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 know-how 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 govt 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 mentioned the group caught to at least one guiding rule: “to present every episode its personal id.” 

However on the identical time, she added, it was necessary 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 by way of line and Desmond’s story and Tula’s story. I might say they had been our primary characters. However it was then a matter of making an attempt to introduce everybody—and it’s an enormous 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 wished to go away issues on the finish of season one, Schapker mentioned, “I wished to really feel like the bottom had actually shifted beneath their toes by the top of the season, however on the identical time that we’d have revelations that will make us perceive these characters and their dynamics otherwise, and that there can be a form 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 feel is in line with form of the best way 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 top of season one, I feel you’ve got 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 necessary to me, that elementary shift within the dynamics.”

Requested concerning the frame of mind of their characters on the finish of season one, each Watson and Williams had been reflective.

“I feel all the things [has changed between them],” Watson mentioned. “However I feel Valya remains to be holding on to [her idea that] ‘I’m the chosen one. I’ve a future.’ [That’s still] her information by way of this. However I’d be very curious to know what occurs subsequent.”

Added Williams, “I feel the large factor for Tula it’s the second when [she says] ‘Please don’t kill my son. Belief me, I’ve received this.’ And the truth that [Valya] does belief me and [leaves her with Desmond], little realizing 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 individuals of that character like to remain within the shadows, and it will likely be fascinating 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 like that concept of what you’re saying: in some methods the sisters alternate [places] within the sense of Valya does retreat to the shadows, and Tula is abruptly out entrance within the capital, and what that’s going to imply to them going ahead,” she mentioned. “However I additionally suppose like several secret that comes out, the longer you retain it, the ache round it must be metabolized … it makes it’s a must to rethink your relationship going again over time of like, how did I miss one thing?”

Watson added, “I feel it’s additionally a humiliating second as a result of all the things [my character has] carried out 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 obscure on any potential season two spoilers. “[If you] look again over season one, there are clues to Desmond’s id and his energy and form of the place all of it comes from,” she mentioned. “So far as type of shadowy figures [seen controlling his fate in his visions], I feel that continues to be to be seen sooner or later. However, we attempt to seed it in—I don’t know if individuals discover, however the material he’s carrying the primary time we see him, when Desmond Hart seems and salutes and walks as much as the palace, he’s received this black material. That’s actually his type of token of his mom, and [it reappears] by way of the entire sequence. He makes use of it in personal moments as a [way to keep] alive type of his drive and his connection. Lastly he meets her and is clutching her precise costume, and realizing form of what as soon as was a chunk 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 nearly mythic Dune house that we all know very properly however we type of stored it a distance the entire season. I feel it’s very vital 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 complete regiment was killed.’ All I might say is I feel Valya goes to search out out much more on condition that she is the place Desmond emerged as an adversary, and it’ll be fascinating to see what she finds on the market.”

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

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