Diksha Sundriyal
HBO’s sci-fi drama series, ‘Dune: Prophecy,’ wraps up its first season with its sixth episode, where things get heated up in Salusa Secundus as the power struggle between the different parties comes to a head. The episode also dives into flashbacks to focus on the history of the Sisterhood and how ruthlessly Valya Harkonnen took over the Bene Gesserit. The bloodshed and secrets of the past trickle into the present as some shocking truths come to light, setting the stage for the war that is to unfold in the next season of the show. SPOILERS AHEAD
A Major Shift in Power Takes Place on Salusa Secundus
As her parents fall under the spell of Desmond Hart, Princess Ynez decides to take a different route by helping Kieran, who has been imprisoned after being charged with treason. When Ynez tries to save him, she is imprisoned herself, which leads Valya Harkonnen to change her plan radically. The whole purpose of controlling things was to put a Sister on the throne, and Ynez was chosen for that role. Valya and her Sisters went through all sorts of troubles to make sure that Ynez was where they needed her to be. So, when it turns out that she has been thrown in prison, Valya decides that the time for passive manipulation has passed.
Valya already has Emperor Corrino under her control through Francesca’s imprinting, but now, she believes it is time to get rid of him. She sends Francesca to kill the man, and she arrives at the palace to get herself arrested so she can visit the prison and free Ynez. It is easy for Valya to have herself arrested; she simply has to tell the Emperor how useless he is and how the Sisterhood has controlled every aspect of his life, including his marriage and his rise to become the Emperor. Later, the Emperor, grieved by Francesca’s betrayal, stabs himself in the heart, and a few moments later, Francesca herself is killed by Empress Natalya, who decides that it is time for her to take over the Imperium for good.
Escaping the palace becomes a key issue for Valya, which is where Sister Theodosia comes in. The original plan was to quietly slip away with Ynez while Theo would take her place. This way, no one would miss Ynez, and Valya could buy the time to put the next step of her plan in motion. But then, Ynez refuses to leave without Kieran, which forces the Sisters to change the plan. Theo decides to stay behind and buy them some time while the trio tries to run away. Their troubles are exacerbated when Desmond Hart is told that Valya Harkonnen has been arrested. He immediately realizes her ruse and chases after her. In the end, he even catches up to her, but she turns out to be much more of a challenge than he had expected.
The Tables Turn as Valya Loses Control of the Sisterhood
While she is busy at Salusa Secundus, things take a turn for the worse at Wallach IX. Tula decides to find Desmond, especially after she realizes that he may be the key to changing everything. However, her sudden departure turns out to be a very bad decision, as things slip out of control incredibly quickly. Tula leaves an unstable Sister Lila in the care of Sister Jen, who has a soft spot for Lila, which is why she loosens her shackles, not realizing that it isn’t really Lila asking her for help. At the time, Lila is possessed by the spirit of Sister Dorotea, who renders Sister Jen unconscious and escapes her prison.
When Lila walks out with blue eyes, all the Sisters are shocked to see her. They had already been on guard, trying to make sense of their shared vision that haunts them still. To see Lila is like seeing a miracle happen because, for all they knew, she was dead following the Agony. It doesn’t take a lot for them to realize that it isn’t Lila in front of them but Sister Dorotea, so they address her as such. Dorotea is shocked to discover that Valya took control of the Sisterhood following her death, which makes her wonder why her followers didn’t try to do anything. When she is told that all her followers deserted the Sisterhood, she decides to get to the root of it.
It turns out almost all her followers were killed, and their dead bodies were thrown in the well that is at the center of their building. This is where their bodies have been all this time, and it seems that truth had always been right in front of their eyes. This revelation becomes a tipping point for all the Sisters, who are now convinced that they have been led astray. They decide to correct the course and follow Sister Dorotea instead. Her first course of action is to do what she was stopped from doing all those years ago. On the day she was killed by Valya Harkonnen, she was on her way to destroy the thinking machine Anirul. With the truth out in the open and all the Sisters following her, she storms in and destroys the machine.
Who Turned Desmond into a Weapon?
Since the first episode, Desmond Hart’s mysterious power has been a mystery, but the penultimate episode reveals that it isn’t something supernatural. Rather, all the people killed by him died of a virus. More light is shed on the matter when Sister Nazir comes to study the virus and find a way to beat it. It is clear that the virus also exists in Desmond’s body, which means he is the first victim of the thing. This also means that someone exposed him to this virus intentionally, but there’s still time to discover the identity of that person.
It seems that the virus feeds on a person’s fears, so Sister Nazir tries to beat the virus using her Sisterhood training and controlling her body’s chemistry to destroy the virus from within. However, the more she tries to resist, the stronger the virus gets in its attacks, and it keeps coming back until it has won the fight put up by Nazir’s mind and body. Later in the episode, we find Valya going toe-to-toe against Desmond using the same approach. She takes the risk to buy time for Princess Ynez and Kieran Atreides to escape, and being a more powerful person, she believes she can beat the virus. But then, the more she fights, the stronger the virus gets. She is on the brink of losing when Tula finds her and guides her through it all.
