 2019 — and what a horrible little ending it was — there’s been a seemingly never-ending quest to find the “next Game of Thrones.” What that means is two-fold: a series that captures Game of Thrones’s extensive, fantasy world-building and the drama of political succession and a show dropping on HBO’s premier Sunday night spot that everyone wants to talk about the morning after.
Dune: Prophecy feels more like that than any other show right now.
Loosely based on the 2012 novel Sisterhood of Dune, Prophecy has GoT trappings: political maneuvering among the universe’s rich families, backstabbing and surprise deaths, conniving villains, and sweaty sex scenes. The struggle to hold power in the Duniverse is just as difficult and deadly as it is in Westeros. And conveniently, it is airing Sunday nights on HBO.
But what’s won me over in Prophecy is that while it’s officially all those aforementioned things, it’s mainly gossipy, ambitious space divas diva-ing ambitiously in space. Granted, Prophecy is yet another chapter of Hollywood’s infatuation with IP, but it’s also yielded a lavish little soap opera where Emily Watson is a super-powered leader of an all-female finishing school for young intergalactic mages.
Prophecy is about just how dangerous women in STEM — that is, sorcery, transmutation, eugenics, and mothering — can be.
Dune: Prophecy is about who gets to be powerful
Prophecy takes place at the very beginning — 10,148 years before Paul Atreides is born.
Played by Timothée Chalamet in Denis Villeneuve’s two Dune movies, Paul Atreides is the anchor for all casual fans. Both Dune films chronicle his journey — fleeing home after an assault wipes out almost all of his family and those loyal to the Atreides clan, and then becoming a refugee on Arrakis (a.k.a. the desert planet known as Dune), where he assimilates into the Fremen, an indigenous people oppressed by the same Imperium that slaughtered his loved ones. Paul is, according to premonition by a sisterhood of precognitive, super-powered women known as the Bene Gesserit, a messiah who will rule the universe.
Zooming into 10,000 years B.P. (before Paul), Prophecy takes aim, as the title suggests, at the formation of that very important Bene Gesserit revelation and the Bene Gesserit themselves.
How did these space divas become so powerful? Who are they? What do they believe in? What’s their purpose? Are they always kinda mean?
Their reason for existing, like so many other suspicious organizations, is slightly based in eugenics. Oh no. Mother Raquella (Cathy Tyson), their founder, has been keeping a vast archive of DNA of the most powerful families in the universe. Her belief is that humans are fallible, feeble creatures that will always careen toward their own destruction. By matching up families based on this archive, Raquella believes she and her sisters can breed leaders they can control and influence — the endpoint being Paul Atreides.
To ensure even more influence over people and their futures, Raquella has created a school for future space witches on the desolate planet called Wallach IX, where sorceresses-in-training learn powers like being able to clock when someone is lying or blood magic soothsaying. Raquella calls proteges Truthsayers, and these skills make them very valuable. Soon every ruling family in the universe wants a Truthsayer by their side.
What those aristocrats don’t know is that though their Truthsayer seems to integrate into their houses and customs, their actual loyalty is to the Bene Gesserit sisterhood.
There’s a certain political commentary here, too, about who’s allowed to rule the great houses of Dune, what roles women are confined to, and how the Bene Gesserit turn women’s social limitations and underestimations to their advantage.
Prophecy begins with Raquella’s death, finding a faction of her acolytes who think the eugenics stuff is kinda icky, while her most devout follower, the ruthless Valya Harkonnen (played by Jessica Barden in youth, but mainly by Emily), thinks it actually rules. But even though we know Valya and her sisters succeeded in bending the future to bring us Paul, a lot can happen in 10,000 years.
Dune: Prophecy is about who really holds power in the Duniverse
Prophecy’s biggest achievement is how it manages to cut through the density of the Dune universe. It’s not an easy task to take all the complexities of Frank Herbert’s extensive world and make it accessible. But Prophecy does so, primarily, by framing this immense society and all the relationships within, as gossip. That makes Valya and her sisters the universe’s gossip girls.
