Dune: Prophecy

Born twice

Season 1

Episode 4

Editor’s Rating

4 stars

****

Photo: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

One thing we can expect over the millennia between events Dune: Prophecy and the rise of Paul Atreides in dune is that the Harkonnens will not only rise to power as an evil empire of the Great Houses, but will also physically manifest the sins that brought them there. In both films, Baron Harkonnen is immediately recognizable as a villain, a grotesque beast who wields galactic power without pity or pleasure, as if he were a pus-filled organ of human misery. Dune: Prophecy seems to imagine Valya and Tula Harkonnen as the slippery slope that the family would slowly fall down. What could have started as a righteous mission to restore the Harkonnen name after history tarnished it has become a desperate struggle for influence, aided by lies and deception from both sisters that jeopardize their mission.

Perhaps the original sin lies with Valya, given the burning revenge that led her to the Bene Gesserit, but not before she lost her beloved brother to a tragedy the family cannot forgive. Perhaps some of the blame lies with her mentor, Mother Superior Raquella, who sought to harness her anger and psychic powers, revealing secrets to her that the other acolytes did not know. In both last week’s standout episode and this extremely compelling sequel, Valya’s decision to murder Dorotea, her rival to succeed Raquella, has opened a Pandora’s box of consequences for her and Tula, which now lead to Dorotea the entire sisterhood is haunted from beyond. They are taken to the grave and must hide the truth from altar boys who are literally taught to detect lies. And not to mention the comatose Lila being held in the lap of a thinking machine that makes Alexa look like an Atari 2600.

In “Twice Born,” the series finally spends more time with the altar boys and gets a better sense of who they are individually and as a unit. Lila’s catastrophic experience with the Agony nearly cost her her life, but the effects of her encounter with Dorotea are not limited to her. In the opening sequence, the religious Emeline has a vivid dream in which she follows a mysterious figure until she discovers that it is some kind of doppelganger who produces a dagger to slit his own throat. This jump scare takes us back to the altar boys’ dormitory, where Jen wakes up to find all the other women thrashing and moaning in their sleep, sharing an interconnected dream like the teenagers within A Nightmare on Elm Street. A force seems to be leading them to a shared revelation, and they look to Tula for answers as Valya attempts to put out a major diplomatic fire in the Empire.

Tula’s solution leads to one of the episode’s two strongest scenes, as she brings the altar boys together for a sort of guided meditation to figure out what their nightmare might mean. But before that scene, there’s another crucial moment where Tula tells the standard lie that Dorotea took her own life after Raquella’s death, and Emeline quietly uses her sense of truth to scan her for bullshit. Tula realizes what Emeline is doing and yells at her about it, but the die is cast, despite older sister Avila’s assurances that Emeline is looking for answers like everyone else. From this unsettling opening, the episode moves to the scene in which all the acolytes are placed in front of drawing pads and are instructed by Tula to draw what they experienced in their sleep. She insists this is a controlled and safe way to provide insight into what they saw. But in the rush of synchronized sketching, Tula loses control of the acolytes as their individual visions narrow into a single drawing of a group of eyes surrounded by darkness.

Aside from concerns about what terrible foreboding the drawings might suggest, Tula’s inability to take advantage of the situation is crucial to the episode because it connects her to Valya, who continues to fail when it comes to confronting the mysterious and exceedingly mysterious to wrest influence from powerful Desmond Hart. Last week, their confrontation resulted in Valya being cast from Emperor Corrino’s sphere, and she fears that other Great Houses may follow her example and banish the Soothsayers and wipe out the influence of the Bene Gesserit. She initially attempts to strengthen the weakened House of Harkonnen by offering the family a fortune teller and expanding her political connections to gain Harrow Harkonnen a place on the High Council in the Landsraad, which describes itself as a group that “acts as a check against Tyranny serves.” , injustice and war.” To this end, Harrow must earn his initiation by demanding a formal investigation into Pruwet Richese’s death, which Valya hopes will lead to Desmond’s incrimination.

Still, there are conspiracies that Valya doesn’t see, at least not completely. Rebel forces have secured an illegal drone on the black market that they intend to unleash on Corrino’s throne room, but their efforts, aided by the devious swordmaster Keiran Atreides, are dramatically foiled in front of the entire Landsraad. Valya also knows about the plan and tries to regain Corrino’s favor by foiling him, but Desmond takes control of the situation first and makes his presence felt. The psychic power he had used to sacrifice Pruwet and Kasha is used against the conspirators in a grisly public way, leaving Corrino, freshly spared from assassination, any skepticism he might have had about Desmond’s intentions , destroys. The fact that Desmond seriously injures himself while performing this magic endears him even more to Corrino, which of course puts Valya in even deeper trouble.

That the Harkonnen sisters are so miserably unanswered in Twice Born is an interesting detriment to their status as leaders of the Bene Gesserit, a group that generally enjoys their unfettered independence and influence. Tula must bring the Acolytes back under control – a task made more difficult by Lila gaining consciousness within the Anirul machine – and Valya must find a better counterattack on Desmond, which now involves asking Sister Theodora to use one dangerous array of transformative gifts that Valya had promised she would not activate. The last time Valya turned to an altar boy to break the glass in an emergency, she urged Lila to perform the torment before she was ready. Now it’s Theo’s turn to bring about disaster.

• Nothing involving Princess Ynez has added much to the drama so far, although her confrontation with Desmond at brunch did get an unintentional laugh. It’s a little difficult to give much weight to their accusations (“We’re having breakfast with murderers now?”) when the whole family seems to be enjoying what looks like a Sandals resort.

• “The time to put out a fire is when a fool strikes a match, not when your house is burning down around you.” Desmond appeals to Corrino to be a more decisive leader, but of course that means Desmond to the top of the sword to make. The extent of his actual loyalty to the emperor is unknown.

• The chance that Pruvet was burned alive by his toy is one in 2.5 million. So you’re telling me there’s a chance?

• The term Kanly will be thrown around briefly in the Landraad and will surely appear again. A Kanly is a formal vendetta between noble houses. Something to add to the helpful list dune Terminology given to moviegoers prior to the 1984 version.

• Emeline’s confrontation of Tula with her and her sister’s sins may turn out to be a fantasy, but it suggests how much guilt Tula feels because of the actions she has taken and the secrets she has kept with her sister guards. She’s the more conscientious of the two, for what that’s worth.