'Dune: Prophecy' Episodes 2 and 3 Deep-ish Dive
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Welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson. Joining me today is not Mallory Rubin. It is one of the most famous women in the world.

Benjamin Lindberg. Hey, Ben, how you doing? Things always go great in Dune when a man shows up in place of a woman who is supposed to appear. So I'm excited to be here. This is just a plan thousands of years in the making. And oops, Ben showed up instead. Hello. Hi. I'm sipping my spice tea for clarity. And you know I'm always happy to pot with you or Mal. And you and Mal. In fact, I don't think you had to tell me to take out my knife and hold it to my neck to get me to come on here. You could have just asked nicely.

Oh, it's true. I didn't even have to waste the voice on you. Okay. Well, here we are to talk to you today about Dune Prophecy episodes two and three. We've got a special little ensemble cast on the podcast today. Ben is here to talk to me about some like burning questions we might have about these episodes. So to speak.

So to speak, burning from the inside and the outside. And then later in the pod, Van Lathan read a book. He read many books, but one of the books he read was Dune. And he wanted to talk, well, I want to talk to him about it. So Van's going to come on to talk to me about it because he was just texting me questions. He's like, why is this person so weird? And why is this happening? And what is going on here? So why not? Get ready, Van, if you continue your reading in the series. It's true. It's true. Things are about to get a lot

Otter. So Van will be back. We'll be here in the back half of the episode to talk to us about

to me about just Dune, Dune stuff. Before we get into any of that, programming reminders. Ben, what's the latest and the greatest on Button Mash? What are you up to? We are recording this week. We're recording a PlayStation 1 30th anniversary draft. Steve will be there and some others. A frequent podcast partner of yours, Rob Mahoney, also will be there and Matt James. And we'll just be wallowing in our nostalgia and reflecting on how old we are.

I just want to apologize to you personally and to anyone listening last week when I said PSI instead of PS1. I caught that. I couldn't tell you why I said it because obviously it says the number one in the document and I do know anyway. Our pounds per square inch draft coming up on Button Mesh. Exactly. Also this week on both Midnight Boys Pew Pew and House of R, we're covering Skeleton Crew. We're back in Star Wars land, which means...

Ben Lindbergh will be joining us this week on House of R. Talk about a little bit of lore when it comes to Skeleton Crew. Maybe so. That is very exciting. Double dose of Ben this week. It's

It's a lot. It's a lot to keep track of. It's a lot to cover. So we hope that you will just subscribe to the various pods, to the Ringerverse, to House of R. We hope you'll follow us on social, follow us on TikTok, on Twitter, increasingly more and more people on Blue Sky, on Instagram, et cetera, et cetera. Ben, are you on Blue Sky in any desire? I am. Not particularly active, but I'm there. You're there. I stake my claim. Excellent.

Fine. Yeah, exactly. That's what I did immediately. I was like, no one should take my username from my cold dead hand. All the Ben imposters out there. All the fake Ben accounts. So you follow us on all the social media. Also, just why don't you subscribe to our YouTube channel? That way you can see Ben's beautiful face as he talks to me about Spice and other things on this podcast. And my dog. I'll hold her up. And your dog. There she is for those of you watching. She's here. She's my prop for podcasts.

You can only enjoy that if you watch these podcasts, which you can in both the Spotify app and on our not-so-new YouTube feed, the Ringerverse YouTube feed. So that is all the stuff that you should know, except for last but not least, hobbitsanddragons.gmail.com. We don't have a ton of Doom prophecy emails coming in. I don't know if that is because people are too confused or if they're not confused at all. I don't know. You answered all their questions.

Yes, I mean, at length a couple weeks ago, and we will do so again today. But if you have any questions, hoppsanddragons.gmail.com, any comments, any advice for any of us on how best to wear a veil or a large hat or anything like that, we would love to know it. And also...

skeleton crew questions, Star Wars questions. We love a Star Wars question. Got the lore master himself at your, at your beck and call. So office and dragons at gmail.com. We are structuring the podcast today. The conversation that Ben and I are going to have is around six ish questions. We have, um, about doom prophecy coming off of episodes two and three. Um, um,

First things first, before we get into any of that, Ben, what is your relationship with Dune? How intensive of a spice head are you? What's your deal? Well, while attending my all-scholarship, all-boys high school, which was sort of like a gender-swapped Benny Jesser at school with less eugenics, maybe more agony, if anything. Sure.

I immersed myself in the white guy sci-fi canon, which I somehow squeezed into my busy social calendar. So Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, you know, the grandmasters. So as part of those sci-fi studies, my independent study, which I received no actual credit for, I read all of Frank Herbert's Dune books and also saw and was somewhat disturbed by the

And then probably like a lot of people, I lost touch with the Dune-iverse until the Villeneuve movies, which also like a lot of people, I really like. So that's about the extent of it. I have not swallowed the water of Brian Herbert. I was going to ask you. Beyond the broad strokes, I'm not familiar with the source material for Prophecy, but I am pretty fascinated by the attempts to force Dune into the mold of a modern multimedia franchise. Yeah.

despite at least half of the original novels being batshit and Brian's many, many novels with Kevin J. Anderson being divisive, to say the least. Yeah, that's a good word. I've written about the Dune franchise building for TheRinger.com. What a great website. In fact, by the time this pod is posted, probably an even greater website.

Go check it out. Spoilers. That is quite a spoiler. I love it. All right. So we are here to talk about season one, episode two, Two Wolves, and season one, episode three, Sisterhood Above All. And I think...

You are much more versed than a lot of people. I think a lot of people are coming into the show. This is what I'm hearing anecdotally. Word on the street, Ben, is that a lot of people are coming to the show just having seen the Villeneuve movies and not having a broader context beyond that, not having read any of the books. I don't know how much of a percentage that is the house of our listenership, but I think in general what I'm seeing is I'm seeing a lot of

confusion from people and a lot of uncertainty for people. And I'm just curious for you, we're halfway through the season. There's only six episodes this season. We're halfway through. How are you feeling about Doom Prophecy so far? Well, this is awkward. I thought I was here for the Paul of Fame episode.

Apparently not. I thought we were doing it finally. Should we do it right now and just not tell Valerie and release it? Yeah. It's the only way it'll happen. So, Paul Atreides is both a martyr and a messiah figure. In this episode, I will explain that. Okay, go.

My feelings have been mixed for most of the same reasons that you and Mal expressed after the premiere. It's partly the prequel problem of having seen the future that these characters are all trying to anticipate. It's partly the six-episode season problem of trying to cram this much worldbuilding, this many characters, this much backstory and timeline hopping in several episodes together.

But I think it's more so the feeling of just having seen series like this before and not just Thrones. We'll see if we have quite as many Thrones references as you and Mal crammed in last time. But it's also series like Foundation and Raised by Wolves, which, to be fair, only

only I have seen, but it's you and at least like five other people. Yeah. It's definitely the casting director on house. Yes. I will say that. Yes. Yeah. It's a, yeah, it's like a personal screening for me and a handful of other HBO max and Apple TV plus subscribers. But Travis Fimmel, Desmond Hart is playing almost exactly the same character that he played in raised by wolves, which was a great character. Yeah.

But identical acting choices and costumes, it's kind of uncanny. So this is sort of Raised by Wolves season three for me, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it just feels a little like I've seen this before in more distinctive series. And then I've had some issues with some of the on-the-nose statements of themes, as you outlined last time. You know, Nez in episode two saying, we're all just pieces on the board to be played in the pursuit of power and spice. Yeah.

Yes, we know. We're watching the show. So there's a little too much of that. I'm having trouble. I mean, I think I understand the impulse. I'm like...

Fairly middling on this show so far. I actually really did like episode three. I did too. I know some people were thrown by the flashback, especially Arjuna was worried that we were getting acolyte vibes getting an entirely flashback episode in the middle of a short season, which is a really fair- A female acolyte-based short season episode three extended flashback. Yeah, the track record's not great.

Very fair call, but I liked this so much better than I liked that episode of television. And this is my favorite episode so far. So hopefully, you know, things and it doesn't bode well. Like the fact that we weren't in the palace at all with the Emperor and his family at all. We were just sort of drilling down on these two characters. It was also the first time I felt this season that we didn't get

every single scene was only there for like exposition or world building explanation. I felt like we were getting a little bit more of character development, especially, you know, with the younger version of these two sisters. And so, yeah, so I'm optimistic, you know, that things could always like go up and up and up from here. At least this isn't like the worst episode of the season, you know, so it's possible things will get better and better, but I have been just really,

stuck on the cop that a lot of people keep making and hearing all over the places. Like this is like early aughts sci-fi channel, something Mal and I talked about a little bit, but I'm just hearing this constantly. And, and,

And then a lot of people are like, well, that era of sci-fi channel was really good. And granted, it definitely was. But this is coming off often as the not great version of that. Yeah, when it looks good, it looks great. Like Foundation does, for instance. And at other times, not so much.

