Dune: Prophecy Recap: The Sisterhood is Doing It for Themselves

Before looping back to the beginning of “In Blood, Truth,” the penultimate episode of Dune: Prophecy’s short, dense first season, it’s worth thinking about the final line: “Let us rid the Imperium of these witches forever.” The witches in question are, of course, the Bene Gesserit, the female religious order that secretly pulls as many of the Dune universe’s strings as it can get its hands on. The line is spoken by a heretofore largely marginal player to a character we’ve seen commit vile deeds. In isolation, that makes it sounds like an exchange between two villains. But on Dune: Prophecy, everyone has at least one hidden agenda, and the characters we haven’t seen committing vile deeds have perhaps just not gotten around to them yet.

So are these the bad guys? It seems like the wrong question, really. After five episodes, Dune: Prophecy hasn’t set up any particularly sympathetic characters or established a line between good and evil, even a fuzzy one. That’s not a complaint. In fact, it feels true both to the world created by Frank Herbert’s books and to Dune: Prophecy’s other source of inspiration, Game of Thrones. So far, it’s played less like a series with a moral point of view than a continuing exploration of how perspective makes it impossible to separate the just from the unjust. That one of the most sensitive characters we’ve encountered, Tula, is also responsible for slaughtering a family filled with seemingly nice people, including a man who loved her, says a lot.

Taking the long view of history, at least within the world of Dune, if not our own, also reveals a certain amount of futility. Dune: Prophecy is set 10,000 years before the events of Dune. In that later timeline, the Bene Gesserit aren’t just alive and well as the story opens; they’re on the verge of fulfilling a plan to put a messiah in power 10,000 years in the making. It feels odd that so little of the look of the world or the names of those running it changes between Dune: Prophecy and Dune Proper and that so many events in one echo the events of the other unless you treat those details as a bit of barbed commentary. All this has happened before and it will happen again. (Wrong show, sure, but it applies here, too.)

Okay, back to the start: “In Blood, Truth” opens with Emperor Corrino proclaiming the establishment of a “new, elite regiment” in response to the previous episode’s failed assassination attempt, a kind of Department of Homeland Security to be headed by the Emperor’s new Bashar, Desmond. (Of course.) The scene captures the dynamic between the two well. Corrino looks the part of a strong ruler as he explains his decision, but he’s really just doing Desmond’s bidding, as their subsequent conversation confirms. The wild-eyed soldier from Arrakis can barely contain his smirk. Similarly, Ynez can barely contain her disgust as she flees for an emotional meeting with Constantine in which he reveals that underneath his playboy antics is a boy seeking the approval of his dad.

That means missing the arrival of a previously unseen major character, Francesca (Tabu). A Bene Gesserit, Francesca once had Emperor Corrino’s heart, as Empress Natalya’s unhappy reaction suggests even before subsequent exposition clarifies their relationship. Ostensibly, Francesca’s here for just one reason: to visit Constantine, her son. Francesca is disturbed to learn of Kasha’s death, in no small part because she feels Valya should have told her. After taking her case to Francesca is told the situation was simply too volatile to put that sort of information out into the universe and that Corrino’s eschewing of a new Truthsayer and embrace of Desmond has put the whole Sisterhood in jeopardy, news that deeply disturbs Francesca (or seems to, anyway). Valya’s plan: Francesca will sweet talk the Emperor into going back to the old ways and convince him to make Constantine the empire’s fleet commander. It would be a win for the Sisterhood and for Francesca’s family. As for Desmond, don’t worry. She’ll keep him busy.

When Francesca has what seems to be a long overdue heart-to-heart with Constantine in a later scene, she’s unusually candid about her work with the Bene Gesserit and his place within their grand plan. What’s his purpose? He’s there to protect Ynez, the Sister to whom the Bene Gesserit have pinned their hopes of ascending to real power. That’s not exactly a warm, maternal hug, but maybe he can appreciate the honesty. (Though, as we’ll later learn, “honesty” isn’t exactly the right word.)

Meanwhile, back at Bene Gesserit headquarters, Sister Avila discovers she has a hard time keeping the acolytes focused due to the recurring nightmares plaguing all but one of them, Jen. It’s Jen who speaks out, only to be shut down, quickly and firmly, by Tula. But Tula only appears to be pissed. In truth, she needs Jen’s help and the promise of some discretion as she reveals that (1)) Lila has been brought back from the dead, but also (2) she’s kind of messed up and might not really be Lila anymore. More specifically, her experience with the Agony and subsequent death and revival has allowed her to pay host to various foremothers, and they’re kind of a handful. With Jen on Lila-watch, Tula sets off to tend to “other matters.”

As this plays out, Harrow Harkonen seeks an audience with the newly ascended Desmond in hopes of winning back the favor of the Emperor after the events of the last episode. As a strategy, he chooses to throw Valya under the bus, which gets Desmond’s attention. Desmond wants to know all about any relationship between the rebel movement and the Bene Gesserit and offers an unspecified reward for any information. He also offers a snoot-full of spice, which gets Desmond talking and points Desmond toward an underground market that might hold the key to where the insurgents are located and who’s helping them. This helps Harrow’s case, but getting hard evidence of Valya’s duplicity will help even more.

