Learning Mother Superior’s greatest fear is not as riveting as one might hope

Image: HBO

It’s not Dune if someone isn’t taking poison to access their race memory, right?

Recap

Sister Nasir (Karima McAdams) arrives from the Suk School to examine Kasha and help Tula figure out what happened to her. The Acolytes discuss Kasha’s death, with Sister Theodosia (Jade Anuoka) saying it seems likely to be an assassination. Valya gets word about Pruwet’s death and means to leave for Salusa Secundus to secure their place with the royal family. Valya leaves Tula in charge and wants her to put the acolyte Lila (Chloe Lea) through the agony so they can access Raquella’s knowledge. Tula doesn’t want to do this as she thinks of Lila as her own, but agrees to do what’s right for the Sisterhood. Valya asks Theodosia to accompany her, and she agrees. On Salusa Secundus, the Empress talks to Duke Richese, who thinks of accusing the royal family in his son’s death. The Emperor talks to Desmond Hart about the death and Hart makes it clear that he believed the Emperor wanted the boy dead, so he took care of it. The Emperor has him locked up in a suspension chamber and advises Keiran Atreides to keep quiet about it.

Tula talks to Lila and explains the reckoning they believe is upon them, and Lila’s heritage: She is Rauqella’s great-great-granddaughter, and they want her to undergo the Agony so that she can access her genetic memory. Lila is horrified at the idea, but Tula tells her that the choice must be hers. Lady Sharon Richese (Tessa Bonham Jones), Pruwet’s older sister, is having a fling with Constantine, and they do a lot of drugs while she pumps him for information; he tells her about Hart in the cells. The Emperor tells his wife what Hart did and that the surveillance footage shows he survived an attack by the sandworm on Arrakis. The Empress suggests that they use Hart’s loyalty rather than casting him aside. Sister Avila (Barbara Marten) asks Tula about the poison she’s preparing for the Agony; Tula knows she’s been sent by her sister to keep an eye on things and insists that Lila will still get to make this choice on her own. Duke Richese hears about Hart from his daughter and demands that the Emperor hand him over. While the two fight, Valya enters unannounced to give her condolences and calm things down.

Richese leaves after being assured by the Emperor that there is no suspect in custody for this son’s murder. Valya lets Javicco know that Kasha has died, and asks to speak to Hart. Before doing so, she tells Ynex of Kasha’s death—the princess is heartbroken, but Valya introduces her to Theodosia, her possible future dorm mate as a distraction. Valya meets Hart, who tells her he was born on Balut, and that faith led him to the Emperor. He admits that he killed Pruwet and Kasha too, because she was unfit to stand besides the Emperor. He claims to serve only the Imperium, and tells the Emperor that Vayla and her kind chip away at his power. Kayla is determined to remind the Emperor of their value to the throne. Lila has conversations with Sister Emeline (Aoife Hinds) about martyrdom and its uses, and Sister Jen (Faoileann Cunningham) about not being used as a pawn by the Sisterhood. Keiran Atreides is scanning the palace structure for a meticulous blueprint; it turns out that he is part of a resistance cell, and he meets up with Horace (Sam Spruell) and Mikaela (Shalom Bruce-Franklin) to discuss their next steps to announce the rebellion on a large scale.

Tula and Lila speak again, admitting that they feel bonded to each other like mother and daughter. Tula tells Lila that her mother died in childbirth, giving Lila another reason to go through the Agony. Mikaela meets with Valya at night—she’s a secret member of the sisterhood, working in the shadows. Valya wants to burn the whole resistance cell she’s looking out for in order to regain the Emperor’s trust, and she begins by naming Keiran, which catches Valya’s interest. Ynez has another sparring match with Keiran and tells him about her father facing another rebellion when she was a child, the Broken Chain. She was kidnapped by them, and Constantine insisted that they take him as well so he could look after her. They kiss, but Ynez insists that they stop now that her future is uncertain. The Empress takes a moment to speak to Hart alone, asking why they shouldn’t give him up. He insists that he can show her how much help he would be to their family.