There are a couple things that I haven't been bothered by as much. I know some people have bounced off the series, including my wife, because of the unchanging nature of the universe and the technology. It just kind of beggars belief. We're talking 10,000 years here, as you and Mal alluded to last time. And this is an issue with a lot of sci-fi and fantasy franchises, mostly for off-screen audiences.

out of universe reasons, just you establish a vibe and a look and a template for a franchise. Yeah. And we have that here with Villeneuve. And so you want to give people a way into this world by having it look somewhat familiar, even if there's a lot lower that you're not familiar with. But then how do you square that with how has nothing changed over these eons? Yeah.

And I kind of wrestle with that with Star Wars or Alien or Blade Runner, all these shows that were series that kind of came to us in the late 70s, early 80s and are forever frozen in time, looking like they were then, which is a great look. But can it ever look different? Something that I think Star Trek has done well in Dune, though.

I think it bothers me. My Star Trek smuggle man. Yes, I know you'd appreciate that. But in Dune, I think it bothers me less, even though the time span is so long, just because it's kind of already addressed by the canon. There are in-universe reasons why it's so static.

just because you have the Bene Gesserit manipulating everything and you have them kind of keeping things in line and you have the Butlerian Jihad and you have the anti-thinking machine sentiment. And it's all about engineering humans as opposed to engineering technology. So that, I think maybe if you're more into the lore, you...

are more inclined to excuse than if you're just coming to this from the movies and saying, this is 10,000 years ago and we've got the same house on the throne and the same feuds and the same shield technology, which I understand why that throws people. I think in general, I'm willing to accept this idea that

And I'm ready to embrace it because my AI sentiments are as anti as they come. But the idea that if we rid ourselves of AI concept, we might slow down in our technological advances. And I'm really fine with that as an idea. I think...

There are things, and it's not enough to make me bounce off the show in any way or really, really hold me up too much. I think the only one really is that is the hand-to-hand combat shield technology that just looks identical. You know what I mean? If it didn't look identical, but almost the same, then maybe. But yeah, I also understand from an... Yeah, you establish this look. Also for IP reasons, right? It's like...

The draw, the allure of IP is that you're serving up people something that looks familiar, something that feels familiar. And so to completely restructure the look of or design of the world is to lose that basic idea, which is we put the word Dune in front of the colon so that you will tune in to something that's not just called sisterhood or prophecy or whatever. And it's asking a lot of creators to not only engineer this future world, but also create

convincingly extrapolate from there over hundreds or thousands of years, how would all of this evolve in this world? That's a lot on top of everything else you're asking them to do. And those personal shields, they work so well for the kissing and the stabbing. It's just the color-coded kissing. It's just great. The no means no. Red light means no. Yes. I've also been struck, I think, by just what a world we're living in where HBs

has been so IP-pilled. You know, like, we've kind of become accustomed to this. People point to superhero stuff at the box office. Oh, you know, superhero stuff does so well or historically has done so well. I think it's even more striking to me that we're living in the nerd culture world that Sunday night, probably,

prestige on HBO now is House of R, Ringerverse content. It's Thrones and The Last of Us. I mean, we're talking hot D into the Penguin, Dune Prophecy, the franchise. HBO is all in on IP for better or worse and worse.

And worse. I mean, The Last of Us, amazing. I'm really excited for Dunkin' Egg. There's obviously stuff on here I'm very excited about. I thought The Penguin was really good. But as much as I love all this House of R stuff and as much as we love to have content to cover, you don't want to miss that...

HBO Sunday night drama content, which we all love as well. So I don't think it needs to be either or like if they, if they made it like sci-fi Mondays or something, you know what I mean? Like did something where they like picked another night of the week where they, they, you know, Zaslav and his initiative, various initiatives, you know, kept the IP TV machine going in that.

Yeah, we're eating well as it is. We don't need every network and every night necessarily. But to bring it back, I was with you on episode three being my favorite so far. Not so much because of what I'm calling the red engagement, because unlike in the red wedding, we didn't really know the victims here personally.

Ori. So, you know, it's just the golden retriever Atreides. Yeah. Yeah. Is it just, did, did Ori remind you distractingly of Steve or was it just me? Yeah.

Oh, that's a you thing, but I love that for you. From the neck up. I haven't seen the rest of Steve, but I was facially... Well, dare to dream. Certainly seeing some similarities there. But because I had a hard time connecting with individual characters and finding the emotional core of this story as opposed to just the lore. And so the focus on Talia and Tula here, even if they aren't the most cuddly characters, I think that helped here. And there was a lot of just...

thematic stuff about the past and the future and how all of this resonates that we can get into a little later. It's interesting from a, from a sort of, who are we rooting for standpoint? Um, uh,

I've heard of my walked in while I was watching this episode and I was like, sorry, I can't, I'm watching it for work. I can't stop watching it. So she like sits down and watches the back half of the episode of me and she watches to like kill all of these atreides men. And she's like, wow, that sucks. I was like, what?

you know, and she's like, on the one hand, she's like, you know, she knows enough about noon to know a trade. He's good. Harkening bad. Right. That's her understanding of the situation. I was like, yeah, but this is our main character. And in theory, they killed her brother. And I don't know. There are a few, you know, and I was just like finding myself justifying a mass, uh, you know, killing, uh, she, you know, she puts up in the Kool-Aid at the Atreides hunt. And, uh,

I thought it was just a pretty compelling sequence, even watching it, even figuring out, but even before they start chanting Atreides that she has infiltrated the Atreides camp, uh, watching her have her own conflict about what she's doing here. Um, thinking about the tool that we know in the present day and thinking about how we think of her as the nicer sister, but when it comes down to it, has she actually got more, you know, blood, uh,

on her hands than her older sister does. These are questions. But I thought that was like, I don't know, I just thought all of that was really well done. And even though we don't know the Atreides men,

they were, uh, except for, of course, Archie Barnes from House of the Dragon. That might be my last, no, it won't be my last Game of Thrones reference, but like, um, we, I, I was like with her and I was really feeling it. I thought, I thought the young actress playing her was really, really good. And I, I, I was really intrigued by that plot. Right. And also just intrigued by how much we, we,

We didn't know. And how much can you justify in something like that? What is war? What isn't? All that sort of stuff. Yeah. And how much of that relationship was real? Was there actual affection between Tula and Ori or was it all a show? And, you know, I love an official companion pod.

So I did listen to the official Dune companion pod and Emma Canning was on who plays young Tula and did a great job in this episode and was saying something that I thought I had picked up on while I was watching it, which is that there is a moment when she expects Ori to reject her.

When she reveals that she's a Harkonnen and he doesn't, he's like, oh, that's cool. We can chart our own future. He's like, we are not who they say we are. What is hate? What is war? She's like, well, I have something to tell you. She's like, the syringe is already loaded, though. Like, I already put the poison in the syringe. So in that moment, I think she's thinking, was there another way? Could we have avoided this? Could this have been...

a way out of the Montagues and Capulets situation, and we could have charted our own path. And is this Valya steering me down? You know, she's the, the two wolves are the two sisters, right? And which is the worst wolf, the one who cries while eating the lamb or the one who doesn't? And Tula's the one who cries, who actually, she wells up, she feels emotion. She lets Albert-

AKA Oscar Tully go, but in a way that makes her maybe more dangerous and more unpredictable. But is that just because she's been coached that way? Cause she was raised by a wolf herself sort of in Valia. And, you know, in a way, I guess, did Valia engineer Paul in a sense by perpetuating and deepening this feud? Cause even as she's worried about the sisterhood and the future and

Things could have been different if she hadn't driven Griffin to his death, presumably, and then caused Tula to kill all of the Atreides. So is it the self-fulfilling prophecy that you and Mel talked about that we all love? Is it her trying to avoid that fate for the sisterhood and yet in getting the revenge before she fully commits while she's still a Harkonnen first?

She's the one who maybe leads eons down the road, thousands of years down the road to Paul and everything that comes after that. And there are other parallels like Valya put Tula through something she didn't necessarily want to do or had to be coaxed into in killing Ori and all of his kin, much like Valya's kind of pressing...

Tula to do with Lila, right? Because Tula has that relationship with Lila and Valya doesn't really, if anything. I mean, there's no love lost between Dorotea and Valya, whereas Lila means a lot to Tula. So it's sort of a parallel with that present day timeline as well. I think that's true. But I think what's interesting is how much

How much do we lay on the machinations of one person? Like obviously the Bene Gesserit, the sisterhood in general are manipulating things all around them. How much do we put that on Valiant? How much do we put that on the individual choices of people and how much information is being held back from us?

as viewers. And that takes us to my first official question that I want to ask you about this idea of withholding information. We're going out of order in case you're confused. You're like, I thought we were talking about sex first. Nope, we'll get there though. Okay, so my first question is this. Speaking of truth as we believe it,

That's a reference to something I haven't gotten to yet. How much is the show holding back certain things that generate surprise for us, the audience? And how much to demonstrate how our main characters are often operating on false or incomplete information? So we see Valya speaking with her brother. To your point, sort of like urging her brother or urging her family into this vengeance path. I actually liked the way that he's like, I will go do this. And then we just cut to core part.

