Review by C.J. Bunce
Maybe it’s Frank Herbert’s Dune universe that is to blame–a long, political story stuffed with ruling families and a story often as desolate as the deserts referenced by the title. Graphic novels have found the best ways to make the basic Dune novels interesting, providing elaborate visuals to support that narrative. The Atreides and the Harkonnen. The competing families always seem to be a science fiction echo of the competing houses of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. So a prequel set 10,000 years earlier can’t be all that good, right? Two episodes in and Dune: Prophecy will likely surprise even the pickiest fan of the Dune franchise or space fantasy in general. Like the Dune movies, old and new, this series, streaming now on Hulu, is similarly packed with some of the best actors you could find. But its genre-hopping is also the most exciting, riveting, compelling stuff to come out of a Herbert-world adaptation yet.
Can the series keep up the momentum?
With only six episodes in its first season, it will need to move quickly. It just doesn’t have time to catch up to the other fantasy series of the past few years. Its production aims to be a less expensive The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, but it’s no threat to that sprawling show. Still, it has two key features that show great promise: its A-list cast and its genre-bending story.
Just as the past few years have been inundated with drug-focused crime series, viewers have also seen several series focused on witches, sorceresses, and sisterhoods, from a hidden underworld of witches in A Discovery of Witches to the Nightsister witches of Dathomir in Ahsoka, to the coven of “Force witches” in The Acolyte and the superhero-realm witches of Agatha All Along, it’s the latest popular genre trope Hollywood thinks is worth exploiting. Although it will take something dark and fun to beat The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Dune: Prophecy is off to an intriguing story.
Is any of this actually science fiction? As some spaceships come and go, they might as well be aircraft, because this series is all fantasy. Dune itself is more Edgar Rice Burroughs’s heroes of Mars fantasy than Star Trek, but Dune: Prophecy is even more filled with fantasy elements. Acclaimed actor Emily Watson plays Valya Harkonnen, Mother Superior and leader of the Sisterhood, a group of advisors who use empathic magic to ferret out liars among the political factions. Genre-favorite Olivia Williams plays her much less viper-like sister Tula, a Reverend Mother charged with mentoring a young acolyte of the Sisterhood who may hold a key to the past.
Valya is a master manipulator who inherits command of her Order and spends the next 30 years plotting to put one of the Sisters on the throne of the Empire, the ultimate power grab. Viewers meet all the players just as her selected disciple, Sarah-Sofie Boussnina’s Princess Ynez, is readying to take a big step toward that goal, sealing a bond between her father’s house and the Richese family, whose progeny will soon will everything. Ynez’s father is played by the ubiquitous Mark Strong, who is both commanding and borders on perilously ineffective as Emperor Corrino in our introduction episodes of the story. The Emperor isn’t all that excited to marry his bright, strong, and beautiful daughter off to a nine-year-old kid, so it’s lucky a soldier thought dead comes along. That soldier is The Vikings’ star Travis Fimmel as Desmond Hart, a rogue of the John Wayne and Han Solo school of heroes. He has had his own perilous and surprising journey leading up to the events of this series.
At first the Emperor doesn’t want Desmond’s help. But even Emperors have advisors who can be persuadive. Here that’s Jodhi May (Transatlantic, The Last of the Mohicans) as his wife, Empress Natalya, a practical sort whose story will hopefully get even more into power-wielding and influencing mode.
The first half hour of the series is stuck with some clunky worldbuilding. Viewers will see a world that looks quite like that of The Terminator–did we know Dune takes place in the future of Earth? Who are these characters? How do they relate to the Atreides and Harkonnen 10,000 years later, and (more importantly) why should we care? Ten thousand years is a ridiculous passage of time, the kind of thing that is certainly a product of vintage sci-fi novels. It doesn’t matter, because the story shifts quickly into a mystery. What’s behind Desmond’s newfound powers, and is he as powerful as the Sisterhood? Does Valya have any hope of her scheme being successful? Once the story digs into the Sisterhood as Truthsayers, it gets pretty good. The Truthsayers communicate via flicks of their fingers in their own sign language. We quickly find how useful it is to have someone tell you everyone who is lying to you throughout the day.
And yes, there is a big sand worm, one who takes out one of the story’s key characters. And the MacGuffin is the same as previous Dune tales–it’s all about the spice trade, so yes, this is yet another 2024 series about drug wars. Since this is an HBO Max series, prepare for more unnecessary sex scenes that don’t further the plot. That’s HBO Max. There must be a subset of viewers that subscribes for that content because the streaming platform can’t seem to offer a show without it.
A legion of young actors, women and men, fill in the corners, including a Harry Potter-esque school of the Sisterhood training the next generation of Truthsayers, and young men in the Emperor’s court. Standout so far is Faoleann Cunningham as Sister Jen, a particularly sharp young novice who looks like she will play a larger role in the series later. As for the production itself, the set pieces are fairly sparse and the special effects are at a minimum. It’s on par with the Game of Thrones sequel series visually, with a big worm swapped for the dragon.
Nothing in Denis Villeneuve’s movies compares to this series. This has a better story and actors taking on more compelling characters. No hero in the movies matches Fimmel’s charismatic infiltrator. The few female characters in Dune the movie are heavily outmatched by an entire world of strong women in this story. And we get to see the Harkonnen before they become so repellent and unwatchable. That must be what 10,000 years does to you in Duneworld.
Developed by Diane Ademu-John and Alison Schapker with Schapker as showrunner and Anna Foerster as director, this series from Legendary Entertainment is starting off just right.
Don’t miss Dune: Prophecy, streaming now on HBO Max, with new episodes arriving Sundays.