If you wanted to draw a comparison between this HBO fantasy show about politics, power, and a throne and HBO’s previously, hugely popular fantasy show about politics, power, and a throne, Prophecy is like if Game of Thrones was told through the eyes of Varys, Littlefinger, or Olenna Tyrell — players with no explicit power but who know how the game is played.
Prophecy is about how the whispers can influence the world, and about who powerful people listen to. And that the politics of Dune — and politics in general — can be much more riveting when you realize so much of it is about who’s trash-talking who.
Heavy spoilers for the first episode of Dune: Prophecy follow.
Whether it’s half princes who have no right to the throne or the messiness of House Corrino — the rulers of the Imperium — with their shaky grasp on the production of spice (the most valuable resource in the Duniverse), each episode boils down to Valya and her girlies talking about everyone else, and how they intend to manipulate them.
At one point in the premiere, Valya and her sister Tula (Olivia Williams) have a private bitch session. Like evil sorority sisters, they coldly go up and down their list of acolytes, pointing out their strengths and faults, usefulness and uselessness. Brows furrow, lips purse, and side-eyes are flicked — deliciously. Valya and Tula need to figure out which sister to match with Ynez Corrino (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina), the princess they want to sway to the Bene Gesserit. In the process, they’re more than happy to list off all the hopefuls who won’t make the cut.
Watson imbues Valya with the warmth of gazpacho and the charm of a cursed porcelain doll. Unwavering from Raquella’s mission, Valya has the pieces in play to keep the entire system running. Thanks to her loyal truthsayer Kasha (Jihae), she has a hold on House Corrino, and has just signed a deal to bring Ynez to her school. She’s also used her connections to broker a marriage between Ynez and a boy — a literal 9-year-old — from House Richese, a powerful family that promises Corrino the artillery they need to keep spice production intact. The Bene Gesserit are no doubt banking on that future heir to be favorably malleable.
But Valya’s plan seems to be going up in smoke with the arrival of Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), a Corrino loyalist and survivor of what’s supposedly a Fremen attack on Arrakis.
As Hart tells Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong), the reports coming from the region aren’t the entire truth. Since there aren’t many survivors like Hart, Corrino has to rely on secondhand stories that pin the casualties on Fremen. Hart tells the Emperor that no one — including Corrino’s loyal Truthsayer Kasha, Valya, and their sisters — can be trusted. As Corrino decides whether to weigh Hart’s word versus the loyalty Kasha and the Bene Gesserit have pledged to him, someone — the episode doesn’t show us who — gives Corrino surveillance footage of Hart on Arrakis that shows him surviving the attack but also, and more intriguingly, being swallowed by a sand worm. The episode ends with Hart assassinating 9-year-old Pruwet Richese (Charlie Hodson-Prior) by roasting him with mind powers. He seemingly burns Kasha to death as well.
Hart’s arrival and pyrokineses seems to be what Raquella refers to (earlier in the episode) as the Tiran-Arafel, a “holy judgment” that will demolish the sisterhood. But at this point it’s unclear whether Hart represents the big bad Bene Gesserit destroyer that Raquella had visions about, or may be connected to Bene Gesserit’s other enemies. As my colleague Patrick Reis explained when Dune: Part Two was released, the Bene Gesserit have counterparts known as Bene Tleilax, a patriarchal set of genetic splicers and cloners who are also itching to control the universe. It’s not that far-fetched to believe that they might exist in this universe too.
No doubt, for Valya and her sisterhood to thrive, Hart needs to be squashed. He’s clearly a threat. The closer he gets to Javicco, the worse it looks for our space witches. We just need a bit more time, some gossip, and maybe a few more episodes to figure out if he’s the big bad Raquella dreamed about, or just another piece of the puzzle that leads us to it.