Like harsh cut to corpse. I found that unintentionally funny in a way that I'm... It's, you know, we deserve to make it. We will, you'll see. Cut to corpse on slab. Cut to corpse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, definitely have that vibe. But also my question was...

Do you think they did that so that we would be, however, temporarily duped or unclear as to the fact that Tula has infiltrated the Atreides camp? Like, to not show us what Ori or any of the other Atreides men look like so that when we...

you know, when they start chanting Atreides, that's when we're supposed to go like, oh my God, it's the Atreides. Or did they not show us how Griffin died because they have a story about how Griffin died, but we didn't see how he died. And so is the story actually more complicated? Is Ori actually, you know, much more innocent and all of that, you know? So the question is, are they holding back this information? I guess three reasons. Number one, comedy, a corpse comedy moment.

Number two, to twist the knife on us, the audience, by trying to surprise us with the Atreides clan. Or to show that Valdia specifically, who is the one who is often the most certain of the path forward...

and despite not always having a grasp of the entire picture she is frequently caught on the back foot i would say she's caught the back foot a lot in episode two in a way that you would hope that this woman who has like risen all the way up the ranks of the bed of jesuit and has all of this incredible power wouldn't be so caught so unaware so frequently but the fact that she is means that she's

in many senses on a lot of bluster and sort of false certainty rather than actual informed certainty. So what do you think the show has more, especially as we talk about truth as we understand it, truth as we believe it to be, which we'll go back to with Desmond Hart, how much do you think the show is interested in that as theme versus plot?

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Well, the Atreides gathering reminded me very much of the Lindbergh Thanksgiving tradition where we, we dob ourselves in mud and circle a fire chanting Lindbergh, Lindbergh. So I immediately clocked what was happening. You felt at home? Yeah. You felt at home. Okay. But I think when it comes to Griffin specifically, I got the sense that that was more just about efficiency of

about saving time and kind of clumsy in a way that this show sometimes is. And you don't know if it's, again, because the constraints of the six-episode season or because some of the creative turmoil and who knows how many drafts some of these episodes were subjected to. That just felt to me like, look, it's episode three. We haven't met Griffin yet. We don't really have a lot of time to get to know Griffin. And

Griffin is really just a plot device here. He's sort of meant to illustrate the effect of Valya and how manipulative she can be, and also the actual heartbreak that she went through and that Tula went through. And so we don't really have time to convey the essence of Griffin and why he was so special and how great a representative on the Lensrad he would have been. And...

exactly what would have happened here with him confronting the Atreides. That just felt to me like a cut, you know, maybe a deleted scene somewhere on someone's hard drive. Just like, let's get moving. Oh, the Griffin cut? Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah, literally the Griffin cut, I'm sure, somehow, one way or another. I guess we don't know exactly what happened to him. But yeah, that felt to me like, look, this is a Tula and Valia episode, and Griffin is mostly a means to an end.

All right. So let's, uh, let's go back to, let's start, let's start back at the beginning with sex, which is where I had intended to start in honor of Mal, who is not here today. Yes. Um,

This is snarkily put, but I'm sorry. What's in greater danger of wearing itself out? The protracted sex scenes or Valia telling someone to get out a knife and cut their own throat, as she has in some form or another in every single episode so far. Before you answer that, I would say the...

You know, we get it. It's HBO Sunday night. And I know that like there are some shows like Succession where it where the powers that be at HBO were like, please, can we have more sex? The weirder, the better, the longer, the better. You know, the audience is used to it. And Jesse Armstrong in that case with Succession was like, nah, you know, so there are some shows that are not, you know,

engaging in that. And it seems like the folks making doom prophecy were like, Oh, we'll give you something every episode. Don't worry about it. The most egregious example I think was episode two, which was just like terribly clumsy, um, sex position interrogation scene between Constantine, uh, and Shannon, uh, Richaise. Yeah. Um, but we've had a sexy in every single episode. Uh,

We'll talk about the possible consequences of what happened with Tula here. But how are you feeling about either Jessica's go-to move of take out the knife or the proverbial take out the knife of the sex scenes in these very simple scenes? Yeah, I mean, that had a little more impact the first time she used it, I guess, now that we know that it's such a go-to. I mean, when she was kind of testing it out for the first time,

To be fair, Desmond has used his pyro power a few times already. So stick with what works, I guess. Play the hits, right? But I found it to be pretty poignant that the first time she uses the voice, it's for good.

That she doesn't cultivate it intentionally, but she does it in this moment of duress to save beloved Griffin, who is just numbed and paralyzed in the water. And she summons this from deep within herself to save him. And then this power gets corrupted and she corrupts it into...

So yeah, dramatically speaking, the technique, unlike the knife, is blunted each time we go back to this well. But I suppose it makes sense when you have a super effective weapon like that to keep using it.

And did it strike you as odd as much as it did to me when we see the first usage of the voice at school when she tested out on her pals to get them to slap each other and receive a slap? And their reaction is not, what the hell? Why did you just make us slap each other? But wow, that was awesome. Can you teach us to do it?

What does that tell you about her friend group? Or I guess the Betty Jesser, it's just willingness to be led by Valya to become kind of a cult. Because if one of my friends tried that out on me, I don't think that's the way I would react. It did read, and this has been on my mind a lot because of...

I think the coverage that Rob and I were doing on say nothing, this idea of like being young and being sort of led into a cause or a cult or whatever, thinking about like the Manson girls and stuff like that. It read very Manson girls. It was so dark, uh, you know, just like slap each other so dark. And then they're giggling girlishness around it made it even darker. The fact that Raquel Washington was like, yeah, that's, that's the one that's, that's what I like to see. Um,

It's disturbing. And I really like that about both Jessica Bardem's performance as young Valia and just sort of this idea of factions forming inside of the Bene Gesserit. This idea of sort of like hardline virtuous versus like weird little slapping games is sort of an odd thing.

of the division, but I think it makes sense that inside of an institution with that much power, there would be constant political factions inside of it and constant jockeying for power inside of it. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, intentionally quite disturbing. Yeah. Another thing I liked about episode three was that mirroring that parallelism of Rakela as a kind of mother to Valya, the way that Tula is to Lila, except maybe even more nefariously, but both manipulative. But both people who didn't have mothers, weren't raised by mothers, found these mothers in the order who both pushed them down these paths that maybe weren't

the best for them in the long run. Possibly. We also got to see just how great a liar Tula is so that we know that, okay, she's clearly not being forthright about who Lila's mother is. And you might wonder, well, can a Bene Gesserit lie to a Bene Gesserit, even if we're not talking a reverend mother, just a sister here who hasn't been through the agony and hasn't had the full truth-saying course? But Tula, it seems like, is especially adept at that.

maybe because she can conjure that emotion and maybe even feel that emotion legitimately, genuinely, but still do the dark thing and lie about it. And so we got to see that in the past. And then again, that's mirrored in the present. As for Constantine's big finish, I guess I would say that, you know, we learned a little bit about him and his sister here. It was hinted at previously, but the abduction that they went through together and what,

What we learned from that, I guess, there's maybe still some doubt. We know that the Bene Gesserit saved them, right? We don't necessarily know if they were behind the abduction in the first place. Feels like they probably were, though, right? Probably. Seems like something they would do. Yes, definitely. Abduct you and then save you. It's in character for them, yeah. But Constantine's not a bad guy, as Imperial princes go, because he stuck with his sister when she was abducted. But he's a little full of himself, and I get it. Good-looking guy. But the sex scene...

