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 tough 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 notably enjoyable, attention-grabbing, or partaking — and but, for each thudding character or uninteresting 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 operating on the fumes of those concepts eternally, and with the season 1 finale approaching, it appears to me that there are two paths ahead for Dune: Prophecy. And in becoming franchise style, solely a slender and sophisticated 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 at the very least 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 transferring towards, is the easy choice that Desmond Hart is the proto-Kwisatz Haderach; the primary glimpse the Bene Gesserit have of a male with supernatural talents and the direct, acknowledged inspiration for them to work towards a equally highly effective man that they will management as an alternative.
This model of the present can be easy and clear, and method too pat for a world like Dune. If that’s all Desmond Hart actually is, it might be extremely straightforward to see how the remainder of the present may fall into place. The struggle on Arrakis that episode 5 teases would see the Fremen declare victories because of the Bene Gesserit, and Mikaela (Shalom Brune-Franklin) would look on sadly as her folks are fed a lie about Lisan al Gaib. The Sisterhood would study 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 can be the Solo: A Star Wars Story of the Dune universe, a short journey that one way or the other fully 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 task to play within the Bene Gesserit plan to create the Kwisatz Haderach, however that doesn’t must be a part of this present’s plot.
This could supply the prospect 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, large struggle on Arrakis, and little hints of the type of struggles that will pressure 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 could be 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 could possibly be straightforward to forgive.
Clearly, midi-chlorians have a little bit of a damaging 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 continually 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 probably the greatest and most attention-grabbing sci-fi worlds ever created. It isn’t properly made due to how fastidiously related 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 flowery struck him.
And Dune: Prophecy, for all of the boring scenes and too-important traces it’s had to this point, continues to be in a spot to create these splendidly frayed edges in its first season. However to try this, the finale should be massive and messy and impressive in methods the present has solely gestured at to this point.