Reward Shai-Hulud, Dune: Prophecy is getting Dune-ier. Within the second episode of HBO’s dive into Frank Herbert’s sci-fi universe, the plot will get thicker and the lore will get thornier. There are snakes within the backyard, skeletons within the closet, and a person with mystical thoughts hearth powers. The politics and the characters each bought trickier, and a few Dune fundamentals got here to the forefront. I’m right here to clarify the weirder components of the weirdness so you may deal with who needs to kill or sleep with whom.
Within the premiere, we have been launched to the Imperial Home Corrino on planet Salusa Secundus and the Bene Gesserit sisterhood (the psychic house nuns) on planet Wallach IX. Each teams are pushing for a giant fancy wedding ceremony between the Princess Ynez ( Sarah-Sofie Boussnina) and child-groom Pruwet Richese, inheritor to a mighty navy household. However the plans hit a snag when mysterious soldier Desmond Hart from the planet Arrakis (also referred to as “Dune”! Just like the title!) reveals up, pledges his loyalty to the emperor, and, uh, burns the child from the within out along with his thoughts.
So the marriage isn’t precisely successful. House Rasputin (Hart) additionally appears to have killed Kasha, the Emperor’s Bene Gesserit advisor, whereas she was planets away, making his pyrokinetic powers all of the extra baffling. That’s the place episode 2 picks up, with the Mom Superior of the Bene Gesserit, Valya Harkonnen (performed by Emily Watson) flying to the Imperial homeworld to determine what the hell is occurring. All of the politicians are in the identical boat, dashing to seek out out who killed Pruwet, how, and why.
As soon as once more, the motion is ready in two separate worlds, Salusa Secundus and Wallach IX. On the danger of oversimplifying, you may consider the previous because the politics and the latter because the sci-fi shenanigans. Whereas the occasions on Salusa Secundus have been extra difficult and action-packed this episode, the occasions on Wallach IX have been, for my Huge Dune Man Bucks, extra necessary, and possibly extra complicated to Herbert novices. Let’s break it down.
The imperial homeworld is all about palace intrigue. Proper off the bat, House Rasputin admits to Emperor Corrino that he killed the Richese boy, simply because the Emperor was giving off a vibe that he didn’t like the wedding. The Emperor promptly throws him in a “suspensor cell” (one of many cooler sci-fi touches within the present), and the present’s energy gamers (the Corrinos, Valya Harkonnen, Duke Richese) spend the remainder of the episode making an attempt to determine what to do with him. The Richese household needs justice, the Mom Superior sees Hart’s energy as a possible menace and needs him eradicated, and the Empress needs to harness his energy for herself.