As kind of clumsy it was as a form of exposition, you know, pillow talk does happen. Maybe you're more inclined to let things slip, so to speak, in that situation. And I did think that it was revealing about Constantine, again, just because, you know, he's very much like...

he looks like he should have a mirror on the wall to watch himself in the act, right? And Shannon is not exactly like lighting up a spice cigarette and bathing in the afterglow of this encounter. She's like, okay. He finished. She told him how great he was, reassured him. And then she got down to the business of prying secrets out of him. So that was kind of revealing of his character again, you know, just sort of conceited, insecure, like,

You know, maybe not really cut out for the throne. I mean, definitely not. I think that I, I think I wanted just the better version of the scene, which was like two people trying to play each other inside of this. Yeah.

like sexual encounter. Um, and it was just like, he was just so outmatched that it was just so sad to watch and not even like that interesting. Um, also on the, I don't usually engage in this because I felt like, I feel like people are often quick to the, is this person, uh, pregnant mine, uh, based off of like one sexual encounter. Um,

There is some indication though from book readers that this is something that we should be thinking about, about either Tula or Inez in terms of secret Atreides babies. I don't know how strong the seed is in the Atreides household. If like, uh, every time you have sex with an Atreides, there is a secret Atreides baby somewhere. But there are some like Tula baby theory. Like if Tula on her not wedding, red wedding night, um, uh,

had sex with Ori Atreides is pregnant is off to the bed of Jezzeret, uh, you know, as, as a teenage and, and pregnant, uh,

Could one of the characters we already know be a secret Tula baby? Could it be Desmond Hart himself? I don't know if the math quite works out there. Kieran Atreides. I don't know that she would give birth to an Atreides and then give it back to the Atreides or that they would take that baby or trust that that baby was an Atreides. One of the acolytes, the Harkonnen cousin who is so obsessed with whale fur, is he actually her child? Yeah.

I don't know. These are questions worth asking, but I don't know with only three more episodes to go how many further twists and turns of the plot we have room for. Right. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on this. And season two is in development. Will it actually be made? I don't know, but clearly they want to lay some groundwork here for a second season, much like the Acolyte tried to, to no avail. So there could be some seeds again. Yeah.

So to speak. How many times have we said so to speak in this episode? But there could be some seeds that could sprout into saplings in a future season if we are graced with one. So I don't know if that's something that is pressing on my mind. That's not the parentage mystery right now that I am most consumed by. But again, that could be our ignorance of the source material, in which case, kind of nice to be on that side of things. Yeah. I mean, my understanding is that there are both

Seeds of plots inside of the book that could be picked up for this. But this is, again, we mentioned this earlier when Mal and I did episode one, this isn't a one-to-one adaptation of any of the books. So like there's a lot of room for them to zig and zag however they want to. The other question, and this is one that I feel less

There's this theory going around that Albert Atreides, a.k.a. the Tully Lord, as he mentioned from House of the Dragon, played by Archie Barnes, who is given mercy by Tula, is allowed to scamper away. Some people were wondering if Valia's look when she finds out that Ciaran Atreides is in the...

is in the castle, or the palace, rather, if she didn't know that there were any surviving Atreides. And I just want to say, come the fuck on. She's the Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit. She knows whether or not... She might not have known that there was an Atreides at this very moment in the palace, but she knows that...

They didn't wipe out every single Atreides in one hunting expedition. I was going to ask, yeah, just how well attended was this family reunion? Because I think she leaves Albert alive not so that he can send a message, you know, tell your clan what happened here kind of thing. I want them to know it was me. Right. I think it was more of a, you know what, I just murdered so many people. Like, you can go. I'll just, I'll let this one slide. You're a kid. I'm out of poison.

I used my last dose on poor Ori. My last syringe, yes. Alas, poor Ori. But I wonder... I was wondering, like, are we to believe that...

that Albert is now the progenitor of all surviving Atreides down through the ages, that she could have ended the line right here and now, but she left Albert alive. And thus, all of the Atreides spawn that we see subsequently are from the loins of Albert Tully, but probably not

That, right? I would imagine... I don't know. That kid has some riz if we're going to translate... If we translate riz over from House of the Dragon. He was making moves on Tula to the point that I was expecting a flip there. I was thinking she'd be sneaking into his tent, but that didn't come to pass. But maybe if she thought, like, I can cut off this line right here and now if I just take care of Albert, maybe that would have spurred her to do one more murder. Okay. So on the, like, who is...

Who is whom? Who made whom running around here? Is your, are you alluding to, uh, our guy Desmond Hart? You're, you're raised by Wolf's fave, Travis Femal. Um,

What's your latest greatest theory on what's going on with this particular character? Well, I liked the confrontation that he has with Valya in episode two. I'm kind of glad we got that as early as we did. It seemed like something that we might have been building toward later, but no, we kind of got it out of the way early, which then incited all of this subsequent action. And we got to see Valya...

put in her place or in a place that she really hasn't been on since she was on Harkonnen Ice Planet. And, you know, she is very much outmatched here, right? She thinks she's going to take care of him easily, worm her way back into the good graces of the Emperor. And as John Lennon sang, Mother Superior jumped the gun. Wow. Thank you. It's from the song, Happiness is a Very Warm Nine-Year-Old. But, um...

Desmond just totally undoes Valya's power because he's not lying, right? At least about his surface actions, as far as he knows. As far as he believes it. He's telling the truth. And so you take that away from the Mother Superior. She can do her little finger snap and it won't do her any good. She can't see through what he's doing. Also, I enjoyed that she asked him where he's from.

And she says he's from a harsh world for a child. And then we see in this episode that Valya is from an equally harsh world. And so they're kind of well-matched in that sense, except she's clearly outclassed here. So the fact that he fights off the voice, and it looks like I couldn't tell whether he's trying to fake her out by appearing... It looked real. It looked like a real struggle to me. Yeah, I thought it was a struggle. And so...

You know, it's tough. Given the performance, given that he has this unhinged, off-kilter appearance, again, that is exactly the way he was in Raised by Wolves, so it's hard for me to distinguish between the actor and the acting choices here. But if we are to read into that, then I think you could say, okay, there's something uncanny valley about this guy. Aside from the fact that he can set people on fire from the inside, maybe we're dealing with someone who is more machine than man. Yeah.

Right. So there's this concept inside of this world that I was sort of tiptoeing around in the first episode, but we might as well just talk about it. There are a couple options here. There's cloning as an option, just straight up cloning someone. If the idea that Desmond Hart was swallowed by a worm and actually died, and this is not actually him.

Is he a sort of flesh and blood clone? Is he a Gola, which is a cybernetic sort of cloning idea? You can stop writing your emails to me and well-actually me, because I do know that in this timeline, the Gola technology is not supposed to be up to snuff this good yet. So is the show bending yet?

sort of the timeline a bit to introduce this idea of the Gola, the non-organic clone idea. And the thing about Desmond Hart, there's two things, whether he's a real clone or this is actually him and he survived, whether he fulfills that prophecy language of born by blood and spice, right?

write the Lila Dorotea prophecy quote, the key to the reckoning, one born twice, born once in blood, once in spice, a weapon born of war and a path too short. Like if that, you know, that is who Vali is like, oh, I, I know who that is. That's this blonde weirdo who won't, who a voice won't work on me. What is true about Desmond? Two things. Number one, he believes that he, whatever he's doing is for the Imperium. He, he believes that to be true.

I don't believe that to be true. And so I believe that someone is controlling him to such a degree that they have programmed him to believe something, you know, believe that he is doing it for one thing. The other thing he says, the tricky language that he uses when he is defying the voice is he says, I always wondered what your greatest fear would be.

What do you mean, you always wonder? Doesn't that sound like someone who has known Valia for a long time? Obviously, he's known of her. She's the head of the Bene Gesserit. But it sounds like someone who knows her would say, I always wondered what your greatest fear would be. And so that, to me, again, reads someone...

And puppeteering this guy and whoever that person is has always wondered what the weakness Revalia is, which just brings me back to my earlier Natalia theory, but I'm holding it loosely. What do you think, Ben? Yes. And also, he seems to have a keen interest in the thinking machine in the first episode, and he's the one who deals with it, which may be

makes you think he's best equipped to do that because he's a part not exactly thinking machine himself but not natural right so yeah there could be that i do hope that there's more to the prophecy than the burning truth being the guy who literally burns people because poor lila and her sacrifice if that was just to get the the literal hot tip from rakella that desmond is a threat i mean

Nice rhyme with the being born twice and the spice and everything, but doesn't necessarily seem worth going through the agony at that point. So hopefully that is something of a misdirect and that there's more to that prophecy than the very obvious solution that is in front of us after three episodes. But it's an intriguing character. And yeah, this is...

that maybe doesn't exist at this point in the Dune timeline and they want to bend things a little bit. I personally wouldn't be that bothered by it because I'm not that into the Dune. You're only a medium Spice Ed. Exactly. You're not a picante, spicy Spice Ed. Yeah, yeah, I got it. And I think most people watching this who came into Dune through the Villeneuve movies will not notice or care. So, you know, unless you're...

Brian Herbert or Kevin J. Anderson. Maybe there's not that big a constituency that would be bothered by that. So I say, you know, bring on the Benny Tleilax. Bring on the Bennys. Molto Benny. I was... Molto Benny. I was...

really just fondly hoping that you would be the one to try to that pronunciation and i am proud of you for doing it so you crushed it i don't i don't even want to try it okay um well on the on the prophecy front that brings us to another question my my i put it thusly lila are you coming back anytime soon girl because lila seems like she died in in pursuit of the agony here um

But, I mean, you don't put a corpse in a spice coffin and expect me to believe that that character is dead. So, in terms of born of blood, born of spice, that would describe if she has a resurrection, Lila. And I do like this sort of prevailing idea that if Valya has her interpretation, which is...

