‘Dune: Prophecy’ Episode 4 Recap: “Twice Born”

After the last episode of Dune: Prophecy, which drifted backward in time to reveal how Tula Harkonnen murdered a throng of Atreides, we lost track of Keiran Atreides in the present, and the House Corrino swordmaster’s burgeoning little scheme. He was actually falling for Princess Ynez on one hand, while planning a rebellion with the other, and besides, the whole thing felt a little half-baked. Neither Keiran nor his friends knew how their plan to destroy the emperor dovetailed with what Valya had already conceived. That she intended to reveal them publicly, and thereby shore up the Sisterhood’s support in the Imperium. And here in episode 4 of Prophecy, they still don’t. But while they work to secure a black market thinking machine, a dart-like explosive drone that Keiran will release in the emperor’s presence – “and our little resistance will become a full-fledged rebellion” – it’s Desmond Hart, the ol’ crazy-eyed Shai-Hulud prophet himself, who laps both the insignificant rebellion plotters and Valya’s powers of careful arrangement.

Desmond Hart is playing the insecurities of the emperor like a fiddle. Show the great houses who’s boss, he urged when Javicco instead preached patience. Use Desmond’s mind-burning power to strike fear into any Corrino naysayers. But while the emperor was tempted, he needed a little push, and it came from Empress Natalya. It was she who shared intelligence about the marketplace for thinking machines with Desmond, which enabled him to round up the rebellious agitators and a few nobles from rival houses before outing them in front of the High Council of the Landsraad. And with a grim nod from Javicco, Desmond burned them all. Straight up, the emperor is now ruling through fear, and is only further in thrall to the man whose terrible power is the source of that fear. In a court climate like this, how long can a traitorous swordmaster keep his head attached to his neck? It might come down to Keiran’s relationship with the princess, who herself is now in open opposition to her father’s patronage of Desmond. Ynez is no longer going to Wallach IX to train with the Sisterhood. But it seems like there’s a chance she could run away from it all with her rebellious Atreides lover.

Desmond’s big fire show in front of the galaxy’s power players took Valya by surprise, especially because it destroyed the work she did to maneuver her relation Harrow Harkonnen into a position before the High Council. (As Harrow, with all of his stuttering and weak-minded eagerness, Edward Davis also inserts a few enjoyable notes of levity into Dune: Prophecy.) Valya did score the takeaway of a Desmond Hart blood sample, though. She’s gonna run it through the Sisterhood’s secret gene bank, and get to the bottom of his lineage and true identity. Which is a solid plan. But while Valya has been away from Wallach IX, it is not just Lila and her new not-quite-dead stasis status that Tula has been tracking. It’s the sinister emergence of a dream shared by all of the young acolytes. Sister Emiline (Aoife Hinds) sleepwalks, and nearly slices her own throat. Within their minds, the rest of the sisters – except for Jen – see a similar darkness of impulse. And when Tula uses a spice cocktail to help them recall those visuals, what’s revealed on their sketch pads feels like a reckoning. Sand, a thumper, and Shai-Hulud, communicating en masse through the Sisterhood’s brightest minds. The same force at work behind the blue eyes of Desmond Hart is invading the inhabitants of Wallach IX from within.

Is anything going right for Valya and her faithful? Well, two developments on that front. For one, Lila seems to have woken up. She has broken free of her stasis chamber, down in the depths of the Sisterhood’s secret basement level, and is now upright and ambulatory, her eyes suddenly glowing a cerulean blue like those of the Fremen on Arrakis. Tula embraces the young woman. Her play to bring her back from the dead worked! Lila has been twice born. The only question now is what news she will bring from the other side, what clarity she will offer in Valya and Tula’s search to define the reckoning and Desmond’s place within it. And whether it will offer clarity at all. 

Actually, wait, that isn’t the only question. Because the other big development in Valya’s plan to bolster her order and its galactic standing is just what the fuck is going on with Sister Theodosia (Jade Anouka). Episode 4 of Dune: Prophecy concludes with the sister Valya kept closest to her on this journey seeming to transform into another person entirely. Skin becoming a clear and dripping goo. Bones creaking cracking audibly. And Theodosia seeming to become Valya’s long dead brother Griffin Harkonnen before assuming the form of Reverend Mother Dorotea.

What fresh Dune Universe hell is this? And is it at all good for the sisters? There are major developing story vibes here, because this “talent” is always why Valya brought Theodosia along. As a “Face Dancer” – another factional entity in a galaxy full of them, from the Sisterhood to the Suk Doctors and the Space-Folders – Theodosia can be another weapon against the mysterious adversary that is currently more powerful than the Sisterhood, continuing to score wins, and still not fully understood. Raised from birth with the ability to manifest the physical form of anyone, Face Dancers have traditionally been assassins. That this is both Theodosia’s heritage and her biggest secret, since outwardly she lives only as a sister, means Valya had planned to reserve this intimate access to such a unique and powerful ability. And Desmond Hart, with all of his mind-burning and royal family manipulating, does not seem to know anything about Theodosia or her shape-shifting, which feels potentially game-changing.

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.