Dune: Prophecy is a really sophisticated present. Positive, a part of that’s the truth that it has so many characters, plots, and counterplots commingling in every scene. However extra straightforwardly, it’s simply very troublesome to elucidate to folks whether or not or not I like this present. Put merely: Watching it looks like a chore, the line-to-line writing isn’t significantly enjoyable, fascinating, or partaking — and but, for each thudding character or boring line, the present has additionally launched a short strand of plot or Dune universe-building that I can’t assist however be fascinated with.
However the present can’t preserve working on the fumes of those concepts perpetually, and with the season 1 finale approaching, it appears to me that there are two paths ahead for Dune: Prophecy. And in becoming franchise trend, solely a slender and complex path will let it come out the opposite aspect clear.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Dune: Prophecy season 1 episode 5.]
Picture: HBO
The present’s future — or no less than our indications of what it could be — all hinge on Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel). The primary choice, and the one I worry the present is shifting towards, is the straightforward choice that Desmond Hart is the proto-Kwisatz Haderach; the primary glimpse the Bene Gesserit have of a male with supernatural skills and the direct, acknowledged inspiration for them to work towards a equally highly effective man that they’ll management as an alternative.
This model of the present could be easy and clear, and approach too pat for a world like Dune. If that’s all Desmond Hart actually is, it will be extremely straightforward to see how the remainder of the present may fall into place. The battle on Arrakis that episode 5 teases would see the Fremen declare victories due to the Bene Gesserit, and Mikaela (Shalom Brune-Franklin) would look on sadly as her individuals are fed a lie about Lisan al Gaib. The Sisterhood would be taught to harness the Voice and be completely recognizable to followers of the Denis Villeneuve motion pictures by the tip of the present. In different phrases, Dune: Prophecy could be the Solo: A Star Wars Story of the Dune universe, a short journey that in some way utterly explains the backstory of everybody concerned, shrinking the universe and robbing it of its thriller within the course of.
The opposite model of Desmond, and the present as an entire, is extra messy. We’ll name it the midi-chlorians path. For this one, the present would wish to cease connecting the dots. Let the reveal of Desmond’s shared Harkonnen and Atreides blood be a reveal purely for Tula and the viewers, reasonably than one thing extra vital to the universe. Positive, these two bloodlines have a job to play within the Bene Gesserit plan to create the Kwisatz Haderach, however that doesn’t should be a part of this present’s plot.
This might supply the possibility for Dune: Prophecy’s season 1 finale to open the door to the bigger, stranger elements of the Dune universe. It may present us the Spacing Guild and its weird Guild Navigators; it may open up the thought of a posh, huge battle on Arrakis, and little hints of the form of struggles that might power the Bene Gesserit to evolve into the clandestine group we all know them as when the sequence begins in earnest. Like The Phantom Menace’s one-off point out of midi-chlorians, what Dune: Prophecy wants now’s world-building by unanswered and unanswerable questions, reasonably than by too-simple information. If this season is all desk setting for a weirder universe, then its clunkiness might be straightforward to forgive.
Clearly, midi-chlorians have a little bit of a detrimental connotation for sci-fi followers as a betrayal of the elegant world-building of Star Wars’ unique trilogy; Dune: Prophecy was by no means going to be that. What I’m saying is that at this level what we will actually hope for is the ambition of Star Wars’ prequels, which always expanded its galaxy in methods each good and unhealthy, as an alternative of the tight company squeeze of Disney’s time with the sequence to this point that has merely made it smaller and extra tightly wound with each entry.
However to step away from all of the Star Wars analogies: Dune is a sequence that’s all the time been at its finest when it’s at its strangest and most formidable. The unique e-book is a masterpiece with the most effective and most fascinating sci-fi worlds ever created. It isn’t effectively made due to how fastidiously linked all of its threads are, however reasonably due to the messiness that Frank Herbert left at its edges, little threads to be pulled at later each time the flamboyant struck him.
And Dune: Prophecy, for all of the boring scenes and too-important strains it’s had to this point, remains to be in a spot to create these splendidly frayed edges in its first season. However to try this, the finale must be huge and messy and bold in methods the present has solely gestured at to this point.
