It took six episodes, dozens of burning bodies, Spice snorting, and too many betrayals to count, but Dune: Prophecy‘S the first season has finally come to an end. And like most of the first season, the finale is already setting up possibilities that will have consequences in the next season, and the one after that Dune movie.
Shai-Hulud and thinking machines may be one and the same
The Battle of Corrin occurs when humans have finally eliminated the threat of thinking machines by prohibiting their existence to the point that: the child will burn alive for having one as a toy. In the breathtaking 60 seconds of the final episode of Season 1, he asks the terrifying question: What if the war against thinking machines isn’t over yet?
In the season finale, Sister Tula (Olivia Williams) and Sister Nazir (Karima McAdams) discover that the virus Hart is whistling into people’s bodies like a maniacal Pied Piper feeds on people’s fear. The virus burns the infected person from the inside, attacking the amygdala, and its strength increases as the victim becomes more fearful. It’s still unclear how it could spread or why almost all Bene Gesserit in training had the same nightmares in previous episodes. But once we know what they see, the whole thing Dune the universe is turned upside down.
After confronting Hart at the end of the episode, Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson) is able to fight off the virus, preventing it from preying on her fears, and finally sees those glowing eyes shrouded in darkness that all those infected have seen. She and everyone else witnessed Hart’s traumatic experience of being swallowed by Shai-Hulud and then having the virus implanted into his right eye by a thinking machine while a shadowy figure watched him. Unless Hart was devoured and then transported elsewhere or never actually devoured, all of this would confirm that thinking machines had taken control of Shai-Hulud.
Their collaboration would make a lot of sense. When, in the penultimate episode, the spirit of Mother Superior Raquella Berto-Anirul (Cathy Tyson), controlling the body of her descendant Lila (Chloe Lea), examines the brain of Sister Kasha – the first victim of Hart’s Bene Gesserit – she sees a similarity to biological weapons used by thinking machines to kill people through attacking their liver. Also in the series premiere, Mother Superior Raquella, lying on her deathbed, several decades before the events of Dune: Prophecyhe saw a vision of the same burning body that was created by everyone infected with the Hart virus. She had this vision right after she saw Shai-Hulud devouring Wallacha IX, home of the Sisterhood.
This changes a lot in season 2 and beyond Dune Movie
It’s good that HBO notified the world about the series renewal second season before the season finale airs because there would be a riot on the internet demanding more episodes after the cliffhangers it otherwise leaves us with. In the final moments of the season, Tula reveals to Valya that Hart is the child whose death she lied to her sister about, and Valya sets off on an expedition to Arrakis with Princess Ynez Corrino (Sarah-Sofie Bousnina) and Kieran Atreides (Chris Mason). . These moments coupled with the Shai-Hulud twist show that Dune: Prophecynext season could be what brings the Fremen back into the show after an entire season of their absence. It also sets the stage for the next season, where we will begin to explain how Harkonnen and the Atreides went from mortal enemies to collaborators in the birth of the Messiah who would lead humanity.
But this revelation of the integration of thinking machines into Shai-Hulud also means that next season will likely see a showdown between the Bene Gesserit and the thinking machines. Valya notes that the sisters came to Arrakis because “the road to our enemy begins here”, a foreshadowing of future conflict. As for the next one Dune movie, Prophecy The season finale opens the door to the possibility that the sandworms that rule Arrakis in the films may still have a connection to thinking machines that have either been neutralized over the last 10,000 years, reused for their own benefit, or a combination of both. The prospect of thinking machines operating on humans in Shai-Hulud, much like the Fremen using sandworms as a means of transportation, opens the door to the possibility that some entity will control the sandworms for its own reasons. That person could be Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) when he fully becomes the Messiah.
It also cannot be a coincidence that the first person Shai-Hulud and the thinking machines operate to fulfill Mother Superior Raquella’s devastating prophecy is the son of Harkonnen and Atreides, just like Paul Atreides in the movies. This, combined with Kieran going on a quest with the current Mother Superior and the election of a Bene Gesserit as ruler of the Empire, may ultimately end up as a footnote in the long history of the Atreides, which has been blotted out in blood by the events of the next Dune movie. But Dune: Prophecy the season finale could foreshadow the lasting effects of the thinking machine virus, including its genetic transmission in some way.
Does it seem far-fetched that thinking machines would implant a dormant contingency plan into the lineage of the family that would produce the Messiah? Bright. Does this sound more far-fetched than thinking machines acting on a person inside a giant sandworm and infecting that person with a virus that feeds on fear? Absolutely not. We’ll just have to wait and see what Dune: Prophecy did to Dune universe.
