To understand HBO’s Dune Prophecy show, here’s what you need to know about the houses — Harkonnen, Atreides, Corrino — as well as the Bene Gesserit and Imperium
Anyone who has read any of the Dune books, or watched any of the Dune movies, or, heck, talked to anyone who has done either of those things will tell you: The world of Dune is complicated. This is a grand sci-fi universe, built on a few millennia of royal politicking, power plays, manipulation, and violence.
So it’s no surprise that Dune: Prophecy has a lot of people to cover. It’s the same universe, sure, and is loosely adapted from Brian Herbert’s Great Schools of Dune, a prequel trilogy to his father’s series. But Prophecy is set some 10,000 years and change ahead of when Paul Atreides lands on Arrakis, so there’s a whole host of new characters and traditions to establish here. The family names will almost certainly be ones you’re familiar with, but the circumstances of the houses will not be.
In light of that, we’ve pulled together a primer on who to know from Dune: Prophecy and how they correlate to other characters across Dune.
[Ed. note: The rest of this post contains spoilers for Dune: Prophecy season 1.] The Bene Gesserit Sisterhood
In the pilot of Prophecy we see the Sisterhood at a couple different times: Early on we see Valya Harkonnen (played then as Jessica Barden) as a sister, called to the bedside of the dying Mother Superior Raquella. In an effort to preserve the Bene Gesserit breeding program, which is just getting started at this point, Valya uses the Voice on fellow sister Dorotea (Camilla Marie Beeput) and makes her drive her own knife into her neck.
Flash-forward to 30 years later, when the Sisterhood is thriving, and now-Mother Superior Valya (played in the present day by Emily Watson) is still committed to doing anything to preserve the Bene Gesserit vision of the universe. At her side is Reverend Mother Tula Harkonnen (Olivia Williams as the elder, Emma Canning as young Tula) and Reverend Mother Kasha (Jihae), who currently serves as the very trusted truthsayer to Emperor Corrino.
There’s a collection of young sisters currently studying with the Bene Gesserit, but we don’t know a ton about them quite yet.
