HBO's Dune prequel series Dune: Prophecy was filled with enough secrets and plot twists to do a Bene Gesserit proud, but according to showrunner Alison Schapker, one of the show's biggest reveals was teased right from the start.
Schapker was part of a recent FYC panel to talk up Dune: Prophecy ahead of the Emmys, along with Emily Watson (Valya Harkonnen), Olivia Williams (Tula Harkonnen), Travis Fimmel (Desmond Hart), producer Jordan Goldberg, costume designer Bojana Nikitović, production designer Tom Meyer, and VFX supervisor Michael Enriquez. Variety has published a report of some of the biggest moments from the panel, including Schapker's tease about a hidden Easter egg that hints at the identity of Desmond Hart in his very first appearance in the show.
Late in the series, it's revealed that Hart is none other than the son of Tula Harkonnen, who had a love affair with a member of House Atreides as a young woman. She murdered her lover as part of a revenge plot to get back at the Atreides family for killing her older brother, Griffin. But Tula's night of passion with Orry Atreides resulted in a pregnancy which led to the birth of Desmond. She later faked his death in order to prevent her power-hungry sister, Valya, from using him for her own ends.
Desmond has no reminders of his previous life...save for a cloth that he had been wrapped in as a baby. “He walks up to the palace, and he has a little piece of black cloth, and it takes the whole season for you to really figure out where that comes from, but that’s a connection to his mom," said Schapker.
Olivia Williams expanded on this Easter egg and how it connects Desmond to his mother. “Anyone with small children knows that the first thing that you wrap a child in, you can’t ever lose it, or change it, because the kid will notice. So, it was a beautiful theme that ran through.”
Desmond Hart is an interesting character, because unlike the Harkonnens and Atreides, he was wholly created for the TV series. Fimmel's a seasoned actor who has done tons of television work in shows like Vikings and Raised By Wolves. But in Dune: Prophecy he had a bit easier of a task than many of his colleagues, since he could create the character from scratch.
"There’s such a vast background on the show.” Fimmel said, “I was lucky. I just had mummy issues, you know, and just a primal need to get love in that. And then that was one of the easiest jobs to do.”
Dune: Prophecy's ice lake flashback was one of the most difficult to film
Dune: Prophecy had many beautiful settings, bringing to life the universe of Dune 10,000 years before the original novel. It features some locations we don't get to see much or at all in the movies from Denis Villeneuve, including the ancestral home of the Harkonnen family, Lankiveil. We mostly see Lankiveil in flashbacks to when young Valya (played by Jessica Barden) fell out of favor with her family.
During those early years, she once saved her brother Griffin after he fell into an icy lake, which was the first time she used the Voice. At the very end of the season, adult Valya is brought back to that traumatic memory in a vision which splices scenes of both Jessica Barden and Emily Williams together as a harsh wind whips the snow around them into a blizzard. According to VFX supervisor Michael Enriquez, this scene involving the ice lake was the most difficult to get right.
“We had a lot of wind blowing, a portion of the ice surface was built, and there had to be a storm that involved not only white but black snow,” Enriquez recalled. “We replaced the entire environment. What we had there was amazing to get the proper lighting on Emily and on Jessica, and then, eventually we just basically lifted everything else and built this entire snowstorm around them.”
The Mentats and spacing guild will appear in Dune: Prophecy season 2
Dune: Prophecy has been renewed for a second season at HBO, though Schapker said during the panel that it's still in the early creative phases. So it may be a while before we get to watch it. But when we do, what can we expect?
“I think you can expect to see what some of the different schools are about, and we’re just going to meet some of the other players in the Imperium and power players,” Schapker said. "I would just say, if you’re a Dune fan and you’re wondering where are the Mentats? What’s up with the spacing guild? I think Season 2 will take you into some of that rich Dune world.”
The first season of Dune: Prophecy was a solid addition to the Dune universe, so I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes next. I'd bank on season 2 coming out sometime in 2026 at the earliest, which could line up nicely with Denis Villeneuve's Dune Messiah movie that's slated for a holiday 2026 release.
If that's too long for you to wait to get back to Arrakis, the new video game Dune: Awakening is out now and getting very positive reviews. Maybe you can kill some time by riding a sandworm:
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