‘Dune: Prophecy’ : Here's Your ‘Who Are These People’ Guide To HBO's Spiced-Up ‘Dune’ Prequel

I am here once again to alert you that the spice flooooooows. Last night HBO debuted Dune: Prophecy, its prequel series to Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, the massive two-part blockbuster that gave us Timothée Chalamet as psychic desert messiah Paul “Muad‘Dib” Atreides. The show has new faces with familiar names, a stellar cast, and an abundance of sci-fi weirdness, and it could be a winner.

HBO seems to be running Dune on the House of the Dragon OS, washing Frank Herbert’s universe in the network’s signature blend of elite power struggle and thorny personal relationships, with the standard dash of sex and drugs. The series follows the early days of the galactic Imperium, as the nascent Bene Gesserit sisterhood and great houses of the Landsraad jockey for power, influence, and the galaxy’s most important commodity: spice.

Perhaps you read that last sentence and felt your mind touch the void. Fear not. This is why I, a GQ-designated “Big Dune Guy,” have come. Like any sci-fi universe worth its salt, the world of Dune has a lot of strange vocabulary and complex systems that can intimidate the uninitiated. Fortunately there are people like me, subject matter experts who forewent senior prom and can help you know your Mentats from your Guild Navigators. I’m here to tell you know who’s related to who, who’s beefing and why, and what lore you need to understand to get this show.

For starters, when is more important than where. Dune: Prophecy is set 10,000 years before the events of Villeneuve’s movies, not long after an event known in the show as the War of the Thinking Machines (or the Butlerian Jihad in the books). This is a major event in Dune history that I wrote about when the first film came out. But for now, all you need to know is this: because of a massive war between humans and AI, computers are now outlawed. Humanity is left to pick up the pieces and establish a new galactic order.

With that foundation, the show is basically set in two spheres. The first is on the planet Wallach IX, where a new religious order known as the Truthsayers is taking shape under the leadership of the ambitious and wily Valya Harkonnen (played by Emily Watson). The second is on Salusa Secundus, where the Emperor Javicco Corrino (played by Mark Strong) is working to shore up political power and stabilize his rule. Those spheres are about to intersect, with the Imperial Princess Ynez set to wed an obnoxious 9-year-old in a pragmatic political marriage, then head to the Truthsayers’ school until her boy husband comes of age.

Now if you saw the movies, you may have spotted some familiar names there. First and most important is Valya Harkonnen, Dune: Prophecy’s problematic MC. The Harkonnens are the the bleach-white big baddies of the main Dune: Stellan Skarsgaard’s corpulent floating Baron, Austin Butler’s sociopathic Feyd Rautha, Dave Bautista’s bruiser Rabban. But unlike in the films, where the Harkonnens are established power players, Valya and her family are pariahs. A voiceover at the start of the show explains that the Harkonnens are considered traitors in the War of Thinking Machines, in part due to the actions of House Atreides. As punishment, they’ve been relegated to an icy, desolate planet with little industry. We see the current House Harkonnen leader Harrow pathetically trying to sell the Emperor on the commercial value of whale sperm.

That marginal status is what drives Valya Harkonnen and her sister Tula to the Truthsayers—the beginning of the Bene Gesserit. The Bene Gesserit are the psychic space nuns from the movies who use “the Voice,” a special technique that forces people to obey commands. Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica (Paul’s mother) is one of them. But the Bene Gesserit are 10,000 years in the future. That name isn’t even used in the show. In Dune: Prophecy, they’re still the Truthsayers, and Valya is working to establish their influence (and her own) in service of the order’s main goal: matchmaking. The Truthsayers track families’ genetic history in order to “breed better leaders,” and insert themselves in the families of the Landsraad (think intergalactic Senate) to arrange suitable pairings.

Thus Princess Ynez marrying a kid. The Truthsayers have pushed the Emperor (who quickly proves himself susceptible to suggestion) towards this marriage knowing that it will lead Ynez to their order, allowing them to put one of their sisters on the throne. We know that this will work at some point in the next 10 millennia—the Corrinos are still the Imperial Family during the Dune films. These characters are the ancestors of the Emperor Shaddam IV and the Bene Gesserit-trained Princess Irulan, played by Christopher Walken and Florence Pugh.

But what about Paul Atreides, the hero of the main films? Does Timothée Chalamet have a great^10 grandparent in this film? He’s hanging in the wings: Ynez’s combat instructor is one Keiran Atreides. In a nice reference to the canon, we see them dueling with shields, the signature combat mechanic of the Dune franchise (“the slow blade penetrates the shield”). Because this is HBO, Dune: Prophecy juices this for all the sex appeal it’s worth. Ynez may be marrying a child, but that doesn’t keep her from getting close and personal with the dashing scion of a war hero.

So. Let’s pause for a recap: Valya Harkonnen, ancestor of the main villains in the films, is one of the founding leaders of the Truthsayers/Bene Gesserit, the witchy puppet masters of the franchise. She’s finessing her order’s way into the Imperial dynasty, House Corrino, who will lead the galaxy until Timothée makes Walken bend the knee in Dune: Part II. No real sign of House Atreides yet. And sorry to Zendaya fans—while we spot a Fremen in episode 1, we likely won’t see any ancestors of her character Chani, a true woman of the people, in HBO’s courtly intrigue drama.

All this lines up nicely with Villeneuve’s films, and, as a bonus, is fairly consistent with canon. That’s not surprising, as Kevin J. Anderson is a credited producer on the project (he was also a creative consultant, or loremaster, on Villeneuve’s films). Anderson co-wrote all 15 (yes, 15) Dune prequel novels with Frank Herbert’s son Brian, and the series appears to be following their Great Schools of Dune trilogy, particularly Sisterhood of Dune.

If there’s an X factor in Dune: Prophecy, it’s Desmond Hart, the mysterious soldier played by Travis Fimmel of Vikings fame. He returns to Salusa Secundus after surviving an ambush on Arrakis—the planet where the main films are set. As your Big Dune Guy, I have racked my brains and come up short—I’m not sure who this guy is, but he’s very clearly up to something, sidling up to the Emperor with promises of service. Call him Space Rasputin.

Hart is a reminder of what everything in this world is all about. It’s called Dune, after all. The planet Dune, AKA Arrakis, is the only source of the spice melange, the universe’s most important commodity. People use it as a food product, but it’s also a powerful psychedelic and an essential resource for space travel. Imagine you have one substance that’s like cinnamon, psilocybin, and crude oil underpinning the global economy, and you had to supply the entire earth from one deposit in New Zealand. It would be complicated. That’s why Corrino is marrying off to Ynez—to broker an alliance that will give him the military strength to pacify Arrakis. And it’s why people listen when Hart returns from the desert whispering of conspiracy and the supernatural.

The world of Dune—with its giant worms, religious cults, and funky neologisms—is famously weird, but HBO seems to have pulled out the political machinations and twisted families in the franchise’s core. If you can keep your eye on the players, you can enjoy the drama without knowing the lingo or how Chalamet fits in. But Dune rewards those who dive into the strange, and the show seems poised to go deep.