It took six episodes, dozens of burning bodies, some Spice snorting, and too many betrayals to count, but Dune: Prophecy’s first season has finally come to an end. And, as did much of the first season, the finale is already creating possibilities that’ll have ramifications in the next season as well as the next Dune movie.
Shai-Hulud And The Thinking Machines May Be One And The Same
The Battle of Corrin is when humans finally eliminated the threat of thinking machines, outlawing their very existence to the point that a child would be burned alive for having one as a toy. In breathtaking fashion, 60 seconds of Season 1‘s final episode ask a terrifying question: What if the war with thinking machines isn’t over yet?
In the season finale, Sister Tula (Olivia Williams) and Sister Nazir (Karima McAdams) discover that the virus Hart has been whistling into people’s bodies, like a maniacal Pied Piper, feeds off of people’s fear. The virus burns the infected from the inside, attacking the amygdala, its power increasing as the victim succumbs to more fear. It’s still unclear how it may spread, or why nearly all of the Bene Gesserit in training were able to all have the same nightmares in past episodes. But, when we do find out what it is they’re seeing, the entire Dune universe is flipped upside down.
After confronting Hart near the end of the episode, Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson) is able to fend off the virus, preventing it from feasting on her fears, and finally sees those glowing eyes shrouded in darkness that everyone infected were seeing. She, and everyone else, saw 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 being watched by a shadowy figure. Unless Hart was devoured and then transported elsewhere, or never truly devoured at all, this would all but confirm that thinking machines had put Shai-Hulud under their control.
Their collaboration would make a lot of sense. When, in the penultimate episode, the spirit of Mother Superior Raquella Berto-Anirul (Cathy Tyson), in control of the body of her descendant Lila (Chloe Lea), examines the brain of Sister Kasha—Hart’s first Bene Gesserit victim—she sees a resemblance to a bioweapon used by thinking machines to kill humans by attacking their livers. Also, in the series premiere, Mother Superior Raquella, while on her deathbed decades before the events of Dune: Prophecy, saw a vision of the same burning flesh that resulted from anyone infected by Hart’s virus. She had that vision right after seeing Shai-Hulud devour Wallach IX, the home of the Sisterhood.
This Changes A Lot For Season 2 And Next Dune Movie
It’s a good thing HBO let the world know the series was renewed for a second season before the season finale aired, because there would’ve been online riots demanding more episodes after the cliffhangers it leaves us with otherwise. In the season’s final moments, Tula reveal to Valya that Hart is the child whose death she lied to her sister about, and Valya embarks on an expedition trip to Arrakis with Princess Ynez Corrino (Sarah-Sofie Bousnina) and Kieran Atreides (Chris Mason). Those moments, in conjunction with the Shai-Hulud twist, show that Dune: Prophecy’s next season could be what sets up the Fremen being included in the show after an entire season of their absence. It also sets the stage for the next season to begin explaining how the Harkonnen and Atreides went from mortal enemies to collaborators in birthing the Messiah to lead humanity.
But this revelation of the thinking machines’ integration with Shai-Hulud also means the next season will likely see a showdown between the Bene Gesserit and the thinking machines. Valya remarks that the sisterhood came to Arrakis because “the path to our enemy begins here,” foreshadowing future conflict. As for the next Dune movie, the Prophecy season finale opens the door for the possibility that the sandworms that govern Arrakis in the films could still have a connection to thinking machines that has either been neutralized over the last 10,000 years, repurposed for their own benefits, or a combination of both. The prospect of thinking machines operating on humans inside of Shai-Hulud, not unlike the Fremen using the sandworms as transportation, opens the door for the possibility of some entity controlling those sandworms for their own motive. That person could possibly be Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) when he fully becomes the Messiah.
It also can’t be a coincidence that the first person used by Shai-Hulud and thinking machines to bring Mother Superior Raquella’s destructive prophecy to fruition is the son of a Harkonnen and an Atreides, just like Paul Atreides is in the films. That, and Kieran embarking on an expedition with the current Mother Superior and the Bene Gesserit’s selection for ruler of the Imperium, could ultimately end up being footnotes in a long Atreides history that is glossed over in blood by the events of the next Dune movie. But the Dune: Prophecy season finale could foreshadow the lasting effects of the thinking machines’ virus, including it being genetically passed on in some fashion.
Does it sound far-fetched that thinking machines would embed a dormant contingency plan in the bloodline of a family set to birth the Messiah? Sure. Does it sound more far-fetched than thinking machines operating on a human being inside of a giant sandworm, infecting that person with a virus that feeds on fear? Absolutely not. We’ll just have to wait and see what Dune: Prophecy has done to the Dune universe.