It's Desmond and Tula has her interpretation, which is it's Valia and that they're both wrong. And the actual answer is maybe potentially a spoiler for an upcoming Dune movie. And that they're just thinking, this is the thing Mal was bringing up a couple of times is like,

Are they in the world of prophecy here? Are they just keeping it way too short term? This prophecy, of course, has to do with our lifetime, our machinations, the characters that we're interacting with, and not understanding that they're hearing prophecy that has to do with thousands of years in the future. Yeah. Love a self-fulfilling prophecy. Also love a related misinterpreted prophecy.

Same. Yeah, one of my favorites. So Lila's in the Boba Fett bacta tank. So I'm guessing she's going to be... But so is Cobb Banth, and we haven't seen him in so long, Ben. It's true. It's true.

He's still cooking, and I'm deeply upset. I mean, I would say he's marinated at this point. Let him out. Let him out of the tank. Yeah, but we do get introduced to the Betty Jesseret AI here, which again reminds me of other properties. Horizon Zero Dawn for the gamers out there. And Mother Raquel's great work, which is not the great work from Skeleton Crew. That's a tease for our lore segment later this week, but a different great work named after...

mother Raquel and clearly ruining the environment using up all the energy with the power it would take to crunch the numbers. How many bottles of water do you think does it take? All

All the ice from the Harkonnen planet needed to cool this thing down. So, yeah, the Betty Jesseret, they're the ultimate thinking machine. They've got this thing underground, which I like that location, by the way. Yeah, me too. Some of the sets...

on this show have been lacking, others look great. And that one, again, I learned on the official companion pod is this network of subterranean warrens where they built planes for the Luftwaffe during World War II near Budapest. And here we have the Bene Gesserit. A Luftwaffe crypt? Yeah, it's thematically appropriate, I guess, for the eugenics-curious Bene Gesserit order here trying to

win a war of their own devising and engineer the future. So yeah, you'd figure it'd be hard to hide this thing, but I guess you, you need the little, you know, code bank, all the DNA samples and that thing to, to open the doors to the great work. The, this reveal, which hopefully, yeah, like hopefully people clocked that this is like, fucked up and scary. The Bene Gesserit, one of the loudest voices against AI in, in,

Like a lot of Frank Herbert's work is secretly using AI for their breeding program. That don't, don't get too mad. If you do send your letters to Brian Herbert, not HBO, because this is a Brian Herbert sort of idea and mentioned straight from the book. So, but that reveal, like we haven't really been fully in that space and it's,

to see that it is run by AI is a fascinating little turn for the plot there. By the way, Dorotea tries to kill her own granddaughter to get even with Valya. Harsh, right? I mean, Dorotea is the one who's all, you know, sisterhood above all. And also, I guess you don't completely die if you just become a creepy ghosty in someone's genetic memory. But still, it's very much the, you know, eye for an eye situation.

of the Harkonnens here. This feud has... You take my hope, I'll take your... Oh, you take my future, I'll take your hope. Yeah, I mean, on the one hand, sure, Ben, but on the other hand, have you ever been compelled by the voice to slit your own throat by some little upstart who stole your proper sort of line of succession place? No, I might hold a grudge about that. Yeah, there would be some hard feelings because I wouldn't say, wow, what a cool power you had. Can you teach me to do that? Sick move, bro.

On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, I do want to praise the show and say that whole sequence with Lila in the sort of memory bank, stretching all these shrouded figures in the dark space of her memory, her genetic memory, I thought that looked amazing. I thought that was very scary and suitably... It worked better for me than...

whatever it was that happens to Alia in Dune 2, where it's just sort of like blue goo going into the womb and you're sort of like, okay, I guess that baby is super now. Something we should say for Lila, if and when she ever gets out of the Bacta tank, the Spice Bacta tank, and I assume she will and

Once again, much faster than Cobb Banth did, and I have some objections about that. If she comes out, there is a strong possibility, according to lore of the Herbert Burst, that she will come out, quote-unquote, possessed, an abomination, meaning she will no longer be Lila. She will have been taken over, overcrowded by the many...

Egos voices of her genetic memory. And so it's possible that like Dorotea herself will sort of like live again, uh, through Lila when she comes out of the, uh, out of the tank. Um,

But I've made erroneous predictions like that in the past, so I'm just not going to claim that Jon Snow is coming back with a direwolf brain. She might come back totally fine and normal and unchanged by this horrifically traumatic experience. Since I'm filling in for Mal, I'll note, not enough pets in the Duneiverse. That's something we're missing here. We need some familiars or some sort of direwolves or something.

Do you want to say something about Robert Baratheon since you're playing the mal-role here on the show? Yeah, great to get the gang together again. I guess, you know, he's setting the tone for the Harkonnens and their floating repulsor devices here. I'm somewhat surprised that he lived to the grand old age that he clearly did here. I guess, yeah, it's thematically appropriate for Robert to come back in an episode where we got a deadly feast from

because he's been through some of those himself. A deadly hunt. Yes, exactly. He's never going to hunt with Robert Baratheon, it's true. Yeah, Mark Addy here just doing the most Mark Addy thing you can possibly do.

the Harkonnen patriarch, we, we should note also, um, you know, we, we left them on an ice planet. We find them at the top of a glossy skyscraper. So, um, you know, uh,

Valya may not have sent them their own Bene Gesserit, but she has not let them completely languish on a snow planet. Yeah. And I liked the little hint of Harkonnen lore we got in the family scenes, which I kind of enjoyed. You know, just like the hand cam shot a little more of an intimate environment, though certainly not emotionally intimate. Not warm or comforting in any way. No way, physically or psychologically. But

The shout out to Abulard Harkonnen. Yeah. Apologies if I'm mispronouncing that, but just, you know, I like a villain arc and one of my favorite villain arcs also is the misunderstood villain who just got a bad rap all along. And so Valya is convinced that actually he was not a villain.

traitorous guy who betrayed everyone. He was a victim of treachery himself by the supposed good guys by House Atreides, which again set the Harkonnens down this road to actually legitimately being the baddies. But maybe they were not that to begin with. They were sent down that road, perhaps. Possibly. Well, you're not my most reliable source, but sure. Yeah.

All right, any other questions you want to add to the list here, Ben? Well, we saw the whale carcasses. We saw the whale fur. Where was the whale semen? Conspicuously absent from this episode. It's a great question. I did get an email from a listener who wanted to correct me very kindly and gently, I'm sure, on the fact that, like,

Anyway, I don't care to know that. I care that my truth is my truth. Yeah, I like your version. Like Valya's version of Harkin in history. Usually I prefer to know the correct answer when it comes to sort of scientific fact, especially that I get wrong. In this case, I'm clinging to fiction. Thanks so much. Anything else you want to mention, Ben? It did remind me very much of Obi-Wan making sushi on Tatooine, except colder. Oh.

Yeah, not without the baking sun. Absolutely rendering that meat rancid. Yes. What's your preferred balance of flashbacks in this series? Because in episode two, we got none. None.

We were just in the present timeline, but episode three, we were mostly in the past and that was actually our favorite thus far. So sometimes it feels like you're in the past, you're not making progress. How are you going to get the reveals, the mysteries, the mystery box stuff that we want answered? And oh no, we're halfway through the season. And I kind of wonder how much of the flashback stuff we have seen and how much you would want to see. Yeah. Yeah.

I tend to say I want more. The story is more... The story of their rise to power, I want to know what happens when Tulis shows up to the Bene Gesserit. I want to know how all of that unfolds. And I think there's something in the...

I hate to say this because in general, I really love Emily Watson and Olivia Williams as performers, but I think there's something about the sort of like stoic nature of we've been doing this a long time of their characters that is less interesting to me than the younger sort of scrapping it all together versions of them. So, you know...

I don't think that's what we're going to get for the rest of the season. I think it's going to be mostly present day. I think we're going to be spending more time in the palace and stuff like that. But I kind of want the prequel to this prequel show, which is the girls. Before those hard outer layers were built up. Although, I guess she did just mass murder the Atreides, so she's not exactly a softie at this point. But that's the first layer.

Yeah, she felt bad about it.

by the Bene Gesserit. It's wheels within wheels and he's kind of a pawn, perhaps, unless there are wheels within wheels within wheels. We'll see. Not too shocked, to be honest with you, just because we got an earlier mention of the Bene Gesserit and their knowledge and involvement in the uprising in Arrakis and stuff like that. And so I just feel like

whatever is going on other than Desmond Hart who seems to confound them. I assume they have their hands in it. This Atreides being part of a rebellion, that's interesting to me. Again, thinking of

our immediate association with House Atreides, which has to do with sort of like honor and all this sort of stuff like that. But like, are we making the incorrect assumptions about a character just based on the fact that his last name is Atreides? Yeah. Maybe we're in Acolyte territory again. Are we sure the Jedi are good? Are we sure the Atreides are good? We also...

