The Dune: Prophecy TV Series Is Doing Much More Than Setting Up the Bene Gesserit

This article contains spoilers for Dune 2.

A few years ago, it seemed deeply unlikely that a second Dune movie would be the biggest film of 2024 so far and even less likely that the seemingly far-fetched spin-off focusing on the witchy Bene Gesserit would be hitting screens that same year. But, here we are! At their recent upfronts Max revealed the hauntingly severe trailer set 10,000 years before the movies as well as the reveal that the show would hit in Fall this year. But, while the series seems to focus solely on the cosmic magic users, the title and trailer hint at a wider connection to the Dune universe (Duneiverse? Is that a thing?) that could offer deeper insight into the world and its witches.

Dune: Prophecy Official Teaser Trailer Screenshots

In case you haven't been keeping up with your sandworm lore or Timothée Chalamet fandom, Dune centers on the violent intergalactic politics of a galaxy torn apart by a war. Said war pitted humans against so-called Thinking Machines (aka robots), basically destroying most computer-based technology and sending the world back into a galactic feudal system where familial houses fight for power. At the center of the story is the prophecy of the legendary male leader known as the Kwisatz Haderach, who the Bene Gesserit claim will be able to access the genetic memories of the witches and use his powers to rule the world thanks to near omnipotence. As we learned in Dune 2, that man is none other than Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), who took on those powers in the last film after drinking the Water of Life and using "The Voice" that can control people.

Phew! Now that we're all caught up on that, we can dig into the weird world of the Bene Gesserit. The witches are the focus of Dune: Prophecy, which looks to be set a few hundred years after the event of the Butlerian Jihad or, as the trailer points out, 10,000 years before old Paul "Lisan al Gaib" was born. So it makes sense then that, in the wake of the war, the burgeoning collective known as the Bene Gesserit would begin their plan for conquest. Which makes us think that the series could be just as concerned with the creation and plan to bring the Kwisatz Haderach to life as the women behind it.

The trailer showcases multiple acts of intimacy alongside the more staid and serious politicking. We also see the would-be Bene Gesserit enacting strange rituals. Both of those themes fit with the idea that the show is about about the origins of the millenia-long "breeding project" the witches planned in order to create the Kwisatz Haderach, alongside their galactic propaganda campaign to spread the concept of a prophecy that'll make the common folk on planets everywhere believe in him when they do finally succeed. Taking the title into consideration too, it seems highly likely that we'll see the witches plotting for that very reason, or we'll learn that they were created solely for the power-hungry purposes laid out above.

According to the press release, the series is loosely adapting one of the later books written by Frank Herbert's son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson, Sisterhood of Dune, which focuses on warring factions including the Bene Gesserit, the Mentant who use the space drug known as Spice to give them mental powers, and Space Guild who use the substance to enable them to navigate the cosmos. Despite that, it's likely the series will introduce new elements and themes, that's why we're thinking that its focus may be on the creation of the Kwisatz Haderach. That would also give the series a more direct connection to the hit films, seeing as director Denis Villenueve is no longer actively involved or directing the pilot, as was originally the plan.

In a cynical business sense too, I'm sure the execs at Max thought a hard sc-ifi story about a bunch of middle-aged women coming together to manipulate the sex lives of the galaxy was a hard sell. But when you more directly connect it to a movie whose box office is currently over 700 million, it suddenly seems like far less of a risk. Saying that though, here's hoping that Dune: Prophecy has the space in its six-episode run to be as weird and fantastically grotesque as the books and the Bene Gesserit within them really are. But we'll have to wait until later this year to know if we'll get any magical witch hoo-hahs or the like. Here's hoping.

Rosie Knight is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything from anime to comic books to kaiju to kids movies to horror flicks. She has over half a decade of experience in entertainment journalism with bylines at Nerdist, Den of Geek, Polygon, and more.