Dune: Prophecy stars warn that their characters "are not women to emulate"

Beware SPOILERS for the Dune: Prophecy season 1 finale below!

Emily Watson as Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen and Olivia Williams as Reverend Mother Tula Harkonnen in Dune: Prophecy
Emily Watson as Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen and Olivia Williams as Reverend Mother Tula Harkonnen in Dune: Prophecy

The first season finale of Dune: Prophecy is in the can, and it was by far the most action-packed, eventful episode of the show so far. The twists came fast and furious. Desmond Hart arrested Tula Harkonnen, who it ends up is his mother! Valya Harkonnen travels to Arrakis with Princess Ynez and Kieran Atreides! And things at the Bene Gesserit school on Wallach IX have completely fallen apart.

It sets up a lot of exciting plotlines for season 2, which we now know is coming. In the meanwhile, we got to participate in a roundtable interview with lead actors Emily Watson (Valya) and Olivia Williams (Tula), as well as Dune: Prophecy showrunner Alison Schapker.

Between them, Valya and Tula have a very large body count. They've both done some unsavory things in the name of expanding the Sisterhood, and not just to their enemies. Early on in the show, Tula manipulates the young Sister-in-training Lila (Chloe Lea) to undergo the dangerous spice agony, which goes extremely badly. Tula feels terrible about that, but she did do it. How does Williams feel about playing that sort of character?

"It's appalling," Williams said. "This is the thing that Emily and I have to keep saying to ourselves and to people who interview us. You know, we see ourselves as role models in terms of being actresses who get to head up a TV show in our 50s, but these are not women to emulate. The basis of our science is eugenics, and the practice of it. With all due respect to Alison, my character is pretty hopeless. Anyone who got on my table comes to a pretty sticky end and I wouldn't advise anyone to get up there and have a go, really. I'm terribly, terribly sorry about what happened with poor Lila. She's rightly, and all the ancestors are rightly, outraged at the result."

Emily Watson agrees that the Harkonnen sisters are not women to look up to. "I think Valya, in a way, she's really got a piece missing," she said. "She doesn't deal in empathy, or something in her is very frozen in a way. But I think by the end of six, everything she thought she knew is incinerated. Yet she's been...through a powerful experience. Everything has changed."

For her part, Alison Schapker outlined her thinking in crafting characters who truly put the Sisterhood above all, even if that means violating norms around basic human decency. "I think that there's a ruthlessness to the sisters, these two Harkonnen sisters who are leading this organization forward at this very critical time in their growth. I think that sort of fierceness and the will to place the good of the future ahead of any one individual person's good makes for the kind of ruthlessness that I think, Olivia, you're gesturing to, and that I agree with. It's incredibly hard choices that don't make sense from what we owe one another as individuals, but only take on, I think an imperative based on sort of looking over a larger span of time. But I think ethically, that is solid grey area, and I think we can all debate, do the ends justify the means?"

Personally, I really enjoyed that Dune: Prophecy put complicated, morally compromised characters like Valya and Tula at its center. They were the highlights for me, and as questionable as some of their choices have been, I find myself on their side even so, and want to see more of both of them.

Olivia Williams and Travis Fimmel in Dune: Prophecy.
Photograph courtesy of HBO | Dune: Prophecy

How has the relationship between Valya and Tula changed?

The relationship between the sisters is also complex. Valya is the dominant personality, so much so that Tula felt the need to lie to her about her son having lived, fearful that otherwise Valya would have used him as part of her plans to exert influence of the Imperium. Honestly, knowing Valya, she was probably right.

Now that Valya has learned the truth, Watson thinks that "everything" has changed between them. "ut I think Valya is probably still holding 'I am the chosen one, I have the destiny.' is still her guide. That's her guide through this. Very curious to know what happens next."

As for Tula, Olivia Williams thinks moments like this represent the character coming into her own. "I think a huge thing for Tula is the moment when says, 'please don't kill my son, trust me, I've got this,'" she said. "And the fact that does trust and go — little known that shortly afterwards my son has me arrested. That moment between the sisters where finally Tula is entrusted with something. When all these years she's known that she is highly capable and highly effective and has been treated as the lesser sister. It's an interesting thing though because sometimes people of that character like to stay in the shadows and it will be interesting to see what happens if she is pushed further to the front and whether she can handle it."

emily-watson-olivia-williams
Photograph by Attila Szvacsek/HBO | Dune: Prophecy

Valya must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.

As big an episode as this is for Tula, Valya has the biggest scene: Desmond Hart infects her with the machine-made virus that he's been using to kill people all season, the one that preys on the human fear response in the brain. But Valya, being among the most fearless people in the universe, is able to pass through the challenge, with her sister Tula there to guide her. And she's rewarded with a glimpse of the shadowy organization that turned Desmond Hart into a weapon. That's why she goes to Arrakis at the end of the episode: to find answers.

Schapker broke down what happens in the scene where Valya passes through and over the fear virus; it feels like this will be the inspiration for the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, which is commonplace thousands of years later during the events of the original Dune story. "Well, I think we've seen kind of this idea that this machine virus is operating in a certain part of the brain that is triggering people's fears to kind of manifest, and there's sort of layers to it," Schapker said. "And I think you saw a little bit in episode four...when Tula guides on their experiment to uncover the meaning of their dreams. Like, they start out and they're all drawing different things, and then they all begin drawing in unison. And then it's as if Desmond's fears become so present that that's what's overpowering everybody, and nobody can get past these two blue eyes. sort of awakens them because the terror is so great. The fear is so great."

"And I think Valya, when she goes to transmute this machine virus — Tula, thank God, is there to tell her that the key is actually to let go. And that actually the work that Valya has to do on a cellular level is to let go of fear, to kind of transmute the fear as opposed to the virus and to let it go. And Emily, I know we talked about this, but this idea that Valya has held on for her whole life to fears. Fears that she caused her own brother’s undoing. Fears that she would amount to nothing. Fears that the family would be forever denied or that the loss would be interminable. And to let that go in the concept, for me, it was operating on a lot of levels. It was emotional, it was psychological. It's plot, because it's working through this virus. But to me, it's about seeing Valya do something that no one else is able to do. And because Tula's there with her, it's really the promise of these two sisters, as well. That through it all they are actually able to come together and get through this."

If there was anybody who was going to face their fear and let it pass through them, it was definitely going to be Valya Harkonnen. That was a really cool way to end the season.

And now we have naut to do but wait. The second season of Dune: Prophecy will be along sooner or later, likely well into 2026 at the earliest. We'll be here.

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