So many awkward family meals this week.
Recap
Jen wakes, and notices that all of her sisters are having terrible nightmares. She finds Emeline sleepwalking with a knife and stops the acolyte from killing herself. On Salusa Secundus, Valya offers to be Harrow’s Truthsayer to bring House Harkonnen better standing with a seat at the High Council. Uncle Evgeny warns Harrow against trusting Valya after she abandoned her family, knowing she’s only helping them to get something for herself. Ynez comes to breakfast at the palace and finds Hart at the family table. She questions her father about the rumors around a Pruwet’s death and realizes they’re true. Her parents tell her that she can no longer study with the Bene Gesserit as the family needs to maintain a united front, but Ynez insists that they will never be united while Hart remains at the Emperor’s side. On Wallach IX, Jen and Emeline tell Tula about her dream, and Emeline asks about Dorotea’s death. When they’re dismissed, Jen stays back to tell her that all the sisters but her had this nightmare, Emeline was simply the only one to sleepwalked. The High Council of the Landsraad begins.
Hart talks to the Emperor as he burns Kasha’s Sisterhood book. He wants the Emperor to remove the Truthsayers from the Great Houses, to stamp out the rebellion that is clearly blossoming around him. The Emperor knows he is seen as a beneficiary to what his ancestors created rather than a great leader, but he refuses this advice, citing a need for stability. Keiran and Horace meet with a man to buy a very big bomb, planning to set it off when the Emperor speaks at the High Council. Mikaela thinks that Keiran is spooked about the mission, and advises him to better prepare. Valya records a message for Tula, but breaks it when she thinks to ask her sister to come to her aid. Theodosia informs Valya of the rebel plan they’ve seeded and guided, which Valya plans to frustrate at the High Council in order to get back into the Emperor’s good graces. The Truthsayers whisper to their Great House lords to sow discord and provoke a desire to investigate the Emperor in Pruwet’s death. They suggest the person to bring this accusation be a disgraced house with the least to lose. This leads to two members of the Landsraad inviting Harrow to the High Council to deliver this accusation. Harrow is nervous, but Valya convinces him of the plan’s merit.
Tula brings all the sister who had the nightmare together to get them all to meditate and refocus on the dream and sketch out what they saw. All the dreams start in different places, but they begin to converge as the acolytes grow more terrified in their trances. Avila tries to get Tula to stop, but she refuses. The sisters wake finally and Emeline says that god is watching and judging them—the reckoning is here. The Empress talks to Hart to find out why he’s not seeking out the Emperor’s enemies and destroying them. Hart realizes that she is the one who leaked the rumor about Pruwet’s death; she wants to use this moment to help the Emperor shore up his power and encourages Hart to act as he sees fit to that end. Ynez runs into Keiran at the bar and they argue about what her father has done. She admits that she’s unhappy with Hart’s position and wants to do something about all of this, but she’d hurt her father. He encourages her to make the right choice, but balks at another tryst and leaves. Theodosia asks Valya about the portrait of Griffin, but she won’t talk about it. They discuss the real reason Theodosia was brought along; something to do with an ability of “last resort” that she was promised she’d never have to use again in the Sisterhood.
Tula and Avila discuss the acolytes’ drawings from the dream trance, which all feature Shai-hulud and also a presence of deep fear that woke all of them. Avila thinks they should warn the acolytes of it, but Tula insists that fear feeds this thing, and is the last thing they should spread. Ynez approaches her brother to ask him to stand by her in calling out their father. He doesn’t believe himself strong enough, but Ynez tells him he’s strong and brave and that she needs his support as she had it when they were children. The High Council begins and the Emperor is introduces with the Empress and Hart by his sides. Constantine wishes his father luck and then flees, abandoning Ynez to act on her own. Harrow is called on to address the council, and he asks to file a grievance with regard to the death of Pruwet Richese and asks for a formal inquest. Ynez steps forward to accuse the royal house before he has the chance and Desmond Hart in particular. Suddenly, Horace is brought before the council; Hart dispatched men to find the conspirators against the Emperor and he insists that he was not wrong to execute the boy for his thinking machine, the very same kind that would have been used to kill them all today—he has their bomb.
With the Emperor’s leave, Hart burns many of the conspirators alive in that room, using his ability. (He doesn’t know of Keiran, so the Atreides makes it out unharmed.) He has rumbled Valya’s plan to expose the same cell, but Valya gets a sample of his blood to send to Tula so that they can find out where he came from. The Emperor comes to see Hart and finds that the man is covered in painful lacerations; using this power comes with a physical cost. The Emperor is moved and promises Hart that he can stay. Emeline knows that truth about Tula now and confronts her about the murder of Dorotea, Orry, and the Atreides, promising to expose her lies. Tula murders her, then wakes—it was a dream. She then notices that Lila’s chamber has been broken. She follows the caverns underground until she comes across Lila, who is awake and well. The two embrace. Valya confronts her uncle over his rudeness to her, and they begin to fight about the past. Valya keeps his medical rescue device from him so that Evgeny suffocates to death in front of her. Griffin appears and says that he understands now what it took for Valya to come back here, and that he will commit himself to this cause. Valya asks if she pushed too far, but he says that everyone makes their own choices. He begins to change and Valya thanks Theodosia—she’s a Face Dancer and took Griffin’s form.
