Season 1 - 6 episodes (2024)
Watch the trailer
Created by: Diane Ademu-John, Alison Schapker
Based on: Great Schools of Dune by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson and Dune by Frank Herbert
Starring: Emily Watson, Olivia Williams, Travis Fimmel, Jodhi May, Mark Strong, Sarah-Sofia Boussnina, Josh Heuston, Jade ANouka, Aoife Hinds, Chris Mason, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Tabu
Rated: TV-MA
Plot
Set 10,000 years before the Dune movies, this focuses on the Bene Gesserit, a secretive matriarchal order who have achieved superhuman abilities and subtly guide humanity's future for its own means.
Verdict
This never lived up to my expectations. It's a space drama where various factions vie for control, and the big reveals at the end were often-used tropes that made the show more shallow. This could be any sci-fi series. It never seemed like Dune. Even with each episode, I was never excited to see what happened next. At the close of the season, I don't care if this is the end of the show. It checks the boxes of a big space soap opera, but there are no characters to care about or for which to root.
Skip it.
Review
This opens with a war against machines, ancient prophecy, and exposition on what seems to be the Bene Gesserit. They're a sisterhood that planned to create better leaders by pulling the strings. A split develops as they debate on whether they should influence rulers indirectly or place their own ruler loyal to the sisterhood. Valya (Emily Watson) is a young sister with a design on power and rule who becomes the Mother Superior, head of the sisterhood.
Part of the lore in the original Dune is that the Bene Gesserit spent thousands of years to enact their plan. What part of that will this series capture? We're introduced to several factions, lots of scheming, many characters, multiple planets, and quite a few arcs. This has a lot of moving pieces and loses focus on how the sisterhood plans to take over. Valya is the leader of the sisters, but her motives are never quite clear.
Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel) is the wildcard. He exists seemingly just so Valya has a rival. He kills someone in what looks like spontaneous combustion. He seems to have been changed in the desert. There's certainly something different about him. Is he being controlled by yet another entity? He's unique in that he can resist the powers of Tula.
Episode three is a flashback episode, and that's starting to become a trope in shows that want to put the plot on hold and go backwards. It almost always feels like filler. The prevalence of it across properties only makes it less effective. While this episode provides insight on Valya and Tula (Olivia Williams), it's nothing that I needed. At this point I'd rather see more of Desmond Hart. Even then, Desmond Hart seems to be inspired by Fimmel's character in Raised By Wolves.
This never felt like Dune. It could be any sci-fi setting. An enduring aspect of Dune is the sand worms, but this seems to invoke the creature only to complete the link. While we're shown images of a sand worm attacking Hart, you could delete those scenes and it changes nothing. At first it seems like the sand worm attack somehow bestowed powers, but that's not it. Then it seemed like the sand worms might still serve a larger purpose, but they don't.
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| Travis Fimmel, Mark Strong play Desmond Hart, Emperor Carrino |
Valya maneuvers to position house Harkonen for a power move against Emperor Carrino (Mark Strong). That's also with whom Desmond Hart has aligned. This move seems engineered solely for the plot. This whole season has built on who Valya and Tula are and how their choices affected the Bene Gesserit. Valya craved power, got it, and shaped the order to her goals. This has a fair amount of contrivance with how all of the characters intersect, but the rest of the show isn't good enough to overlook or overcome the flaws.
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