‘Dune: Prophecy’ Episode 2 Recap: “Two Wolves” 

“The Burning Truth.” It’s a phrase that centers the title of Dune: Prophecy on the actions of the Sisterhood, as their leadership responds to the threat Desmond Hart embodies. For them, Travis Fimmel’s soldier/mystery man, as his unsettling blue-eyed stare sets fire to the middle distance, is the trouble foretold by a dying Mother Superior Raquella Berto-Anirul. So current Sisterhood boss Valya Harkonnen has a plan to face Desmond in her world, while simultaneously fighting him in the shadowy place of “the other memory.” Valya will travel to Salusa Secundus, where she will interrogate Hart in his suspension cell, while Reverend Mother Tula Harkonnen prepares the ritual of “The Agony” for young acolyte Lila (Chloe Lea), Raquella’s descendant, who Tula has always cared for as if she was her own daughter. Will poison taken from the sacred pool and dropped into Lila’s eye socket activate her Sisterhood powers on a molecular level, and put her in spiritual contact with Raquella and the other dead foremothers? It’s a big ask – The Agony has been known to kill. But so has Desmond Hart, with his mind-murders of little Prince Pruwet and Kasha, Emperor Corrino’s truthsayer. Part of the burning truth is leaving all of this new danger unchecked. 

But what is Desmond? Like, how did he just show up, gain the ear of the emperor, and start telepathically comusting royals and reverend mothers? His power is linked with Arrakis, and as Pruwet’s duchess sister Orla tells Constantine Corrino in bed, “the real power is whoever controls the desert planet.” From the Corrinos and the galaxy’s other great houses, to the spacing guilds in control of the pathways between the stars, to the Sisterhood itself, everybody knows that the spice of Arrakis must flow. However Desmond came to have them, his powers have been imparted by Arrakis, and that makes him crucial to Javicco Corrino’s control of the Imperium. Why settle for just submitting your daughter to a politically advantageous arranged marriage when you have access to a kill switch no one else understands, and one that’s operated remotely? Javicco and Empress Natalya bring him into the throne room and watch as Desmond Hart starts to mind-burn Duke Ferdinand Richese (Brendan Cowell), who pleads for his life. “Go home,” the emperor tells his rival. “We’ll let these tragic events fade from history.”

Desmond has not only become the emperor’s secret weapon – he’s also emboldened by him. In these parts, The Sisterhood is respected as much as it is feared. But during Valya’s interrogation in the suspension jail, Desmond treats her power like a plaything and her political standing like a liability. “Shai-Hulud took my eye, and granted me with a gift to see what even you cannot.” In equal measure, Desmond is gassing up the emperor and his insecurities while pledging to totally eradicate the Sisterhood from the galaxy.

As a true believer, Lila was more than ready to submit herself to the Agony. Lying on a slab in a room that looked built partly for ritual or ceremony, partly as a surgical theater from the 19th century, the acolyte worked to unlock her genetic memory, “to waken those that made you.” And Raqella did appear in that place of other memory, with another cryptic utterance that feels relevant to Desmond and the current state of things. “The key to the reckoning is one born twice, once in blood, once in spice. A revenent, born of war, on a path too short.” It seems Valya’s thinking is correct, that Desmond’s arrival marks the burning truth of the prophecy. But it also seems that the place of other memory is not fully on board with Valya’s rule. Dorotea is there – the sister Young Valya forced to kill herself – and she’s not gonna let Lila the acolyte back into the world of the living. It’s Dorotea who calls out to the Sisterhood from that place beyond the realms of lfe. “Harkonnen! You stole my future. Now I’m taking your hope.” 

Now, this is all happening in outer space, thousands upon thousands of years ago, and we’re talking about a mysterious rite that stimulates the living to speak with the dead. So for now, we’ll say Lila isn’t dead, she’s just being detained over there, and we will move on to the other threat that is building across the galaxy. Not the mind-burning desert freak with a meddlesome agenda, but a good old-fashioned rebellion, built from the ground up. And Keiran Atreides, swordmaster to the emperor and head trainer/sexual partner of Princess Ynez, is right at the center of it. “We need to announce this rebellion in a way that cannot be ignored,” Keiran and his compatriots say, and it’s their big plan to attack the imperial palace on Salusa Secundus. But how is the princess picking him to be her bedmate going to jibe with Keiran Atreides’s wish to foment a revolt that turns its back on her family and rebuilds the reputation of his last name? 

Keiran Atreides is definitely in a tight spot. But so is his puny rebellion, because they don’t know that the hand moving behind the harvester attack they carried out on Arrakis was Valya’s. When she meets Sister Mikaela (Shalom Brune-Franklin), a Fremen woman trained by the Sisterhood, it’s revealed that they arranged for the rebels to succeed on the desert planet, so as to destabilize Emperor Corrino. But now that Desmond Hart is on the scene, and cozied to the throne, Valya wants the emperor strong again. So Mikaela gives her the names of the rebels – “Atreides” briefly gives the Harkonnen pause – intelligence which Valya will take to the emperor as a win for the Sisterhood.     

It’s just as the Duchess told Constantine while they were having all of the legendary sex. No, not that stories of Constantine’s lovemaking prowess “have traversed time and space.” It’s the sense that all roads in the Dune universe really do lead back to Arrakis. With control of spice production instrumental to the rule of any imperial leader, and Valya Harkonnen working to shore up Sisterhood influence, and the arrival of Desmond Hart throwing everybody’s plans off balance – even the burgeoning rebellion’s – the storylines of Dune: Prophecy are themselves now circling the desert planet.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.