HBO’s Prequel Show Explained by Cast

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the premiere of “Dune: Prophecy,” titled “The Hidden Hand,“ now streaming on Max.

Eight months after the premiere of the movie ‘Dune: Part 2’, it’s time to delve 10,000 years into the story’s past with HBO’s prequel series ‘Dune: Prophecy’.

Because the show is set in the distant past, there’s no Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen or Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan Corrino — but their family dynasties are well represented in “Dune: Prophecy.” The show explains the origins of the Bene Gesserit, the powerful all-female sect that secretly pulls the political strings of the universe. (Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica and Lea Seydoux’s Lady Margot are among the most famous Bene Gesserit in Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” films.) Emily Watson and Olivia Williams star as Valya and Tula Harkonnen, two sisters who lead the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood .

The premiere episode begins with a flashback to the Butlerian Jihad, a war waged by humans against all thinking machines. It is one of the first events described in the ‘Dune’ novels. The conflict destroyed (almost) every computer, members of House Atreides were labeled heroes, and the Harkonnens were reviled and exiled. Years later, a young Valya Harkonnen is named leader of the Bene Gesserit after the death of the inaugural Mother Superior Raquella. Just before her death, Raquella has visions of enormous sandworms on Arrakis and burning flesh – an omen of what will happen in 10,000 years.

Now grown up and the new Mother Superior, Valya prepares to accept Princess Ynez Corrino (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina) into the Bene Gesserit. Her parents are Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong) and Empress Natalya (Jodhi May), who undergo Ynez training under the badass swordmaster Keiran Atreides (Chris Mason). Despite their gooey eyes at each other, Ynez is politically engaged to the prince of House Richese, who turns out to be a nine-year-old boy.

Meanwhile, a soldier named Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), who survived an attack on Arrakis, arrives and requests an audience with the Emperor, but the local Reverend Mother Kasha (Jihae) is suspicious of him. Like Mother Superior Raquella before her, Kasha also experiences an ominous vision of what awaits Princess Ynez.

The vision quickly becomes reality when Ynez’s marriage to the Richese boy goes off the rails. After getting married, the little groom takes out a seemingly innocent robot lizard, but the toy is a forbidden computer that is forbidden. The royal guests panic, but Desmond destroys the machine before it can cause too much trouble. But in a shocking twist, Desmond later finds the Richese prince and burns him alive with some sort of telepathic fire powers. The same fate befalls Rev. Mother Kasha, as questions about Desmond’s past begin to arise.

Showrunner Alison Schapker and stars Watson and Williams break up the premiere Varietyin which they discuss their Harkonnen characters and creating a ‘Dune’ universe set 10,000 years in the past.

How familiar were you with the world of “Dune” before signing on for “Prophecy”?

Alison Schapker: My history with “Dune” started, like many people, as a fan and as a teenager while reading in my attic bedroom. I have a very strong memory of reading that book. I found it very baffling and moving, and then I went on with my life and career, and I wrote a lot of science fiction. When it was on the air that “Dune” was coming to television as a series, and that I could be involved in some way, it was just a no-brainer. It felt like a dream I didn’t know I had because you can’t imagine something like that coming your way.

Emily Watson: I had seen the first “Dune” movie, but that was it. But it was a beautiful thing to jump into. There’s so much to wrap your head around, so much knowledge about the world, but also real, down and dirty human behavior.

Olivia Williams: I had a hotline with Alison and said, “I need your most thorough and fastest crash course.” And luckily she wrote the manual. We sat down and she went over what I needed to know point by point. The man who came to install my audiovisual in my house knelt at my feet when I told him that I was paying Tula Harkonnen. At that moment I knew I had to take this seriously. Many people’s hopes and dreams were at my command, and I had to respect that.

You have Denis Villeneuve’s films as a reference for what the future looks like, but how was the world created 10,000 years ago?

Schapker: It’s a huge amount of world-building. Nothing exists in our world, so you imagine everything. What does that hat look like, or that suit, or that light? For me, filmmaking is made up of so many small decisions, and I try to take each one with care and let the vision accumulate. We went to new planets we’ve never been to before. We went to an icy planet, so how do people dress there, what is the industry like, where do they live, how does it feel familiar and real to us, but also unknown?

Williams: The most important thing is that there is no sand. Our planet is a very humid planet with a lot of moss, and there was a man with a tank full of water on his back, who sprayed us at every opportunity.

Watson: We call it 10,000 years BC – before Chalamet.

The Harkonnens from the films are all pale, bald villains, but how else are Valya and Tula portrayed in ‘Prophecy’? What is their relationship with the Atreides family?

Watson: The name Atreides makes us shudder because, on the basis of a lie, they have ruined our reputation and our fortunes. That’s how I tell it. In the “Dune” universe, there is nothing that can really be classified as good or bad. We think we are very good. Not everyone would agree with that.

Williams: When you look back on a war over land, power and family feuds, where does it begin? The science fiction of the 1960s has this honorable tradition of mirroring what you see in real politics now. Who came first? Who owns this land? Whose family spit on which goat first? It’s human nature, in any generation, 10,000 or 20,000 years from now. Unfortunately, people don’t forget.

One of the other elements that is eerily relevant to our world today is the role of technology and AI. Did you expect it to be so prescient when you created the show?

Schapker: It’s a very trippy experience to work in a “Dune” universe that depicts the consequences of artificial intelligence and the price humans paid – and the great cost to the species of surrendering their thinking and outsourcing it. A worst-case scenario is presented in which the artificial intelligence eventually subjugates humans, requiring a massive war that pushes humans almost to the brink of extinction. The suspicions, fears and costs of what that technology could bring, you are in the consequences of my creative world and then I walk around in the real world and see people completely abandon their thinking. What happens if you don’t have a machine? That’s what we’re going to do; I guess we’ll just see. I don’t know if it can be stopped, so I feel like it’s a good time to ask questions. This show will help you formulate some questions around technology.

This interview has been edited and condensed.