Guild Navigators, Thinking Machines, Abomination | Dune Prophecy Episode 3 Review

0:21 Hi guys, it's Quinn here. If you appreciate my content, consider hitting the like button. It's the best way to get the YouTube algorithm to notice this channel. If you want to do more to support this channel, consider checking out the Patreon link in the description. So this is the first episode that includes extensive flashback scenes so far, and I'll let you know exactly what I think about that in just a little bit.

0:45 But just to start with, we're going to address the details of what occurred in the episode. So this episode opens up and we're back on Seleuce Secundus. We see two Benny Gesseret, Valya and Theodosia walking out of the palace. They have been barred from the Emperor's palace. Valya still looks disturbed from her last encounter with Desmond Hart in which he resisted the voice.

1:09 Now, in the show, they haven't explained how the voice works yet. They've shown it several times and they show it several times in this episode, but they don't explain anything about how it actually works. We might see more of it in future episodes, but as it stands right now, if you haven't read the books or you haven't seen Villeneuve's Dune, you probably don't have a concrete understanding about how the voice is supposed to work in Frank Herbert's Dune universe.

1:36 The simple explanation of how the voice works in Frank Herbert's universe is that you encounter a person, you understand what makes them tick, what makes them work, and through use of the voice, you influence them. But as I said, maybe the show will go into more detail later. In the opening of this episode, Valya Harkonin seems very focused in maintaining power over the great houses of the Lanzarad.

2:02 She mentions that she's dealt with people like Desmond before, and this cues our first major flashback sequence. I would say that the majority of this episode, more than half, takes place during a flashback sequence. We open up on the planet Lenkaville, which is the planet that House Harkonin was essentially exiled to after the Butlerian Jihad, the Machine War.

2:26 We see the harvesting of whale fur and whale fat, whale meat, and we get a sequence of Vallea and the other Harkonens, which include her brother, Griffin and her sister, and her uncle and mother. And they essentially argue about the future of House Harkonen and the place that House Harkonin is in right now.

2:48 Vaya is very interested in restoring the name of House Harkonen. And this is a part of the Brian Herbert books as well, even though I think it's even more emphasized in those books. Griffin Harkonin essentially says that he will, because Valya wants him to so much, attempt to find Vorian Atreides so that they can maybe clear the name of House Harkonin.

3:08 Now we basically instantly see how this goes. Griffin's dead body is sent back to Lenkoville. Now I don't know how much they're going to get into in this show. This is something that happens in the Brian Herbert books as well, except there's more detail about what exactly happens when Griffin encounters Vorian Atreides.

3:26 There's events that take place on Arrakis, events that involve other Atreides characters, so I don't know if they're gonna do any of that or if they're just cutting it short here. So I won't spoil exactly what happens in the book in case they adapt that later on, but essentially, Valya, like in the books, is convinced that Vorian killed her brother Griffin.

3:47 Also in this episode, we see that Tula basically vows to help Valia in whatever her plan is to get revenge for Griffin. Before the show continues this flashback sequence, they do cut back to the future, and you're back to Valya. On Seleuza Secundus, she is discussing what has just occurred with the Emperor, and everyone's a bit shaken up.

4:07 There are suggestions that they just return to Wallach 9. Valya is given the prophecy, one born in blood and one born in spice, and she immediately thinks Desmond Hart. As I said in my last review, it could be Desmond Hart, and I do think that it makes sense that she is interpreting it as Desmond Hart, but I think it's more likely that it refers to something deeper in the future and that she just thinks it's Desmond Hart because he's the current threat to the sisterhood.

4:33 One of the sisters in this scene said something that kind of bothered me for a little bit. What she says was something like, Well, maybe he is, in fact, touched by the Maker. What bothered me about that phrase was, why would a Bene Jesseret woman say that? The Bene Jezerit invent myth. They don't adopt myths that they believe themselves.

4:54 She's speaking as though she herself were a frimin, and she's among Bini Jezreet, you have no reason to speak in this mythic language. If you are a Bini Jezerit woman and you're saying that perhaps he was touched by the Maker, what does that mean? What exactly are you saying? Because a religious mythical Frimin might have all sorts of vague meanings that they attach to that phrase, but you as a Bini Jezerit, what do you mean when you say he is touched by the Maker?

5:19 Because as a huge Dune fan, I have no idea what c what she could possibly mean by that, and I know for a fact that this character shouldn't have any knowledge of what happened with Later II in the later books as far as like the manipulation of the sand drought and his metamorphosis. So I'm very confused by that line, and I have no idea what she's talking about.

