There’s a disturbingly sinister presence peering from a dark nebulous realm in the season finale of HBO’s “Dune: Prophecy,” which ended its short-but-satisfying debut season this past Sunday night with a multitude of revelations, unexpected deaths, family truths unveiled, and the arrival on one notorious desert planet named Arrakis.
After last week’s startling reveal that Desmond Hart was Tula Harkonnen and Orry Atreides’ abandoned love child — marking the genesis of the millennia-long rivalry of these two Great Houses — there’s a whole lot to unpack in this extended finale titled “The High-Handed Enemy.” Let’s get into it!
On Wallach IX, Tula is fretting away, haunted by the ghosts of decisions past since learning that Desmond Hart is her long-abandoned son. With the help of Kazir, a former sister turned Suk School doctor, they determine that Desmond’s powers come from a bio-engineered virus that feeds on fear. Someone (or something) mutated him with this virus, but if they can chemically counter its effects, they can produce a cure. In attempting to transmute the virus, Kazir has a vision of “The Monster of Arrakis” before being roasted from within and dying to Tula’s horror.
We then flashback to that pivotal moment as Valya gains the support and loyalty of Tula, Francesca, and Kasha after she uses The Voice to kill her fundamentalist opposition, Sister Dorotea. During a private moment, young Tula tells her sister that she’s pregnant and a plan is put in motion for the child to be protected. Eventually, she’ll give him up to an itinerant worker and swap out the baby for the anonymous woman’s stillborn child. Sisters Above All!
Back to the present at the royal palace, Princess Ynez is arrested by Empress Natalya for trying to free the incarcerated Keiran Atreides. Francesca takes that news to Valya, who swiftly whips up a complex plot to employ Sister Theodosia’s Face Dancer skills and Francesca’s resurrected romance with the Emperor to assassinate him with a poison lancet.
Down in the Sisterhood caverns after Sister Jen loosens Lila’s restraints, which is a bad idea given that the tormented girl is a resurrected force to be reckoned with, especially since she’s grappling with multiple personalities of deceased ancestors of the Sisterhood. The current resident is Sister Dorotea, the zealot who was murdered by Valya decades ago. Now though, she’s an instrument of truth as she leads the acolytes to the mass grave where young Valya and her followers killed anyone who stood against them in the aftermath of Dorotea’s self-inflicted slashing. It’s a truly horrific revelation as we’re privy to the pit of piled-up skeletons at the bottom of the reflecting pool.
To help restore the Order’s righteous path, Lila then destroys the genetic thinking machine, Anirul, which has been Valya and Tula’s AI breeding index program.
With Ynez in jail and Natalya aligned with Desmond Hart to play puppetmasters with the weakened Javicco, the final kick to the stomach for the despot arrives in the form of Francesca, who reveals Valya’s murderous plan. Javicco decides he can control only one thing in his preordained life and stabs himself with his dagger right before Natalya enters. Seeing her big power trip foiled, she kills Francesca with the poisoned needle intended for the Emperor. Not a very merry moment on Salusa Secundus!
Meanwhile, Theodosia shapeshifts into a palace guard and sticks a knife into Desmond Hart, who falls but is not mortally wounded. Valya arrives and demands that Desmond reveal the vision of her “end” that he mentioned to her earlier in the season. In a trippy netherworld dream sequence, we relive the moment Valya saves Griffin from the icy water by first using The Voice.
This nightmare intensifies when Tula arrives to soothe Valya’s vision as she slowly transmutes the Omnius mind virus. This leads to images of a colossal sandworm erupting from the deep desert and a horrific scene of Desmond being operated on by robotic arms, etching a thinking machine into his eyeball (yes, it’s gruesome!). This comes from the same shared nightmare of the Sisterhood, replete with the terrifying black maw and blue machine lights. From an observation window above the operation room, a blurry cloaked figure watches the grim experiment on Desmond.
Sensing she must kill Desmond for all this to end, Valya is suddenly shocked when Tula uses The Voice to stop her. Tula finally explains that Desmond Hart is in fact her abandoned son. Stunned by the web of lies, Valya concedes and declares that she’ll continue to dig into the mystery of who these thinking machine monsters are and exits. Tula and Desmond embrace and share a whispered reunion, prior to Desmond ordering her to be arrested by the guards but clearly touched by the intimacy.
We end this outstanding “Dune” prequel series where it sort of all began for the dangerous Imperial soldier Desmond Hart, as Valya, Ynez, and Keiran touch down on Arrakis, with Valya boldly declaring that “The path to our enemy begins here.”
What will become of Valya and Tula’s fractured relationship? How will Natalya and Desmond restructure the power platform of the Imperium? What is this shadowy evil force behind it all? And are there answers waiting for Valya on Arrakis that will provide personal redemption and reestablish the Sisterhood?
Now that a second season has been ordered by HBO, these questions will all be fleshed out at some point in the near future, but we’ll have to be patient for now. Until then, more fruitcake and fudge will certainly help the interminable wait.