In Valya’s mind, she lives the memory of losing her brother, who almost drowned one time. And then, she has him blaming her for his death, which happened after he went after Vorian Atreides on Valya’s advice. This is the form her fear takes, but Tula’s voice brings her out of this. Eventually, when Valya lets go, the virus washes over her, and she sees the Sandworm coming for her. Inside it, she sees two blue eyes, which, as expected, turn out to be a thinking machine. But while most people have perished so far, Valya gets to go further.
Valya sees a couple of thinking machines operating on Desmond Hart. They pull out his right eyeball and stick some chips on his nerves, which explains why Desmond touches the right side of his temple when he uses his power. But that’s not the most interesting part. While Desmond is being operated on, there is a person in the shadows, watching the whole procedure. It is clear to Valya that this person is in charge of the whole thing. This is the person controlling the thinking machines, and this is the person responsible for Desmond’s condition and the havoc he has wreaked on all these people so far. Because Valya sees it from Desmond’s perspective, she is not able to make out the face of the person in the shadows, but from all that she saw, she knows enough to take the fight to them.
What Happens to Tula? Will She Die?
The ending of the previous episode revealed that Desmond Hart is Tula’s son. In this episode, we discover that Tula let go of him intentionally. She found out she was pregnant shortly after Valya took control of the Sisterhood by killing Sister Dorotea. However, that still left Dorotea’s followers, who weren’t entirely convinced of her suicide and believed that the Harkonnen sisters had something to do with it. Knowing that without their support, Valya could never take control, they made a choice to use the Voice, a skill that Valya had taught Tula, Kasha, and Francesca by then. Either they follow Valya, or they kill themselves, and almost all the sisters choose death.
When Tula told Valya she was pregnant with Vorian Atreides’ child, Valya ran the baby’s genetic profile to find out what someone from the Harkonnen and Atreides bloodline would look like. She discovered that the child would have great potential, and this pleased Valya beyond measure. She supported her sister through her pregnancy, but as time passed, Tula realized that just like everything else in her sister’s orbit, her child would become the means to an end, and that’s not the future she wanted for the boy. So, instead of letting Valya raise him and control his life, she decided to give him away to let him find his own destiny. Of course, she didn’t realize that this choice would put her son on a path that would eventually put him in direct opposition to the Sisterhood.
At Wallach IX, Tula discovers that Desmond kills people by activating a dormant virus in their body, which was planted by the thinking machines. But for this, he had to be the first victim of their attack, which means that he is under the control of something or someone else. Under normal circumstances, she would have agreed that killing Desmond would be the best way to go forward, as it would remove the root of the problem. However, she cannot have her son’s blood on the hands of the Sisterhood, so she decides to help him instead. By the time she reaches Salusa Secundus, a lot has happened, but she is relieved to find out that he and Valya are still alive.
Tula comes clean to Valya about faking her child’s death all those years ago while also emphasizing that she will not let Desmond die. Instead, she will stay in Salusa Secundus and help him. When Valya leaves, Tula greets her son, who is wounded but not dead. Desmond had been conscious all this while and now knows why his mother abandoned him. He hugs Tula, but the moment between them is broken when the soldiers show up, and Desmond has her arrested. However, this does not mean that he will have her killed. After all, there is a lot left to be resolved between them. Moreover, it’s clear that using his power to kill people has been taking a toll on him. When he finally decides to get rid of it, Tula will be the only person he can turn towards.
Why do Ynez, Kieran, and Valya go to Arrakis?
In the final scene, we see Valya arrive in Arrakis with Ynez and Kieran. There are several reasons for them to be there. The first thing that drives her there is the vision she has of the thinking machines and the person from the shadows who is controlling them. It doesn’t take much for Valya to know that whoever did this to Desmond is in Arrakis because this is where he was before he came to Salusa Secundus. The procedure was done to him after he came face to face with a Sandworm, and whoever found him decided to use him as a weapon to shake up the balance of power in the Imperium. Hence, Arrakis is where Valya will find them.
Another reason for coming to this particular planet is that this is where Prince Constantine and his fleet of soldiers are. They were sent here shortly before everything went south on Salusa Secundus. Because Valya had sent Francesca to have the Emperor killed, she knows that she has left behind a power vacuum, which, to no one’s surprise, would be taken over by Empress Natalya, supported by Desmond Hart. The only support that Ynez, whose own mother seems to have turned against her, can gather is from her brother, the entire point of whose existence is to support his sister, or so he was told by his mother. When he discovers that Francesca has been killed, he will want to avenge his mother, and this makes him a great ally for Ynez, as well as Valya.
Constantine is not the only person on Arrakis that Valya can trust. In the previous episode, following the fall of the rebels, Sister Mikaela was told to go back to Arrakis. She was disgruntled with Valya for wasting all of her time and effort spent with the rebels, and she also felt like her people were being used as pawns in the Sisterhood’s game. In the end, however, she is still a Sister, and from all that we have seen so far, Sisterhood is above all. If anything, Mikaela might become the connection between Valya and the Fremen, considering that she is a Fremen herself, which would add more power to her cause. All these factors make it clear that Arrakis is going to play a central role in the next season, and Valya’s arrival there gives her somewhat of a head start.
Read More: When Does Dune: Prophecy Take Place? How is it Connected to the Dune Movies?
