One thing we can anticipate over the millennia between the events of Dune: Prophecy and the rise of Paul Atreides in Dune is that the Harkonnens will not only gain power as the evil empire of the Great Houses but physically manifest the sins that got them there. In both movies, Baron Harkonnen is immediately recognizable as the villain, a grotesque beast who exerts galactic force without pity or pleasure as if he were a pus-filled organ of human misery. Dune: Prophecy seems to be imagining Valya and Tula Harkonnen as the slippery slope the family would slowly tumble down. What might have started as a righteous mission to restore the Harkonnen name after history defiled it has become a desperate scramble for influence, supported by lies and deceit from both sisters that are threatening their mission.
Perhaps the original sin is Valya’s, given the burning vendetta that has brought her to the Bene Gesserit, but not before losing her beloved brother to a tragedy the family cannot bring itself to forgive. Maybe some of the blame lies with her mentor, Mother Superior Raquella, who sought to harness her rage and psychic power and revealed secrets to her that the other acolytes didn’t know. In both last week’s stellar episode and this mostly compelling follow-up, Valya’s decision to murder Dorotea, her rival as successor to Raquella, has cracked open a Pandora’s Box of consequences for her and Tula, who now have Dorotea haunting the entire Sisterhood from beyond the grave and are having to hide the truth from acolytes who are quite literally being trained to suss out lies. And that’s to say nothing of the comatose Lila, who’s been kept in the bosom of a thinking machine that makes Alexa look like an Atari 2600.
“Twice Born” finds the series finally spending more time around the acolytes and getting a better sense of who they are individually and as a unit. Lila’s disastrous experience with the Agony nearly took her life, but the ramifications of her encounter with Dorotea turns out not to be limited to her. In the opening sequence, the devout Emeline has a vivid dream in which she follows a mysterious figure until discovering that it’s a kind of doppelgänger, taking out a dagger to slash her own throat. This jump scare brings us back into the acolytes’ dormitory, where Jen wakes up to discover all the other women thrashing and moaning in their sleep, sharing an interconnected dream like the teenagers in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Some force seems to be leading them to a common revelation, and they look to Tula for answers since Valya is out trying to extinguish a large diplomatic fire in the Imperium.
Tula’s solution leads to one of the two strongest setpieces of the episode, in which she brings the acolytes together for a guided meditation of sorts to figure out what their nightmare might mean. But before that scene, there’s another crucial moment where Tula tells the standard lie about Dorotea taking her own life in the wake of Raquella’s death and Emeline quietly uses Truth Sense to scan her for bullshit. Tula picks up on what Emeline is doing and screams at her for it, but the die has been cast, despite the elder sister Avila’s assurances that Emeline is searching for answers like anyone else. From that unsettling prelude, the episode moves to the scene where all the acolytes are put in front of drawing pads and led by Tula to draw what they’d experienced in their sleep, which she insists is a controlled and safe way to offer insight into what they saw. But in the flurry of synchronized sketching, Tula loses control of the acolytes as they individual visions narrow into a single drawing of a set of eyes surrounded by darkness.
Beyond the worry over what terrible premonition the drawings might suggest, Tula’s inability to harness the situation is crucial to the episode because it connects her to Valya, who continues to flounder in trying to wrest influence away from the mysterious and immensely powerful Desmond Hart. Last week, their confrontation led to Valya getting kicked out of Emperor Corrino’s sphere, and she’s worried that other Great Houses might follow suit in banishing the Truthsayers and wiping out the Bene Gesserit’s influence. She starts by trying to boost the diminished House Harkonnen by offering a Truthsayer to the family and working her political connections to gain Harrow Harkonnen a spot on the High Council in the Landsraad, which describes itself as a group that serves “as a check against tyranny, injustice, and war.” To that end, Harrow has to earn his initiation by demanding a formal inquest into Pruwet Richese’s death, which Valya hopes will lead to Desmond’s incrimination.
Yet there are conspiracies at play that Valya isn’t seeing, at least not entirely. Rebel forces have secured an illegal drone on the black market that they intend to unleash in Corrino’s throne room, but their efforts, aided by the sneaky sword master Keiran Atreides, are undone in dramatic fashion in front of the entire Landsraad. Valya knows of the plan, too, and seeks to win back Corrino’s favor by thwarting it, but Desmond takes control of the situation first and makes his presence felt. The psychic power he’d used to immolate Pruwet and Kasha is turned against the conspirators in grisly public fashion, which for Corrino, who’s just been spared an attempt on his life, wipes away all skepticism he might have had over Desmond’s intentions. The fact that Desmond injures himself badly in pulling off this sorcery endears him to Corrino all the more, which of course puts Valya in a deeper fix.
For the Harkonnen sisters to come up so woefully short of answers in “Twice Born” puts an intriguing dent in their status as leaders of the Bene Gesserit, a group that generally enjoys its unfettered independence and influence. Tula will have to bring the acolytes back to heel — a task made more difficult by Lila gaining consciousness within the Anirul machine — and Valya is going to have to figure out a better counter to Desmond, which now involves calling on Sister Theodora to use a dangerous set of transformational gifts that Valya had promised she wouldn’t activate. The last time Valya took this break-glass-in-case-of-emergency approach to an acolyte, she pushed Lila to perform the Agony before she was ready. Now it’s Theo’s turn to invite calamity.
Kwisatz Haderachs
• Nothing involving Princess Ynez has added much to the drama so far, though her confrontation with Desmond over brunch was good for an unintended laugh. It’s a little hard to give her accusations (“So we’re having breakfast with killers now?”) much weight when the whole family seems to be enjoying what looks like a Sandals resort spread.
• “The time to snuff a fire out is when a fool lights a match, not when your house burns down around you.” Desmond appeals to Corrino to be a more decisive leader, but that naturally involves making Desmond the tip of the sword. The extent of his actual loyalty to the Emperor is unknown.
• The odds that Pruwet was burned alive by his toy are one in 2.5 million. So you’re telling me there’s a chance?
• The term kanly gets tossed around briefly at the Landraad and will surely come up again. A kanly is a formal vendetta between noble houses. Something to add to the helpful list of Dune terminology that was handed out to moviegoers before the 1984 version.
• Emeline confronting Tula with her and her sister’s sins may turn out to be a fantasy, but it does suggest how much guilt Tula feels about the actions she has taken and the secrets she keeps with her sister. She’s the more conscientious of the two, for whatever that’s worth.