This is the most anyone will ever reference the Acolyte ever again. I know. I meant to shout out the whispers also in the agony scene, which was very Acolyte-coded as well. We love spooky whispers. Lots of whispers. Yes, it's true. And lastly, I guess, because I know you're very invested in the emperor-empress relationship. Yes. And we did get what you forecasted to some extent, which was the Empress pulling the strings on

of Desmond and being the one to encourage the emperor, hey, use this guy, right? Don't take this pawn, this piece off the board to please your enemies. And again, from the official companion pod, your fave Jodi May on the empress said that inside her there's a Tony Soprano who's desperate to get out. Now I know you still haven't seen The Sopranos, right? But I assume you get the reference. And I... Wait, what? I...

Was he bad? It's complicated. Did he kill some people? Yeah, but he did therapy about it. That's what I know about Tony Soprano. I liked the Mark Strong line, the emperor line, my wife is a champion of debate, which was a very like...

you know, kind of respectful, but also kind of condescending way to say that she disagrees with you a lot. He's a big my wife guy. He's like, my wife loves religion. My wife loves to debate. My wife.

Yeah, but clearly she still wields a lot of influence over him. Even if he says he remembers things differently, she is still able to sway him. I would recommend people watch her face when Desmond does not fully...

burn to a crisp. Yeah. The Ducrucese, but, but, you know, sort of flambes him a bit. I would watch, I would watch her face in that scene. I, I have all my suspicions about Natalia are still in play here. Okay. Right.

I think she's the main antagonist. I do. I think it's going to be the Betta Desert Sisters versus the Empress. And we'll see how that turns out. Okay. I hope so. Maybe she's pulling the strings of Desmond all along. You can't survive being swallowed by a worm. You can merge with one and become a worm yourself. But you can't tell me that you can actually come out of Shaihulud's maw just bigger and better than ever, even if Boba did it.

It's not feasible. Yeah, where's your Beskar? I don't think you had any. All right. I'm sorry to have imposed my manly energy on the sisterhood here, but as Tula says, we do what we must. And it's an agony to miss out on Mal, but only this once.

And as you said, Desmond says to Valya that her greatest fear is that not that no one will hear her, but that they'll hear her and just won't care, which is also a podcaster's greatest fear. And House of R listeners, they always care. So it's always a pleasure to talk to them and to you. Oh, yeah. Thanks, Ben. Bye. Bye.

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All right. This is the second half of the show. I'm still Joanna Robinson. And this is, I don't know what, supervillain Van Lathan alone in his manifesto booth. Hello, man. How are you doing? This is good. This is where I tell Superman what my evil plan is. Why would you tell him? Why wouldn't you just do your evil plan? Because that's what, that's them's the rules. This isn't going to go well for you. This is them's the rules. I already know. Lex and Superman won.

Yeah. Superman comes to Lex's underground lair and Lex says the funniest line in any Superman movie that's ever been said. Superman kicks through the door and Lex says, oh, by the way, my attorneys will be in contact with you about the damage to the door. Hilarious. And then after that, he proceeds to tell Superman exactly what he's going to do. So that's what you have to do to the heroes to give them a chance to beat you.

And you feel like you and Gene Hackman are on the same level? Is that what you're saying? As far as that, not anything else. Like, I'm better at basketball than he is. Perhaps. He's a better actor and performer. But in telling... Because I don't know. He might be able to hoop the whole Hoosier thing. But in telling a superhero what the plan is, we're exactly equal.

We're here today not to talk about Lex Luthor and his various mishaps and blunders. We're here today to talk about Dune, a book that you read and texted me about. And you made the mistake. You texted me. You told me you read it.

And now we're going to make content out of it. So welcome to the podcast. You also watched Dune Prophecy a bit, which I actually didn't know before I asked you to do the show. So we might talk about that a bit as well. Obviously, in the first half of the show, I talked to Ben Lindbergh about the last couple of episodes of Dune Prophecy. But I wanted to talk to you about the book because I'm really curious. First of all, I love this journey for you that you've been taking through all of our favorite episodes.

heavy sci-fi and fantasy series. And you are, have you started fellowship? Where are you with fellowship? Started it. Started listening to it. I started listening to it. I was supposed to be October, but I'm just, I had so much lore going on that I didn't get to it until actually like a four, a couple of days ago.

And I feel like... You were so not ready to read Fellowship that you read all of Dune first. Well, I started reading Dune before, but the problem with Dune was that I was doing Dune wrong. Hold on, let me put my phone on do not disturb. I was doing Dune wrong, and I'll tell you why. I had started to listen to Dune because I'm listening to these books. I had started to listen to Dune

Like at night, like when I was, you know, it was like an hour, an hour before I go to sleep, I listen to Dune. The problem is the way that Dune is written, if you listen to it at night, it'll put you right to sleep. It's, this is the, this is the chapter of Muad'Dib. And then it goes into the entire thing. And, and you're, and it's very encyclopedic.

When you listen to it, I'm sure when you read it, it's different. He said the chapter one, the thing that she comes on there and she of Muad'Dib. And then you, and then it tells the whole thing and then you'll be sleep. So I kept doing the thing that you do in an audio book where you listen. You wouldn't even get past the like princess Irulan, like epigraph for every chapter. You're like already out. You're done. Yeah.

And then you have to come back and listen over and over and over again. So I just started listening to it while I was shooting basketball, while I was focused and shooting basketball. And then I was able to get through it. And then I was, you know, I started, I went back to Lorde videos and now I'm starting with Fellowship. Okay. So the review you gave me of Dune over text was, you said, I read Dune. It's weird. Maybe too weird. Is that how you still feel about it? Okay. So I don't want to offend the Dune fans.

Okay. But because obviously you have seen the original Dune movie as well, which is very weird. However, it exists in a pocket of 80s weirdness that for some reason was acceptable. There were movies like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Dark Crystal and all that stuff. It's odd. 80s shit. Legend is weird as shit. Deeply weird. And so it's like that movie is weird.

They de-weirded these two Dune movies. Big time. Big time de-weirding of these two. What do you...

What weirdness are you missing most in the Denis Villeneuve movies? The little girl. It's the little girl and it's not the metal diaper on Sting. The metal diaper on Sting, super duper weird. Yeah. Aaliyah of the knife, super weird. They do a little bit of talking to unborn baby, but not like it's done in the book at all. And then all of this stuff...

Even the Harkonnens are... The whole thing, there's just... The Space Faring Guild. A little bit more talk about them in there. That's weird. That's weird. That stuff is totally not in the movie. So weird in a way that you didn't like or weird in a way that you liked? Weird in a way that this is high fantasy. And weird in a way that, to me...

why the book has had so much staying power over the decades. Why so? Because it is a completely unique and different experience, totally different world. Like you can watch the new movie and think that you're sort of getting into a story about, um,

Stuff that you've seen before, like Desert Prophecy. It's a mixture of Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars and all of that. You can reference things. The book itself, when you read it, even the narrative structure of the book, it's really not like anything that I had read before. And remember, I'm not a high fantasy guy. So the more I got into, I guess...

uh, Game of Thrones, there's some similarities in the way that the books are structured, right? In terms of, uh, the POVs of the characters and things like that. But if you are into this world, you can only get this world in these books. Like you can't read very much that feels similar. Um, like even when you're watching Star Wars and stuff like that, like it's,

Very original, but it's also very referential. Like, you feel Flash Gordon. You feel all these old serials and stuff like that. Dune is, like, very... I mean, you have to commit. Having read Dune, like, the whole... absorbing the whole thing, do you see... maybe you already saw, but do you see maybe even more, like, how much Star Wars and Game of Thrones took from Dune? Star Wars, for sure.

Yeah. Star Wars very directly rips it off. Yeah. Like, very directly rips it off. Game of Thrones! And not in a way that I'm, like, mad about, but it's just sort of, like, it's really fascinating when you read or watch something that came before and you're like, oh, oh, I see where you got all of that. Do you know what I mean? Yep. Game of Thrones, I can see, particularly in the way the narrative of Dune is laid out. It's a very easy book to listen to because...

It's giving you different accounts that are like historical and stuff like that. So it's telling you these things and it's almost like it's giving you the chapters and the contents and it's mentally bookmarking it for you. There's a small similarity in Game of Thrones in that like some of the things that you're seeing when you're reading particularly like A Song of Ice and Fire, you're seeing it through a particular character's point of view.