5:39 Back on Wallock 9, we have a scene where Tula is mourning Lila, who has this weird kind of device attached to her that is keeping her alive in a vegetative state. There is a mention here of spice tea, and this is of course foreshadowing for what happens at the end of the episode. One of the Benny Jezerit sisters says to Tula that no one has ever woken from this state.

6:04 But if I had to guess, I would say it's pretty obvious that Tula is going to awaken from this state. Now at the end of the episode, we finally get one of the big reviews which I've been carefully trying to not spoil, which is that this Benny Jezeret breeding index is actually a huge computer. This is true in the Brian Herbert Sisterhood of Dune trilogy as well.

6:23 It's actually one of the cooler things taken from those books. Now, the way they're handling it and the timeline is a little shaky, but it is a computer. It is a thinking machine. So that's what she meant by forbidden technology. And it's very interesting what we're seeing in this scene. We have Lila in this kind of med box, and she's being kept alive through spice.

6:47 Now, if I had to guess as to what is going to happen here, um I know some people are gonna immediately think guild navigator because they are in tinks and they um have to absorb constant spice, um, and the spice kind of mutates them over time. Now in the Dune universe, the first person to ever become a guild navigator was Norma Sinva.

7:07 So the technology of guild navigators exists now. There are guild navigators around at this point in time, otherwise, they wouldn't be able to navigate across space. That being said, personally I don't think that Lila is becoming a guild navigator. I personally think that what will happen is that she will eventually awaken, but it will not be Lila.

7:29 I think that she will be possessed. Now, possession is something that can happen to Benny Jezeret. They refer to it as an abomination. When there are these other ego memory presences in your mind, and the base personality isn't strong enough to hold them back, then these ego memories can come to the forefront and possess the person.

7:55 I believe that if Lila awakens, that she will be possessed by Dorothea, and Dorothea's mission will be to destroy whatever Vala is building. Now, this could be very well the reason that the Bini Jezerit refer to what we call the pre-born as abomination. Now, when it comes to other characters that have been pre-born, and of course, Lila isn't technically pre-born because she wasn't born with other memory, but she is obviously undergoing the agony at a time when she has not developed a congrete enough personality.

8:33 But these other characters were all born and gestated in the womb under strange circumstances that involved heavy usage of spice. Jessica underwent the agony when she was pregnant, and this led to her daughter Aliyah being awakened in the womb pre-born. Paul's children, Leto and Ganema, Chani was on a special diet that had saturated her bloodstream with spice, and this led to those children being born pre-born.

9:02 Now I see Lila laying here being saturated with spice, and I can only think that that is likely what will occur, and also what Doritea said, you stole my future, now I'm taking your hope. Now I should also mention here that if Lila does awaken from this, then it also to a certain degree makes her a potential candidate to be the fulfiller of Raquela's prophecy, born once in blood, born once in spice, just food for thought, and I do think they're throwing out some red herrings here to keep us guessing.

9:36 Now, the last thing I'm gonna say about the sequence is in regard to the thinking machine portion of this whole thing. Now it's very interesting that the sisterhood would use a thinking machine because the sisterhood very much have the sense that they are guiding humanity, that they are the mothers, the godmothers of humanity.

9:52 Um, so they kind of feel like they have the right to do so. Um, it has the same energy almost as the god emperor of Dune books, where you have Leto II using Ixian technology, and there's a scene where a character exasperatedly says to him, You defy the jihad, and he's essentially like, Yes, I defy the jihad.

10:14 Because he's the god emperor, and he knows that the simple fact that thinking machines exist and the simple fact that we have them wasn't the problem. The problem was that we allowed ourselves to rely on these thinking machines and to be controlled by those in power of these thinking machines. Now, back to the flashback portion of this episode, we get a sequence of Dortea and her conflict with Vallea.

10:39 Honestly, all of this Dorothea Valya stuff is a slightly different, I would say, from the way these characters are portrayed in the books, especially when it comes down to the poisoning scene. In the poisoning scene, this is something that Dorothea and Valleya are doing together, and uh essentially Valya doesn't take the poison, she kind of just pretends to take the poison pill.

11:02 And when Dorothea awakens after surviving the agony, she's actually very happy that Valya has undergone the agony. She thinks that Valya is one of her biggest allies in the sisterhood, or she will be, until she sees Valya, and then she realizes the truth of the matter that Vaya only pretended to take the poison and just completely lied about the whole thing.

11:22 A large part of this episode is about showing how Valya started off as loyal to House Harkonin and eventually became loyal to the sisterhood. In the books, you don't totally see this transition. She's hardcore Harkonin the entire time and does things while she's at the sisterhood to undermine them actually.

