In the Flesh: Dune: Prophecy s1e02 'Two Wolves'

It’s one thing to watch a cold and calculating power player like the Bene Gesserit mother superior, Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson), spend human lives like subway tokens. It’s another to see her sister, the reverend mother Tula (Olivia Williams), sacrifice the novice she loves like a daughter for the sake of a few cryptic words. Williams gives such genuine feeling to her scenes with Chloe Lea’s Lila that it’s easy to overlook the slippery emotional manipulation she uses to pressure the younger woman into undergoing the Spice Agony. For someone to feel so deeply for another and still choose their reckless waste in pursuit of an uncertain prize feels grotesque in a way no tyrant or schemer can. Tula loves Lila, is rendered nearly hysterical by her catatonic failure during the Agony, but she never hesitates. If Travis Fimmel’s Desmond Hart is an obvious fanatic, driven by some deranged messianic impulse instilled, perhaps, by his trip through the bowels of the great worm Shai-Hulud, Tula is his unprepossessing equal, an Abraham who strikes so quickly that God doesn’t have time to find a ram.

The bulk of ‘Two Wolves’, the season’s second installment, is concerned with the act of spending human life. The rebel cell to which we discover imperial swordmaster Keiran Atreides (Chris Mason) belongs, the double agent it contains, the sacrifice of Lila, emperor Javicco’s (Mark Strong) rash decision to unleash Hart against his unruly political rivals. Governments rise and fall on the basis of this human calculus. Who dies, and when, and why. The younger members of the Sisterhood debate as much amongst themselves, with Theodosia (Jade Anouka) and Vera (Flora Montgomery) weighing their lives against the shadowy concept of the Sisterhood’s mission. In the world of Herbert’s magnum opus, where fanaticism and ideology are the guiding hands of empires that endure for millennia, it’s interesting to see people much closer to the ground than his typical cast of characters try to determine their place in that.

The Spice Agony sequence is the definite centerpiece here, a tangle of faceless, Silent Hill-esque figures and empty, dust-filled halls pulsing with pale light. It’s an effective set piece, putting the weight of compelling genre imagery behind the episode’s emotional arc. There’s good tension, too, amidst the supernatural farrago of prophecy and ancestral memory. It pairs well with the closing scene in which Valya attempts to compel Hart to kill himself using the Voice, which he resists with an incredible effort of will. Each scene implies a much larger and more frightening supernatural world waiting beyond its borders, one with imagery, the other through showcasing the taut chemistry between Watson and Fimmel. With two episodes under its belt, Prophecy continues to impress.