And you're getting there almost like the Bible, to be honest with you, if you want to talk about referential stuff, like almost like different books of the Bible, which I guess that kind of makes sense, particularly with some of this other stuff. And that was very similar in those two books, because a lot of times with the high fantasy stuff, I lose my point of reference so easy. Like I don't know which stories I'm supposed to be caring about. I'm not quite sure what,

how to navigate things intellectually. And it makes me feel stupid a little bit, but listening to these books, I'm being for real. I used to always, you're just, you're just not stupid, but like, but, but the point is in any story, you have to care about the characters. And if you're rooted in the experience of the character, the like individual experience of the character, then you can follow them into the most complex bat shit stuff. And that's something that I think Dune does really well. Paul is, in my opinion, like,

not a lot different, but a lot of the criticisms that I had about, not criticisms, but a lot of the observations that I had about particularly Dune 2, they just don't hold up in the book. Like, what's happening with Paul and how Paul is changing and the decisions and the choices that he has to make in terms of, I get, I mean, I guess there were still people that were confused when the book came out about whether or not he was the hero of the book. But,

Either knowing those criticisms or watching the movie, it's so much clearer how much he compromises himself when there's a little bit more density behind what it is that you're reading. Because in Dune II, I still argue that there are people that watch that movie that aren't going to be convinced that Atreides is like, that he's lost himself by the end of it. Right. In the book, it's like, it's like clear.

that things are going off the rails for him to me. And I remember this conversation that you and I and like, you know, our various like ringer colleagues had around the release of Dune II, the conversation about like the white saver narrative and your point, which I agree with it. It's like,

You can't assume that people have read the book. You can't assume that they'll come with all of that extra context into the movie. I don't have a way of watching that movie without the book context because I just already knew it walking into it. So I have no way of... I take your...

I took your opinion as, like, I valued it in terms of you saying that you didn't think Denis Villeneuve did a good enough job of making us understand that Paul Atreides isn't the, like, big damn hero of Dune, that Paul Atreides is a cautionary tale inside of that story. But I do want to ask you about that, like, having read the book, how that sort of informed the way you rewatch or

Or think about these movies. So he becomes a much more overwhelming force in the book to me. Like, he starts really fucking over people. Like, he becomes, like, truly...

Muad'Dib and all of that. Like there's a lot that goes into his eventual transformation into this thing that people kind of fear that they're like a fucking friend at the point that the, the, the little girl reveals who she is. They're scared. They're like, Oh my God. Like, you know, like they're, they fear him. Right. Um, I'll take it back to penguin for a second. And this is how you have to spoon feed audiences visually. Sometimes the moment that penguin like chokes Vic out, spoiler alert,

is fuck this guy. Because if he hadn't done that, I still maintain that we're going into the Batman 2 and the third Batman movie, which will almost surely be made no matter what anybody says, with a sense of ambiguity with the Penguin because he was sort of likable. That moment in Dune 2 doesn't exist.

And whereas in a book, you can get that over chapters and small little decisions, like small little things can be kind of like, they can be played up to where you get it. So they're compounded. In Dune 2, he, it, once again, and this is not an opinion, it's a feeling because Dune

there's less intellectualism that goes into it than anything else, than anything. It just doesn't feel that way. In Dune 2, he gets up there. He's mean to people. They all end up bending the knee. He kills the guy who is essentially the bad guy. Then he goes and he says he's going to take Arrakis and he's with the Fremen who have been positioned as the indigenous people of the land who are being exploited by everyone else who visits there. And you leave and you're like, yay, Paul.

And everybody goes, nah, Paul went too far. And I'm like, I don't know. I wish somebody would do that. When you, when you, I mean, you and I didn't really like hash this out on a podcast at the time, but like when you, I'm genuinely curious when you watch Paul Atreides at the end of Dune, towards the end of Dune 2, he's, he's gone through the agony. He's had the, you know, the transformation, the,

And then he goes like stomping through a crowd of people in like all black with a black coat billowing behind him. And he just like starts getting on, you know, gets on stage and starts screaming at people.

To you, that reads to you as like, this is a fucking badass who's going to go fuck things up on behalf of the people that we care about. And so it's okay that he looks as scary as he looks because he's our scary. He's scary on our side of the fight. Is that how that feels to you? It's part of the toxic masculinity that has been imbued into me over the course of 40 plus years. I mean this. It's like...

In a lot of these westerns and all of this, it's a point where in Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, before he does his revenge ride, you know what I mean? He's, I'm coming for you guys and hell is coming with me. You know what I mean? Like, Doc looks at him. It's not revenge he wants. It's a reckoning, right? And you're like, okay, he's got to go kill a bunch of people. Not great. But these are the people that have been targeting his family. Right.

With Paul in that scene, I get it that he's become everything that he didn't want to become, but it seemed like a necessary transformation in order for him to deliver freedom to a group of people. And once they went along with it, which is another thing, once they went along with it with no coercion whatsoever,

he just, once they went along with it, you felt like, oh my God, he's the man. But like I said, when you read the book, it just reads different. It's a slower burn to get to that point. And he kind of enters into all of the shit that it seems like his family, like his family was destroyed for a very specific reason because of what they represented. And rather than continue on the trajectory of what his family was,

He went the complete opposite way in order to be a part of it. And it's all kind of like right out there for you. And if I remember correctly, your interpretation of like,

Because in watching the movie, having read the book, my interpretation was that Zendaya's character, Chani, was the voice of, this is fucked up. This is too far. I can't hang with him. I don't endorse this. We said we wouldn't do this. This is not what my people should be doing.

And she leaves. And my memory is that you were like, she was heartbroken. She was personally jilted and upset. And having read in the book that he doesn't jilt her in the book. It's not even in there. Yeah. Well, then this is a decision Denis made to show the opposition that

to Paul, the like indigenous opposition to Paul, that it's not a personal heartbreak, that it's like, it's like, it is not, not a personal heartbreak, but it's also an intellectual, you know, point of view, disagreement. Honestly, I'm not going to go too far with it because we're in a new America. America has decided we don't have to be

We don't have to be compassionate and woke anymore. Joe, we can do whatever we want. Oh. You and me? Whatever the fuck we want? We can do whatever the fuck we want. Go ahead, Joe. Drop a couple N-words. No, I'm just joking. So he robbed her of her agency a little bit. He made it a matter of the heart. And that reduces lady character sometimes to...

emotion. He didn't... Having read Chani in the book, who's just sort of like, Paul's great, love Paul, on team Paul. Oh, she becomes his cheerleader. She's down with it forever. Exactly. She just never interrogates him, never questions him. And I think that what Denis Villeneuve did with the Chani character is so much more interesting on the screen. The fact that he made her an op and not a concubine is definitely more interesting.

However, I do feel like in the moment, because I ruin movies in the theater. I just react. You know how things happen. I was there when you reacted. But really, that kind of enhanced the whole experience for me personally. I could not get over that. I literally could not get over that. And so when she's riding away, it doesn't, it seemed like if you were going to-

Van, when Timothy Chalamet as Paul chooses Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan over Zendaya's character Chani, which is not really what's happening, but is mostly what's happening in that scene. Van, you stood up. Yeah. I screamed, what the fuck? You said, what the fuck, in the theater. I was not expecting that. That was great. So when she's riding away, it looks like she's riding away. Now, she had been keeping an eye on him for a long time in terms of what he was going through.

But when she's riding away, it looks like she's riding away because her heart's broken. But to your point, I guess the character, I guess she does have at least a little bit more of a point of view in terms of Paul in the movie. But it's still, she still kind of gets reduced down to someone who is upset that he chose the blonde over her. I just don't think that's why she's leaving. I think she was already out on him before he did that. You're probably right, yeah.

Okay. Did reading the book make you like the Denis Villeneuve movies more or less? What do you think? So this is reverse in Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones, the stuff that I've been getting into, deepens my love for Game of Thrones like you couldn't even imagine. I feel like I'm the man while I'm watching Game of Thrones.

Are you just like re-watching it now or what are you doing on your lore video journey? I re-watch it. I'll tell people, you don't even know what they're talking about. You don't even know what they're talking about. They serve together here. You don't even know what happened. I know. They're talking about, they're referencing stuff and you don't even know. You don't even know why Jon Arryn is so important to Baratheon. That was their dad, basically. They went to live with him. You don't know anything about any of it. You're an ignorant fool.

Dune, it hasn't changed it very much. Okay. Pause on Dune, even though that's why we're here today. I cannot wait for your Dunkin' Egg coverage because you going into Dunkin' Egg having read those books is going to be...

Incredible. A Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Check it out on the Ring of Verse next year. Dune, it hasn't really changed very much. Yeah. Dune was a very dense experience. And what you're doing when you're watching the Dune stuff is...

And I have rewatched both of the movies since I finished. I actually rewatched Dune 2 on Saturday, and that was because I watched the first episode of Dune Prophecy, and I liked it so much more than I thought. Everybody was talking so much shit, I thought it was whack. And then I watch it, and it's decidedly not whack. Like, it's very good. Have you watched just that first episode or all three? Okay. What do you...

