Dune: Prophecy – The Complete First Season, 2024.

Directed by Anna Foerster, John Cameron, and Richard J. Lewis.

Starring Emily Watson, Olivia Williams, Travis Fimmel, Jodhi May, Sarah-Sofie Boussnina, Chloe Lea, Chris Mason, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Mark Strong, Jade Anouka, Edward Davis, Josh Heuston, Faoileann Cunningham, Aoife Hinds, and Mark Addy.

SYNOPSIS:

The first six-episode season of Dune: Prophecy arrives on 4K Ultra HD with a solid batch of bonus features. Highly recommended if you liked the show, as I did.

What a time for science-fiction and fantasy fans to be alive. Yes, I realize what I’m about to say applies to any genre of films and TV shows, but science-fiction and fantasy has always been awash with stories that were tough to cram into a feature film and highly unlikely to get a TV series in the old days.

Thanks to streaming, a platform like HBO Max can give us the six-episode Dune: Prophecy, based on Frank Herbert’s vast, legendary story world but not adapted from a specific book. Set 10,000 years before the events in Denis Villeneuve’s pair of Dune feature films, the series explores the origins of the powerful, shadowy Sisterhood that would later be called the Bene Gesserit.

The main characters are two sisters who belong to a family that would later clearly fall under the “bad guys” label in the overall Dune timeline: Valya and Tula Harkonnen. The former is the order’s Mother Superior, and she’s played by Emily Watson in the present day and Jessica Barden as a young woman. The latter is its Reverend Mother, with Olivia Williams in the present-day role and Emma Canning as the younger version.