"Sisterhood Above All" dives deep into the characters of Dune: Prophecy

Earlier this year, Disney+ aired a Star Wars TV show called The Acolyte, about a pair of long-sundered sisters who were powerful in the Force. The third episode used extensive flashbacks to show us what traumatic events befell the sisters as children, and it was, on the whole, a failure. We'd barely gotten a chance to acquaint ourselves with the main characters in the first two episodes, and now the show is halting any plot momentum to spend an hour in the past? Boo.

The third episode of Dune: Prophecy, "Sisterhood Above All," does much the same thing, but it works much better. Maybe because the episodes of Dune: Prophecy are much longer than episodes of The Acolyte, so we have more time to sit with the story. Maybe it's that Emily Watson and Olivia Williams did such a terrific job setting up their characters, Valya and Tula Harkonnen, in the first two episodes that I was ready to see what they were like as young women. Or maybe it's that the story is just more interesting.

Most likely, it's all three. In any case, this was a strong hour of TV that taught us a lot about Valya and Tula while still moving the plot forward.

Dune: Prophecy review, Episode 3, "Sisterhood Above All"

Valya and Tula grew up on a cold, backwards planet called Lankiveil, where the Harkonnen family was banished following a brutal war against thinking machines which humanity barely survived. The Harkonnens got a bad rap in that war; they were painted as traitors even though the truth is much more complicated, which so far as I can tell lines up with the Dune prequel books written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. Young Valya (Jessica Barden) resents their banishment and is determined to return to her family to its rightful position, but her parents and uncle see her as grasping and entitled. Her younger sister Tula (Emma Canning) and brother Griffin (Earl Cave) are more sympathetic, but what can three plucky young upstarts do against the weight of history?

If you're Valya, you don't let little concerns like that stop you. This episode does a great job of convincing us that this younger version of the character — headstrong, confident and determined — could grow into the older version played by Emily Watson. She's just a lot less experienced and more vulnerable here. When Griffin, who's being groomed as the family's great hope, acts on her advice and tries to get Vorian Atreides to clear the record about the Harkonnen's betrayal, he ends up dead. Valya's family already didn't like her very much and now they blame her for Griffin's death on top of that. It's all very sad and petty and pathetic; it's easy to understand why Valya wants to be anywhere but on Lankiveil.

Before Griffin's death, Valya's plan was to go to join the Sisterhood and train to become her brother's Truthsayer. She still goes to Wallach IX at her parents' urging, even though what she really wants to do now is hunt down the Atreides scum who killed her brother. Even so, she impresses her fellow students with her assertiveness and even catches the eye of Mother Superior Raquella (Cathy Tyson), who takes her under her wing as a potential successor.

But in the end, Valya can't commit fully to the Sisterhood with her family business still unfinished. Things take a turn when she gets a message that prompts her to return home...

Tula Harkonnen, little miss mass murderer

Valya's time at the Bene Gesserit school was probably the weakest part of the episode for me. It wasn't bad, but it was a lot of getting us caught up with where Valya has to be at the start of the show. Also, there were times when I wasn't sure if I was looking at the current crop of Bene Gesserit sisters or at Young Valya and her friends. It's risky to do a flashback-heavy episode this early in a show's run, before we've really settled in with our present-day cast. I think the show gets away with it, but it's playing with fire, especially since the premiere episode also opened with a lengthy prologue.

Tula's flashback was more successful, thanks largely to a juicy twist I didn't see coming. We catch up with Young Tula as she's spending time with her new boyfriend Orry (Milo Callaghan), a handsome guy we later find out belongs to the Atreides family. That's why Tula is attending his family retreat in the woods: to get the Atreides in one place so she can kill them all, getting her revenge for Griffin's death.

The show sets this up so sneakily I didn't notice. There's a nice scene where Tula teaches a young Atreides kid (played by House of the Dragon veteran Archie Barnes, FYI) to gut an animal, making sure to avoid a poisonous organ near its stomach. That bit even pays off when Tula uses the poison to humanely put down a horse that's broken its leg, so we aren't expecting it to come back later. But we do see Tula tell the Atreides kid to bring a potful of some tasty liquid into the middle of the party, and we see the whole Atreides clan drinking through the night. It all makes sense in hindsight.

We can also tell that there's something that Tula isn't telling her Atredies boyfriend, but we figure it's that she's a Harkonnen. She finally confesses after a night of passion, and only then does the guy notice how quiet things are outside. When he leaves their hut and sees all the dead bodies, she shoves a syringe full of that poison into his neck and he dies in her arms as she weeps. The only survivor is the kid who helped her prepare the poison punch bowl, who she lets go.

Tula is the gentler of the two sisters, and the show sells us on the idea that she's torn up about what she's doing. But she still does it. Did she really want revenge that badly? Was she trying to impress her sister, her only surviving sibling? (The message Valya receives at school is from Tula, saying that the need is done, so clearly they planned this together.) The episode doesn't give us a firm answer, but it does flesh out the backstories behind these characters considerably. I feel like I know them a lot better.

Back to the future

And that's important for the few scenes set in the present day. Tossed out of the palace, Tula shacks up with the last people anyone would expect: her family members, including her uncle, who is still alive and zooming around the room in a levitating scooter that recalls Baron Harkonnen's suspensor belts from the original Dune. (He's played by Game of Thrones veteran Mark Addy, aka King Robert Baratheon, which is fun.) Only now, after we've seen how much bad blood there is between Valya and her family, can we understand how desperate she must be to seek refuge with them. But as she says, sacrifices must be made.

As for Tula, what she did still haunts her all these later, and it seems like she's trying to make up for it. As a girl, Tula humanely put down a dying horse. As a woman, she's unwilling to let Lila go after putting her through the spice agony. She uses forbidden thinking machines to keep Lila alive, a choice that gains extra dimension after we see how willing she was to kill in her youth.

So technically, not a ton happened happened in this episode, but it still felt like time well spent. I am concerned that once we reach the end of the season — remember that it's only six episodes long — it will have seemed like not much has happened. I have no problem with flashbacks if they're as rich and engrossing as the ones here, but time is precious.

Dune: Bullet Points

• There's a scene after Tula kills the Atreides where she and Valya are back at home, their mom is being a jerk to Valya, and Valya uses the voice to get her own mother to pick up her knife. She doesn't order her mom to drive it into her throat, one of Valyra's go-to moves, but it's still pretty disturbing.
• Using a syringe given to her by Mother Raquella, Valya becomes a Reverend Mother on that trip home, with Tula guiding her back to life with her voice. That's what Valya meant last week when she said that Tula had guided people through the spice agony before.

Episode Grade: B

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