11:41 I personally think that this version makes more sense. I personally think that it makes sense that women who are truthsayers would have a test to determine who is loyal and who is not. We cut to another flashback scene on Seleuce Secundus. We now have Tula hanging out with a bunch of Atreides, specifically Orius Atreides, who is a character from the books, and in the book she does kill him, she does murder him, but in the book it is on her wedding night, it's different circumstances.

12:14 In the show, we get this very Game of Thrones-esque sequence where there are all of the Atreides by the fire chanting Atreides. We have a love scene between Tula and Ories Harkonnen, and then the next morning he goes outside, everyone's been poisoned, and then Tula kills him as well. And she has done this for Valia.

12:37 This is a way to get revenge on House Atreides. It just adds to the feud essentially. Now I would like to add to this. Now, this is another potential spoiler for people, but in the book, there is a pregnancy. Tula in Navigators of Dune is pregnant with Ori's Atreides child. So we don't really see the outcome of that, but that is a thing.

13:04 And knowing that, there's a lot of potential ways that this could go. In the show version, maybe Tula was never pregnant, or maybe she gave up the child. Maybe the child is somehow Desmond Hart. What I do know is because they introduced Ori's Atreides and they showed that scene, they're keeping the door open for that possibility.

13:25 At the end of the flashback sequence, we have Tula and Vaya both returning to Lankaville. The Reverend Mother Raquela has told Vaya that if she does not return a Reverend Mother, then she cannot return at all. So she's basically saying, you have to take the Rosek poison or you do not return to Wallach 9.

13:44 Eventually, Vaya takes the poison on Wallach 9 and awakens and she's gone through the agony, and her and Tula decide to go to Wallach 9 together, and the rest is essentially history. Those are the main things that occurred in this episode. There are some more details that we will get more into on my livestream on Tuesday.

14:06 Make sure you check that out. We always get into the nitty-gritty details. Now let me get into some more personal feelings about the episode and the way it was executed. Now, personally, I thought this episode really dragged more than the first two. And I think it had a lot to do with them showing a lot of flashback sequences.

14:29 Now, personally, I'm not a big fan of a prequel, and after having the first two episodes set up, you know, the main timeline in the series, this episode felt like the prequel to the prequel. You know, it was already a prequel, and now I'm getting a prequel to the prequel. And a lot of it feels like information that wasn't super necessary, and I feel like a lot that we saw in these flashbacks could have been cut down to like 15 minutes or so.

14:58 Like personally, I thought the Atreides sequence with Ori's Atreides and the Atreides men that got poisoned went on too long, and we also didn't get enough time at the same time to care about any of these events that are occurring with these Atreides. Like you really can't connect to these characters when there's such a limited amount of scream screen time, so why even do it?

15:21 The scenes on Lenkevel felt similar to me, it just felt somewhat unnecessary and somewhat drawn out, especially in a show like this where now we only have three episodes left, and I'm very interested in what happens next, not what happened before. Now I know some people might disagree with this, but I mainly felt that because mostly the flashback sequences were so prominent this episode that this is the weakest episode that we've gotten so far.

15:53 And it doesn't bring me any joy or pleasure to say that. I was hoping that this week's episode would actually ramp things up and make me even more excited after what we got from last week's episode in the building. But honestly, apart from you know the last little bit of this episode where we get the thinking machine and and the spice coffin, I was generally uninterested in this episode.

16:16 I was generally not very entertained by this episode. And I also felt like there were a few fumbles with the dialogue seeming a little strange. The flashback sequences, going back to that for a second, did feel a little disjointed. I wasn't sure how much time was passing, it all just seemed kind of to blur together.

16:36 Unfortunately, this episode does not work as well as the other two when I said from the very beginning before the show was even really a thing that I was going to be very honest about this show. I wasn't going to say that I loved it if I didn't like it that much, and I wasn't gonna act like I hated it if I didn't like it that much.

16:53 I was gonna give my honest opinion, and right now, what I can say is I'm a little bit scared for normal audiences at this point. Because essentially, this episode puts the entire story arc on hold to tell the story of the past, which we've already mostly gotten through just the context of everything.

17:18 Now, I don't want to harp on my dislikes, there were definitely things to like about the episode visually. I thought there were some interesting shots. I enjoyed the shot of Raquela and the other Reverend Mothers coming down to Wallock 9 in the rain, an obvious nod to Vilno's Dune part one. I am still mainly optimistic.

17:38 One not so great episode doesn't make the entire show terrible, and like I've been saying from the beginning, we've gotta look at the full six season arc to know for sure. So we got three more episodes to figure out basically if this show is essentially worth it. Tell me what you guys think in the comment section below.

17:58 Let me know if there's anything that I missed or got wrong. Thanks so much. Peace out, guys.