Lila chooses to undergo the Agony, and finds the place within where her ancestors reside; Raquella is there and tells the sisters that the key to the reckoning was born twice, “once in blood, once in spice.” She begins to seize and thinks she sees her mother, but the person speaking to her is her grandmother—Dorotea. She tells Lila that her mother isn’t there, and shows Lila her own murder at Valya’s hand. Tula encourages Lila to get out, but it’s too late: Lila has died. Back on Salusa Secundus, Duke Richese threatens to tell the Great Houses about what happened to his son, but the Emperor introduces Hart, who begins burning the Duke. The Emperor tells him to keep quiet about these events. Valya arrives at the palace to be confronted by Hart, who tells her that her services are no longer needed by the royal family and her privileges to the palace have been revoked. Valya uses the Voice to try and get Hart to kill himself, but he resists. Hart says that he’s finally learned her greatest fear: “It’s not that no one will hear you. It’s that they’ll hear you, and just won’t care.”

Commentary

Image: HBO

There’s on the nose and then there’s on the nose. By which, I mean, there’s on the nose, and there’s “let’s make the final line of this episode a description of the thing that most women in the world are afraid of because that’s very deep of us, don’t you know…”

Sorry, that was incredibly hamfisted for my tastes. And it also didn’t feel much like it belonged to this universe in terms of dialogue? I wish it had ended on stronger terms.

But we’ve got to talk about the oliphant in the room: Desmond Hart and his strange murdery abilities, supposedly granted to him by Shai-hulud.

There are two probable options here on where this is going. First one: Desmond Hart is an expert conman who is working hard to convince everyone that he has powers beyond comprehension. We will eventually discover what creates those powers and why he’s really here. Second option: This is all real and Desmond Hart has been chosen by the Great Worm to be some sort of faith-based emissary that is here to try and wipe out the Sisterhood. (And he will, per our knowledge of the future, fail in this task.)

The trouble with option two is massive: The conceit of Hart’s powers and where he received them makes absolutely no sense in terms of storytelling or Dune’s worldbuilding. Yes, there are plenty of “magic”-seeming abilities in this universe, but it’s all explained in jaggedy pseudo-scientific ways. There are reasons for the Voice and extreme control the Bene Gesserit exert over their own bodies; and, very pointedly, the fact that they are still called “witches” by most men denotes the heavily ingrained sexism of their society, not the suggestion that the sisters are using actual magic. What Desmond Hart is doing—if it is truly a power granted by Shai-hulud—doesn’t remotely fit the universe’s mechanics.

Option one is still on the table, and I hope that’s where we’re heading. But we’ll have to wait and see, and at the moment, the success of the story is riding solely on this choice.

There’s a lot of treading water in this episode, a lot of characters getting into place for the rest of the action to work, and little reveals being planted all the way through. Yet again, we’ve experienced no flashback sequences after a promise that we’d been getting a story told in two timelines. So that makes the pacing ungainly, but at least we’re getting to know some of the characters better, particularly the acolytes.

And I do love Vayla’s control freak nature making all of her relationships incredibly harsh. It shines the most with Tula, but she has no patience in reserve for anyone. Eager for that to get some use down the road, as things are clearly not going her way by the end of the episode.

One turn that I’m enjoying more than I expected is the reveal that Keiran Atreides is part of the current rebellion against the Emperor. It serves as an excellent example of how ruling classes keep power by giving smaller amounts to the people who might overthrow them. We’re seeing this in the push and pull with the Richese family, and get a much deeper sense of this struggle watching an Atreides working in a resistance cell to bring down the Imperium… all while knowing that this resistance is nowhere to be found ten millennia down the line. The Atreides will once again be a powerful Great House with everything to prove and to lose, firmly in the Emperor’s pocket.

I’m also curious as to whether Lila is entirely dead? Technically you can get subsumed by your ancestral memory in this process, but I don’t think it’s ever been shown without said ancestral memory getting the person to do something that ends their life. Olivia Williams’ drives Tula’s heartbreak into the viewer regardless, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a miraculous recovery. Somewhere down the line.

And props again to Mark Strong for being the universe’s most ineffectual Emperor. His waffly uncertainty manages to project the inverse to swagger, and it’s enjoyable to watch him founder while all the women around him try to make up for his failings.

Truthsaying and Visions

Image: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

These openers really are kinda similar, huh. Between this and Wheel of Time and Rings of Power, I’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart.

I did like the rendering of the place where Lila accesses her ancestors, particularly because Dune: Part Two undersold that experience cinematically. You get a sense of how suffocating it can be, which is dearly important for other characters in this universe (namely Paul’s preborn sister, Alia.) And, of course, the fact that Lila’s mother wasn’t there means that it’s likely Tula lied and her mother is still alive. Who do we think she could be?

The choice to reveal Dorotea’s relation to Raquella like that was extremely effective. That’s how you do it.