I gotta tell you, I'm like middling on it. Interesting. Middling plus. I don't think it's like amazing, but I don't think it's terrible. And I like the third episode the best out of all of them. What are you liking about it? Okay, so take like the first 15 minutes of the pilot. Bene Gesserit, young Harkonnen, all of that stuff. The first time she uses the voice. Spoilers for everyone. Spoilers.

That's okay. They're this far into a podcast about DuPont. First time she uses the voice, there is a betrayal. She murders another member of the Bene Gesserit. There is a power struggle between them. They're setting up to me stakes that forgetting about what I know about the story going forward, it deepens my understanding of these groups.

And it seems like real shit. It seems like actual stuff. There's a real schism within the Bene Gesserit. Then there is a weak emperor. Then there is a plot against him. Then there is a mysterious soldier with a mysterious power. Like the scenes feel meaningful. It doesn't seem like IP whoring, which it is.

to keep people on max and to tide us over until Messiah gets here. It seems like they have an actual story to tell. Little boy, weird mechanical toy. He gets burnt up. There are actual scenes where I go, oh shit, I did not expect that. And I wasn't expecting the movie to be anything other than just

trying to sell us on more Dune to keep the Dune shit going. But they seem like they have an actual story to tell and I don't know what's going to happen. What I don't know is this, because I didn't look it up. Is this based on any actual work?

Ish. So Brian Herbert, Frank's son, wrote a number of books and there's like a trilogy sort of about the various schools, one of them being about the sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit. And so this is like loosely based on that trilogy of books. So there are some characters that are in the books that are in here, but it's like, it takes place at a different

time period than the books is my understanding so that you can kind of reference what happened in the books when talking about this, but it's sort of enough off the main story that you can still be surprised and confused. And Desmond Hart

played by Travis Fimmel, who was from Raised by Wolves and Vikings, is not in the books. So nobody has any idea what the hell is going on with him at all. You've never seen a power like his in the books at all. Burning people's skins up because he got ate by the worm? Yeah. But did he? Maybe he didn't. This is my thing. This is something else. Is that... Yeah. Can you... Do you think you... I mean, like...

I would just be really surprised if someone survived getting eaten by a sandworm. But if you did get eaten by a sandworm, I thought he was going to ride the sandworm. Like when they first showed him there and the thumpers were going, I thought it was going to show him riding the sandworm. He was like in with the fremen or something. But then he's got this kind of power to burn people alive from across the galaxy. This is my only problem with Dune Prophecy. This is the literal only problem. It's 10,000 years before.

Is it because sisters are doing it for themselves? By themselves. And it's 10,000 years before, right? Yeah. That's too long. That's too long. That is way too long. And I say that because that just makes me think that if you haven't figured out Arrakis and how to do this stuff in 10,000 years, 10,000 years, if they'd have done 200 years,

they're a slow developing society if it's 10,000 years think about 10,000 years ago for us we wasn't doing we weren't on shit you know what I'm saying and like 10,000 years is like that's a very I think about that all the time I think

the atreides family 10 000 years after like all of this stuff 10 000 years they haven't figured some of this stuff out it kind of gets the same family i mean this is true in the text but the same family is uh they're still the emperors 10 000 years exact family for 10 000 years don't do that the the um the i'm forgetting their names the targaryens were on top what 300 years

Long ass time, yeah. But a 300 year dynasty makes sense. Not 10,000 years. Yeah. Like that makes sense. They end up fucking it up. Anyway, but I enjoyed the show. I think I enjoyed the show and maybe for the same reasons that I'm enjoying Skeleton and the crew so much. Number one is because there was a void for something that I was super into besides Superman and Lois, which I'm the only person that will watch. It's a fantastic show.

But also because I think that my expectations for both shows were tempered for some reason. Skeleton Crew because of the pluck and Doom Prophecy just because people were saying that it wasn't very good. But I don't really even feel like, even when the lady is on the table and she's going through her whole Bene Gesserit ritual,

That agony, right? She's going through the agony and she's fighting it with her cells. And she's seeing her great-grandma and all of that stuff is happening. And they're trying to talk to her and get the... It's a great fucking scene. That was great. I loved that. I loved that. And I really liked all of the...

Ben and I talked about this, but I actually really liked all the flashback stuff in episode three. I thought that stuff was really good. I think the young actresses who are playing Valia and Tula are really, really good. I think it's like just some of the young royal palace stuff is not doing it for me. And especially when they go into the clubs, that stuff all feels very, I don't know, cheap to me. It looks kind of cheap, and it feels kind of cheap. And there's a lot

of exposition, heavy lifting exposition that they're doing in these conversations. But like the fact that the third episode is my favorite is only good news because it could possibly just get better and better from there. And that's what I'm hoping is true. But yeah, I mean, I don't think it's like an empty IP cash grab. I think they do want to tell a story. I just don't know that it's executed properly.

Six episodes is a weird length to try to execute a story on and stuff like that. So I don't know. It's just not really hitting for me in the way that I think they want it to. I'm trying not to only compare it to Game of Thrones, but they're intentionally trying to...

reach out to that Thrones vibe. And so it's hard to ignore often. So it's a game of Thrones. Not, um, I mean, to be honest, it's a game of Thrones knockoff and the way, even the way they've oriented the story is a game of Thrones knockoff series warrior, uh, emperor, everybody coming for his shit, Dukes and all of that stuff. And then just the random fucking, which for some reason in game of Thrones, uh, would make sense. It would deepen a character to show, uh,

in the throes of passion with someone. You understood things about people's appetites, their sexuality, their vulnerabilities, all of that type of stuff, right? Even, what's his name that, I'm not forgetting his name, that guy, his wiener cut off? Dion Greyjoy. Yeah. His sexual appetite and all of that stuff leading up to what happens to him, poor bastard, leading up to what happens to him

That all pays itself out. A lot of the times, it seems like some of the amorous stuff that happens in this show is just there to remind you of Game of Thrones. Or to meet a quota, some sort of HBO Sunday night quota, you know? I agree. It's... I don't mean to be like... And maybe we need Mallory on this to sort of balance me. I don't mean to be like a weird prude about it. It's just like, it seems...

Like sweaty. Like it's there to just sort of like be literally titillating and not actually give us anything in the story that is more interesting than other parts of it. Yeah, please. Please, please. Okay, so your entire worldview on fantasy has infected me and taken over. Yeah. Very impressionable. Okay. And I read Dunkin' Egg. I read it many times because...

I didn't realize when I was reading it that the- You were reading the whole thing? That was it. That there were three different novellas. I thought these were three different chapters. So I would fall asleep on them too and go back to it, whatever. After Dune, I'm not going to do all of A Song of Ice and Fire. I got that big book you told me to get, but I'm not reading all that shit. It's too much. Right, but you're reading World of Ice and Fire. World of Ice and Fire, yes. After Lord of the Rings, what else? What else is there?

You know what I really want you to read that I think you would love? And I was just talking about this on our hype meter that we did the other day. Dragonlance. Have you ever heard of Dragonlance? What was that? This is like so extremely your nerdy 80s shit that I think you would really love it. Like, do you think you can go there with me? You think you can go to Dragonlance? I'm into it. What is the premise? It's like, it's like, it's...

Like D&D, Lord of the Rings-y sort of thing, but it's like the best version of that. Dragonlance. Dragonlance. I'll give you a book. I'll bring you a book. I'll see you tomorrow. I'll bring you a book. And like, I also re-watched a little bit of the movie with Matthew Broderick and Rutger Hauer. Remember that? Yeah. Ladyhawk. Ladyhawk. It was on and I just watched it. I normally would cut that shit off, but I just watched it again. I like it. 80s fantasy. 80s fantasy. It's our time. It's the best. It's the best.

The best. All right, man. Thank you for reading a book or five books. You're the best. Thank you for having me. House of R, my sisters. I love you guys. I'll see you later this week in person. I'm thrilled. Can't wait. Can't wait to see the resurgence. Are you showing people the hairline or are you keeping it in the hat? Show me. Look at this.

Ooh. Yeah. I love it. All this hair is going to fall out, though. Then the hair is going to be on its place. Then it'll really resurge. All right.

Stay tuned for the hair growth cycle on Van Lathan's head. I can't wait to see how that all develops. Mallory and I will be back with Skeleton Crew, which even Van Lathan likes, later this week. We'll also have a fun interview on that episode as well. The whole crew is getting together later this week for a special project, so stay tuned for that.

And thank you to John Richter and Steve Allman for your video work on this. Thank you to Steve Allman in general for all of the other work he does on this show. Thank you to Arjuna Rinkapal for everything, including helping me figure out my travel today. You're the best, Arjuna. And to Joe Mia Dinoran on the social. And we will see you soon. Bye.