Dune: Prophecy, Episode 2 Review
"It is an Agony, but only this once."
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12/2/20244 min read


WOW, what an amazing episode! I wonder why I liked this episode so much. Could it be because they portrayed the Spice Agony and the Other Memory, which I just wrote about? Yes! That is exactly why I loved it so much. This is the first portrayal of the Other Memory I’ve seen in the current releases of Dune, and I think it’s fantastic. The portrayal of the Other Memory as a terrifying, dark place was a fascinating creative choice, but I loved it since it easily portrayed how dangerous it can be. I think portraying the Other Memories as a swarm of creepy corpses hungry to touch the light of the living was fantastic. The aggressiveness with which these Other Memories try to overcome Lila makes it easy to see how something like an Abomination can occur.
What I thought was the most intriguing part of this episode was the mystery surrounding Lila’s mother, or shall I say, the absence of Lila’s mother. Before Lila decides to undergo the Spice Agony, Tula tells her that her real mother died giving birth to her and that she may meet her in the Other Memory. Lila is excited by this, but her hope quickly turns to horror when her grandmother Dorotea sabotages Lila’s Spice Agony to take revenge for Valya’s murder of her decades prior, which I will touch on soon. Interestingly, Dorotea says “Sorry granddaughter, your mother isn’t here.” So, where is she? Logically, I couldn’t find any explanation for why Lila’s mother would be absent from her Other Memory. Regardless if her mother was Bene Gesserit or not, she would still appear in Lila’s Other Memory as her genetic ancestor. There is of course the possibility that Lilia is related to Dorotea and Raquella perhaps through her father instead, perhaps Dorotea had a son who then fathered Lila. But still, she would need to have a mother, who should be present in the Other Memory.
The only explanation I can think of is that Lila’s mother could be an axolotl tank…. For those unfamiliar with the books, the axolotl tanks are (SPOILER) the female Bene Tleilaxu, who are referred to as tanks because they are brain dead, but their bodies are kept alive for the purpose of incubating fetuses. Yeah, it's pretty dark. We don’t learn that the axolotl tanks are truly the brain-dead Bene Tleilaxu females until around book 5 or 6, and the Bene Gesserit are pretty disgusted with this knowledge, so I can’t imagine that they would use this method to bring about Lila. Maybe the Bene Gesserit have their own, more humane versions of axolotl tanks that they use in their secret Breeding Index room?
On to the issue of the murderous Dorotea which appeared in Lila's Other Memory. I was very surprised to see how they decided to portray the Other Memories as so vicious and aggressive. I think it was a marvelous choice for the plot, but I would've thought that the sum of all female ancestors would be happy to see their descendant? Maybe even welcoming? Well, clearly not as poor Lila succumbed to her fate of being overwhelmed by Dorotea. This I found a little confusing, how did the Dorotea in Lila's Other Memory know that she was murdered by Valya? If the Other Memory is passed from mother to child, with the cutoff being at the point of birth, it wouldn't make sense for the Dorotea in Lila's Other Memory to have knowledge of her own murder. Unless, of course, Dorotea's son or daughter learned of how she was murdered and then went on to father or give birth to Lila. In that way, Dorotea's genetic memory could acquire knowledge of her own murder through the learned knowledge of a living descendant. This theory is plausible, but it yet again brings up the question of, what happened to Lila's mother. Hopefully, we'll find out by the end of the season.
Let's not forget about Raquella's prophecy, "The key to the reckoning is one born twice. Once in blood, once in spice. A revenant full of scars, a weapon born of war, on a path too short."
The obvious answer to the prophecy is Desmond Hart, who literally has a face full of scars, was killed as a soldier on Arrakis, and somehow miraculously reborn. In this episode, we also got a surprising confession out of him. When being interrogated by Valya he says, "Shai Hulud took my eye and granted me with a gift, to see what even you cannot." Interesting... I wonder, did the sandworm take only one eye like he says? And if so, what is the significance of this? I don't know how being swallowed by a sandworm and somehow managing to survive would grant you the ability to burn people from the inside out. Or "see what even the Mother Superior cannot." At the end of the episode, we see he even has the ability to resist Valya's usage of The Voice. It's because of this that I still think he could be some type of ghola/cyborg. Throughout the Dune universe, no one can resist the voice (until books 5 and 6, but I won't delve into that spoiler right now.)
I continue to be amazed by the cinematography of the series, as well as the great costuming. That being said, the one thing I would've liked to see was a more rudimentary version of the shield technology than the one portrayed in the show. I saw a Reddit post that pointed out that the time gap between Dune: Prophecy and the Denis Villeneuve films doesn't feel like 10,000 years because a lot of the technology is exactly the same. Even down to the Suk Doctor diamond tattoo that was on the forehead of the Bene Gesserit Suk Sister at the beginning of the episode. It was the exact same tattoo that Dr. Yueh had in the first DV Dune film. Within 10,000 years, I'm surprised that they haven't made any changes to that Suk tattoo, and I'm even more surprised that the shield technology remained virtually unchanged as well. Overall, at the end of this episode, I'm still left with old questions and some new ones, but I will say I liked this episode a lot more than the first one! I'm excited for next week's episode, and I apologize for my late review. Now that I'm back from traveling I will be resuming my regular posts.
Dutifully yours,
Mother Superior
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