“The Authoritarian Enemy” (season 1 finale)

It’s the season finale of Dune: Prophecyso it won’t take a subtle click of Sisterhood’s fingertips to know that epic deaths will speak their own truths. Like Emperor Javicco Corrino, for example, for whom the real initiative is the final act. But we will come back to that. Lila is a better example. Lila, always as a vessel for the ancestors. Plural. Let’s listen to it for Chloé Léa, who plays Lila, and who carefully nuanced her interpretation of these different other visitors to the memory in her. Because this time, it is not Mother Superior Raquella who speaks and acts through the post-Agony acolyte freed from stasis. Instead, Reverend Mother Dorotea returned from the dead. And she’s ready to explain to the present-day sisters a past truth about the Harkonnens.

It’s nice of Max to tell you that he has already booked a second season of Dune: Prophecybecause these days, no one ever knows if a show we love will actually continue or be consumed by a content-devouring sandworm. Episode 6 of Prophecy“The High-Handed Enemy” has everything you want in a sci-fi cliffhanger, with religious schisms, major character extinctions, and battles across planets that are sure to become bigger battles in the future. the future.

With Dorotea inhabiting Lila in the present, we learn more about Wallach IX’s past. And basically, when young Valya used The Voice to provoke her to suicide, that’s not where the takeover ended. Valya and Young Tula, along with young Francesca (Charithra Chandran) and young Kasha (Yerin Ha), ended up voicing Dorotea’s entire team of Butlerian supporters. “Choose!” they shouted and many sisters slit their throats. Sisters who, like Emeline today, did not believe in Valya and Raquella’s use of forbidden thinking machine technology, but rather in their main Butlerian mantra: “the spirit of man is holy.” Through Lila, Dorotea reveals the skeletal remains of Valya’s followers and her own slain true believers. And with the support of Emiline, Avila and others, Mother Dorotea takes a lever to access Anirul’s physical systems, down there in the Brotherhood’s secret basement. It’s official. The Order is now diverting ideological paths.

Where was Toula during this revolt? Traveling alone to Salusa Secundus to confront Desmond Hart, his long lost son. With Anirul’s help, Tula determined that Desmond’s power came from a micro-sized thinking machine. Technology inserted into human beings at a molecular level, designed to be aroused by fear. And for Desmond, it wasn’t a miraculous transition. We see how he was targeted, then physically operated on – the blue “eyes” from his victims’ common dream, revealed as the tracking beam of a robot surgeon – but we also learn that Tula still has love for her child, despite her trace. of destruction. “My son was not born a weapon – he was do in one! » The question of who or what did the creation? Still undetermined. Go to Arrakis, Dune: Prophecy season 2! Meanwhile, on Salusa, Desmond Hart has Tula Harkonnen arrested.

Javicco Corrino, you flew too close to real power on the wings of uncertainty. The Emperor discovers Natalya and Desmond’s new alliance when the Empress has her own daughter chained for trying to free Keiran Atreides. “You stupid, lovesick girl,” Natalya says to Princess Ynez. “I wanted to teach you power. Let this be a lesson. And the Empress continues her palace coup by assassinating Sister Francesa with a cyanide needle, the same one Valya wanted for Emperor Corrino. Francesca fell on the chest of her dying lover, who had already stabbed himself. It was a real blow to learn that he was just a Brotherhood project, groomed from birth to represent Mother Superior’s preferred ruling lineage. He plunged his blade into his abdomen because it was the only act he could personally control. Now Natalya’s ambition has conquered the throne. And her seduction of Desmond secures access to her mind-burning app.

Is it Princess Ynez, or is it Sister Theodosia? With all this chaos in the halls of power, Valya has her sidekick from Tlulaxan genetics shapeshift into the form of the heir to the throne. This gives some cover to Valya and the real princess – with Keiran Atreides; Nez refuses to leave her boyfriend behind, despite her rebellious desires – which they use to escape Salusa Secundus on a freighter bound for Arrakis.

It’s a pitched battle en route to the spaceport, with Ynez and Keiran taking down the palace guards as they fight back to back, and Valya briefly reuniting with Tula before another disruption from Desmond. A vision reveals to him the source of his power. How his optic nerve was enhanced and weaponized by mysterious mechanical beings, beings who have apparently observed Valya and Tula Harkonnen since their youth and are now linked to the spice-producing desert planet. “If the shadows are where they want to fight, then that’s where I’ll go,” Valya says. And once their ship arrives on the windswept crust of Arrakis, it is with determination that Valya considers the best possible resolution to her grand plan to control the Imperium. Of course, there were some big hiccups along the way. But she saved the only true heir, the royal daughter whom the Brotherhood’s genetic library declared most fit to rule. Ynez, Keiran and Valya look out over the expanse of the desert. “The path to our enemy begins here. »

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is a free-lance freelance writer and editor in Chicagoland. Her work has been published in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media and Nicki Swift.