Prophecy’s Showrunner and Harkonnen Sisters Tease What’s Forward for Season 2

Dune: Prophecy ended its first season with an epic, 80-minute episode that didn’t precisely tie up any of its storylines, together with its central thriller about who or what’s utilizing forbidden expertise to create bio-weapons on Arrakis. So it’s good that the HBO sequence, a prequel set 10,000 years earlier than the Denis Villeneuve movies, will likely be returning sooner or later.

At a press convention timed to the season one finale, “The Excessive-Handed Enemy,” Dune: Prophecy’s showrunner and government producer Alison Schapker, together with stars Emily Watson (Valya Harkonnen) and Olivia Williams (Tula Harkonnen), principally talked about season one—however they did tease a tiny bit about what’s coming.

Talking about how the sequence paced itself throughout six episodes, contemplating its scope and variety of characters, Schapker stated the workforce caught to 1 guiding rule: “to provide every episode its personal id.” 

However on the identical time, she added, it was essential to “really feel like issues had modified and that the characters had undergone one thing that had shifted the story going ahead. And it was essential to at all times perceive Valya’s via line and Desmond’s story and Tula’s story. I’d say they have been our most important characters. Nevertheless it was then a matter of making an attempt to introduce everybody—and it’s a giant world and it’s a dense world. So it was a little bit of a balancing act. However I’m actually happy with how the six episodes construct and culminate within the finale.”

As for the place she needed to go away issues on the finish of season one, Schapker stated, “I needed to really feel like the bottom had actually shifted beneath their toes by the tip of the season, however on the identical time that we’d have revelations that may make us perceive these characters and their dynamics in a different way, and that there could be a type of re-contextualizing of the story. In order that by the point you had watched the entire story, you’ll perceive, ‘Oh, there was extra occurring than I first realized’, which I believe is in line with type of the way in which that the Sisterhood works—the sense that there’s plans inside plans, that there’s extra to the story than you see the primary time round. By the tip of season one, I believe you might have an actual sense of the historical past of [the Harkonnen] sisters, the historical past of the Sisterhood, after which an actual revelation, a reality popping out. And that was essential to me, that basic shift within the dynamics.”

Requested concerning the way of thinking of their characters on the finish of season one, each Watson and Williams have been reflective.

“I believe the whole lot [has changed between them],” Watson stated. “However I believe Valya continues to be holding on to [her idea that] ‘I’m the chosen one. I’ve a future.’ [That’s still] her information via this. However I’d be very curious to know what occurs subsequent.”

Added Williams, “I believe the large factor for Tula it’s the second when [she says] ‘Please don’t kill my son. Belief me, I’ve obtained this.’ And the truth that [Valya] does belief me and [leaves her with Desmond], little figuring out that shortly afterwards my son has me arrested—[it’s] that second between the sisters the place lastly Tula is entrusted with one thing, when all these years she’s recognized that she is extremely succesful and extremely efficient and has been handled because the lesser sister. Typically folks of that character like to remain within the shadows, and it is going to be attention-grabbing to see what occurs if she is pushed farther to the entrance and whether or not she will deal with it.”

Schapker constructed on that. “I really like that concept of what you’re saying: in some methods the sisters trade [places] within the sense of Valya does retreat to the shadows, and Tula is all of the sudden out entrance within the capital, and what that’s going to imply to them going ahead,” she stated. “However I additionally suppose like all secret that comes out, the longer you retain it, the ache round it must be metabolized … it makes it’s important to rethink your relationship going again through the years of like, how did I miss one thing?”

Watson added, “I believe it’s additionally a humiliating second as a result of the whole lot [my character has] finished has been primarily based on my management, my sense of reality. However in a manner, Valya doesn’t do humiliation. It’s like ‘I’m not going to do the feelings and I’m fearless, so I’m simply going to hold on.’”

Requested most likely the most important query remaining after season one—who was behind Desmond’s transformation?—Schapker remained imprecise on any potential season two spoilers. “[If you] look again over season one, there are clues to Desmond’s id and his energy and type of the place all of it comes from,” she stated. “So far as type of shadowy figures [seen controlling his fate in his visions], I believe that continues to be to be seen sooner or later. However, we attempt to seed it in—I don’t know if folks discover, however the fabric he’s carrying the primary time we see him, when Desmond Hart seems and salutes and walks as much as the palace, he’s obtained this black fabric. That’s actually his type of token of his mom, and [it reappears] via the entire sequence. He makes use of it in non-public moments as a [way to keep] alive type of his drive and his connection. Lastly he meets her and is clutching her precise gown, and realizing type of what as soon as was a bit of his child blanket that she swaddled him in [is[ Sisterhood cloth that he’s held on to. And now he’s finally with his mother. I mean, we tried to do things like that to kind of build in and foreshadow where the story was going.”

Ok, but what about the second biggest question: what’s going to happen now that Valya Harkonnen, Keiran Atreides, and Princess Ynez are on Arrakis? Here’s Schapker with, as expected, some hints but not many details.

“After a season of Arrakis kind of exerting its pull from afar—whether that’s in the economics of the spice trade, or the psychological aspects of the visions and nightmares that are sort of imagery of Arrakis and Desmond’s path seeping into everyone’s consciousness—[it was our chance] to really go and put boots on the bottom at this extremely overdetermined and type of virtually mythic Dune house that we all know very nicely however we type of stored it a distance the entire season. I believe it’s very important that Valya is again there, and she or he’s again on the origin level of Desmond, the place he emerged from with a narrative and a fantasy: ‘I’m from Arrakis and I used to be swallowed by a worm aAnd I survived after my entire regiment was killed.’ All I’d say is I believe Valya goes to search out out much more provided that she is the place Desmond emerged as an adversary, and it’ll be attention-grabbing to see what she finds on the market.”

Certainly it can! You’ll be able to watch Dune: Prophecy season one on HBO and Max; season two is coming however doesn’t but have a launch date.

Need extra io9 information? Take a look at when to count on the newest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on film and TV, and the whole lot you might want to learn about the way forward for Doctor Who.