But who’s playing who? In a later scene we’ll learn that Harrow was following a road map created by Valya. He may not have any great love for his aunt, but for now, he’s on board with her plan to win back the favor of the Emperor in hopes of putting the Harkonnens back in a position of real power for the first time in generations.

Desmond wastes no time cracking down on rebels, suspected rebels, and the establishments in which they hang out and snort spice. After breezing by Swordmaster Keiran and apparently torturing a smuggler (off-screen, fortunately), Desmond and his armed thugs hit the imperial city’s hottest club. He might suspect — and certainly should suspect — that Keiran has tipped off Mikaela that her cover has been blown. Desmond apparently doesn’t suspect, however, that Mikaela has rigged the place to explode. As Desmond’s goons set about wrecking the place, Desmond starts an intense conversation with Mikaela about how she reconciles her Fremen identity with her job serving members of the empire that oppresses Arakkis. It’s a big question, one Mikaela doesn’t really get a chance to answer before fleeing with Keiran as the club goes up in flames.

Outside, Keiran has a revelation of his own. He recognizes that the knife she carries means she’s a member of the Bene Gesserit. After a tense meeting with Valya, Valya sends her back to the Bene Gesserit safehouse on Arakkis, though whether Mikaela should trust Valya or expect to be safe remains an open question. And Keiran escapes the explosion but not the palace intrigue. Returning to the palace he encounters Constantine then finds himself arrested for his role in the thwarted assassination attempt. That’s bad news for Keiran but good news for Constantine, who becomes fleet commander, just like his mom hoped he would. It’s also bad news for Ynez, who exchanges a knowing glance with her mother. She’s attached to Keiran — if that’s the right word — but the whole trying-to-kill-her-family thing might have threatened that attachment. Visiting her love as he hangs in prison, she demands the truth, Bene Gesserit style. Yes, he cares about her enough to give up his role in the plan. But he still believes in the core principles of the rebellion. The look that passes between them suggests Ynez doesn’t know where she stands anymore.

When Lila calms down it doesn’t take long for Jen to realize that she’s not talking to Lila at all. Nor does it take long for Tula to figure out that Lila has become host for the spirit of her own grandmother, Raquella, who treats her reprieve from death as a chance to get back to business in the lab. That means looking for patterns in the late Kasha brain stem and making allusions to her “great work” and the “differences” that once troubled Valya and Dorotea — a matter Tula advises her, without using any words, not to pursue in Jen’s presence. That, however, doesn’t mean Jen didn’t pick up on something being amiss. But when Lila/Raquella (Liquella?) discovers evidence in the brain stem sample that reminds her of something she saw back in her war days, that concern goes out the window.

What happened to Kasha bears a resemblance to the “Omnius Plague,” a thinking machine-designed disease Raquella encountered during the war. Lila/Raquella concludes that the Sisterhood’s current problems, including the nightmares troubling the acolytes, can be traced to an engineered virus. She’s so excited to share this news that she barely notices an understandably shocked Sister Avila, who’s not sure she approves of this development. (The word “abomination” gets thrown about.)

But maybe it’s Desmond who’s the real abomination? When Tula examines the genetic sample Valya has sent, she uncovers, with the help of the forbidden thinking machine … well, it’s a little unclear, honestly. As the episode draws to a close, it cross-cuts between Tula’s discovery that Desmond apparently has both Atreides and Harkonnen DNA, Corrino making out with Francesca, and Desmond conversing with Natalya, who expresses a deep resentment for the Bene Gesserit and all the ways they’ve messed with her life. As Tula breaks into tears looking at the results, Desmond tells Natalya his origin story. He’s the child of a Bene Gesserit Sister who abandoned him to live among scavengers. Then, they kiss, and Natalya declares it is time to rid the Imperium of the witches.

Once again, the question of who is manipulating who at this moment is tough to ignore. In an episode that’s revealed unexpected allegiances and tangled loyalties, is this an instance of Desmond, once again, using the emotions of others to his advantage? Is Natalya emerging as a secret mastermind? You can put those questions next to others like, “Will we ever be able to tell when Lila is really Lila?” “What does Ynez want, and how does she plan to get it?” and “Will anyone ever take Harrow aside and talk frankly about his tragic haircut?” Dune: Prophecy has one more episode to reveal any of those answers this season. But expect them to be joined by even more questions. Like the Sisterhood, the series seems to be playing the long game.

Kwisatz Haderachs

• “You were born to wear that uniform,” Natalya tells Desmond. Neither Corrino nor his wife are trying to hide their feelings for others.

• “Do not ever make the mistake of thinking you can become the man you are pretending to be,” Mikaela warns Keiran. It seems like one of the series’ key lines, hearkening back to Tula almost making the same mistake. (Or “mistake,” depending on your point of view.) But who is Keiran when he’s not playing this part? Do we even know?