Dune: Prophecy is a very complicated show. Sure, part of that is the fact that it has so many characters, plots, and counterplots commingling in each scene. But more straightforwardly, it’s just very difficult to explain to people whether or not I like this show. Put simply: Watching it feels like a chore, the line-to-line writing isn’t particularly fun, interesting, or engaging — and yet, for every thudding character or dull line, the show has also introduced a brief strand of plot or Dune universe-building that I can’t help but be fascinated with.
But the show can’t keep running on the fumes of these ideas forever, and with the season 1 finale approaching, it seems to me that there are two paths forward for Dune: Prophecy. And in fitting franchise fashion, only a narrow and complicated path will let it come out the other side clean.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Dune: Prophecy season 1 episode 5.]
Image: HBO
The show’s future — or at least our indications of what it might be — all hinge on Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel). The first option, and the one I fear the show is moving toward, is the simple option that Desmond Hart is the proto-Kwisatz Haderach; the first glimpse the Bene Gesserit have of a male with supernatural abilities and the direct, stated inspiration for them to work toward a similarly powerful man that they can control instead.
This version of the show would be simple and clean, and way too pat for a world like Dune. If that’s all Desmond Hart really is, it would be incredibly easy to see how the rest of the show might fall into place. The war on Arrakis that episode 5 teases would see the Fremen claim victories thanks to the Bene Gesserit, and Mikaela (Shalom Brune-Franklin) would look on sadly as her people are fed a lie about Lisan al Gaib. The Sisterhood would learn to harness the Voice and be perfectly recognizable to fans of the Denis Villeneuve movies by the end of the show. In other words, Dune: Prophecy would be the Solo: A Star Wars Story of the Dune universe, a brief adventure that somehow completely explains the backstory of everyone involved, shrinking the universe and robbing it of its mystery in the process.
The other version of Desmond, and the show as a whole, is more messy. We’ll call it the midi-chlorians path. For this one, the show would need to stop connecting the dots. Let the reveal of Desmond’s shared Harkonnen and Atreides blood be a reveal purely for Tula and the audience, rather than something more significant to the universe. Sure, those two bloodlines have a role to play in the Bene Gesserit plan to create the Kwisatz Haderach, but that doesn’t have to be part of this show’s plot.
This would offer the chance for Dune: Prophecy’s season 1 finale to open the door to the larger, stranger parts of the Dune universe. It could show us the Spacing Guild and its bizarre Guild Navigators; it could open up the idea of a complex, massive war on Arrakis, and little hints of the kind of struggles that would force the Bene Gesserit to evolve into the clandestine organization we know them as when the series begins in earnest. Like The Phantom Menace’s one-off mention of midi-chlorians, what Dune: Prophecy needs now is world-building by unanswered and unanswerable questions, rather than by too-simple facts. If this season is all table setting for a weirder universe, then its clunkiness could be easy to forgive.
Obviously, midi-chlorians have a bit of a negative connotation for sci-fi fans as a betrayal of the elegant world-building of Star Wars’ original trilogy; Dune: Prophecy was never going to be that. What I’m saying is that at this point what we can really hope for is the ambition of Star Wars’ prequels, which constantly expanded its galaxy in ways both good and bad, instead of the tight corporate squeeze of Disney’s time with the series so far that has simply made it smaller and more tightly wound with every entry.
But to step away from all the Star Wars analogies: Dune is a series that’s always been at its best when it’s at its strangest and most ambitious. The original book is a masterpiece with one of the best and most interesting sci-fi worlds ever created. It isn’t well made because of how carefully connected all of its threads are, but rather because of the messiness that Frank Herbert left at its edges, little threads to be pulled at later whenever the fancy struck him.
And Dune: Prophecy, for all the boring scenes and too-important lines it’s had so far, is still in a place to create those wonderfully frayed edges in its first season. But to do that, the finale will have to be big and messy and ambitious in ways the show has only gestured at so far.