Commentary
I can see the merit to having a Face Dancer in this story, but… what a goofy way to reveal it. Particularly after making the suggestion that Theodosia is uncomfortable with the ability and joined the Sisterhood with the stipulation that she’d never have to use it again—now she’s just pretending to be Valya’s brother for Big Drama purposes?
It’s also a strange way of indicating that Theodosia is now on Valya’s page when we don’t see her witnessing the conversation between Valya and Evgeny and get the chance to see how the context affected her. Like many emotional cues on this show, it springs out of nowhere and asks the audience to do the legwork of explaining how characters got where they are.
It’s unfortunate because this is a great episode for the work Emily Watson is doing with Valya. We finally see some of the fatigue shine through for all these machinations, so much so that she nearly calls for Tula’s aid in her message before cutting herself short. Being outmaneuvered by Hart is a blow, but she maintains her calm and poise. And the fight with her uncle finally puts words to her resentments in a way that provides a much better understanding of her as a character. It’s a shame that we had to get over halfway through this microseries before finding it.
Not sure how I feel about Evgeny’s murder, though; obviously I’m not expecting Valya to do good things to her family, or the Dune universe to back away from depictions of ableism and elder abuse, but there’s a lack of clarity around Evgeny’s disability/illness that makes the death puzzling as it’s rendered. Is the tank she withholds oxygen? (If so, why wouldn’t he have that on his person, built into his chair.) Is it medication? (Same question, really.) Spice? (It’s often used for longevity, so not impossible.) It made an otherwise riveting scene peter out awkwardly.
Presumably, the whole section with the joint acolyte dreaming is designed to get the Bene Gesserit to develop their “Litany of Fear” that we know so well from the original book. Tula’s commentary about the importance of being able to combat this deep fear in the acolytes makes it very unlikely to be anything else. And it’s just… disappointing. Here, viewers, we’ll explain another thing you know about Dune. We did prequel good, go us!
The overall ratcheting tension leading up to the Landsraad meeting is one of the more effective pieces of the episode, with all the good political intrigue you want from these sorts of stories. And the fact that the Empress is, yet again, the person defending the Emperor’s reign despite his distrust of her, while his daughter has finally decided to break from his side—that part is extremely clever. At every layer, this story does center on women and their choices, and the series is right not to make that framework entirely about the Bene Gesserit. It allows this series to avoid the pitfalls of the original Dune books, where nearly all women of any import had to be members of the Sisterhood.
You can line them up and with the exception of Hart, the men are entirely useless in this episode: the Emperor refuses to make any difficult choices and is struggling with the inherent privilege of a position that he didn’t earn; Constatine is bolstered by his sister and still lets cowardice dictate his actions; Harrow can’t achieve any of his goals without precise direction from his aunt; Keiran follows his organization’s plan to the letter and fails utterly; Horace gets captured. It’s a mess all the way down, and one of the sharpest aspects of the episode.
Of course, we now have Lila as another potential “twice born,” as predicted. But her role in this story is far from clear, as is Emeline’s. Tula’s dream could very well be a harbinger, but we can’t be sure how; just because she murders the acolyte in a dream doesn’t mean she’ll have to literally kill the woman. Perhaps she’ll only need to “kill” the ideas Emeline is dredging up.
Truthsaying and Visions
- Avila’s constant protests to how Tula is handling things are starting to get a little tiresome. I get that she’s looking after things on Valya’s behalf, but I don’t believe for one second that Mother Superior wouldn’t be into a joint dream trance sketch session.
- They should spend far more time discussing what “god” is in this context. Obviously, Herbert throws out bits and pieces everywhere in the books (the Orange Catholic Bible and all that), but having Emeline say that God is watching and judging them is another matter entirely, and pertains to the creation of the Sisterhood in terms of how their doctrine functions. We need to know if this is coming from Emeline’s belief system specifically, and if the Sisterhood uses faith in any capacity to control their acolytes. It’s a big subject! Allowing the audience to fill in the blanks there feels sloppy.
- I cannot get over how weirdly romantic all the moments between Hart and Emperor are? Fine, I initially thought it was just me and my natural inclination to suggest all characters are gay, but this last scene, when Jarvicco sees Hart’s wounds, is not subtle. They should probably kiss.
The penultimate episode next week. Will we get some answers?
