‘Dune: Prophecy’ episode 1: Mother Raquella’s vision, explained

HBO’s Dune: Prophecy is already making good on its name, delivering some ominous prophetic visions in its first episode.

The first vision comes courtesy of Mother Superior Raquella (Cathy Tyson), the founder of the Sisterhood that will one day come to be known as the Bene Gesserit. On her deathbed, she foresees a terrible future, with an apocalyptic judgment known as Tiran-Arafel coming for the Sisterhood. Much of what she sees in her vision already comes to pass in episode 1, but some images are more symbolic or have yet to happen. Let’s break it down.

A sandworm attacks the Sisterhood School.

Raquella’s vision kicks off with a cameo from Dune‘s biggest star. I’m speaking, of course, of Shai-hulud, the mighty sandworm of Arrakis.

In the vision, a sandworm barrels toward the Sisterhood School. But now, instead of being on the rainy planet of Wallach IX, the school is in the middle of the Arrakis desert, making it the perfect meal for a hungry worm.

Of course, the Sisterhood School won’t magically teleport to Arrakis in the coming episodes, so we can rest assured that this image won’t literally come to pass. However, the message behind it is clear: The biggest threat to the Sisterhood will come from Arrakis.

As of the end of episode 1, that threat is almost certainly soldier Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), who despises the Sisterhood and wishes to rid the Imperium of their influence. He also has a strong connection to Arrakis. Not only is he the sole survivor of an attack on Emperor Javicco Corrino’s (Mark Strong) spice-mining operation, he was also eaten by a sandworm and somehow lived to tell the tale. (At least, according to a hologram Javicco finds.) Therefore, the sandworm attacking the school in Raquella’s vision represents Desmond’s crusade against the Sisterhood, as well as the strange powers he seems to have inherited from his worm time. Speaking of those powers…

Some gnarly burns, courtesy of Desmond Hart.

Without even giving us a beat to recover from the spectacular sandworm appearance, Raquella’s vision leaps into some gnarly images of burned flesh. By the end of episode 1, we know exactly who got burned, and how.

The burn victims are Reverend Mother Kasha (Jihae) and 9-year-old Pruitt Richese (Charlie Hodson-Prior). But they didn’t get scorched in a fire. Instead, Desmond used some strange new power to burn Pruitt to death. At the same time, on an entirely different planet, Kasha suffered the same fate, suggesting some greater connection between the two incidents.

These burns tie back to Raquella’s last words to young Valya Harkonnen (Jessica Barden): “You will be the one to see the burning truth and know.”

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Clearly, the burning truth is Kasha’s death and Desmond’s ability, which may or may not come from being eaten by a worm. In the aftermath of Kasha’s death, years after Raquella’s passing, Valya (Emily Watson) makes that connection, whispering, “I see, Mother. I see.”

There’s a clear horror there, as Valya recognizes that the arrival of the burning truth means the prophesied reckoning can’t be too far behind. Has all her work been for nothing? Worse, has it brought about the very reckoning she wanted to stave off?

Bloodied hands, golden thrones, and plans gone to waste.

Next up in the vision, we see flashes of Valya’s plan to put a Sister on the Golden Lion Throne of the Imperium. She’d hoped that Sister would be Princess Ynez Corrino (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina), whose red engagement gown makes an appearance in the vision, along with the Golden Lion Throne. Based on Ynez’s presence here, it seems like her engagement to Pruitt and her eventual ascension to the throne aren’t going to stop Tiran-Arafel — they’re a part of it.

Adding to this sense that Valya’s actions will cause this great disaster are shots of bloody hands and a trail of blood. They call to mind Valya’s murder of her adversary Sister Dorotea (Camilla Beeput), when she used the Voice to compel her to slit her own throat. The blood from Dorotea’s corpse trickled down stone stairs just like we see in Raquella’s vision, but there is a small difference: In the vision, we see a copy of the religious text known as the Orange Catholic Bible next to the blood. That’s not the case in Dorotea’s death scene.

The Bible in the vision could represent Dorotea’s own piety, which was the reason she opposed Valya and Raquella’s breeding index in the first place. However, the more foreboding possibility is that this footage is from a death we haven’t seen yet.

What’s with those spooky blue eyes?

Raquella’s vision ends with the strangest image yet. We are swallowed by a sandworm — POV: You’re living the dream — presumably like Desmond was. As the worm’s teeth close above us and spice swirls in the air, we see the vastness of space. Then, two metallic blue eyes burst open among the stars, and a strange, robotic sound rings out.

The blue eyes, the way they flash when they open, and the sound that accompanies them are an almost exact match with the eyes of the robotic lizard Pruitt smuggled into his and Ynez’s engagement party. At this point in the Dune timeline, thinking machines like the lizard are freshly forbidden following the Butlerian Jihad. The eyes in Raquella’s vision highlight that thinking machines may still be a major threat to the Sisterhood, even though they are no longer in use.

Now, if you’ll allow me to reach further, Raquella’s visceral physical reaction to the eyes calls to mind another key element of Dune lore: The Kwisatz Haderach, and why the Bene Gesserit tried to create him in the first place.

As Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam tells Paul in Frank Herbert’s Dune, “We look down so many avenues of the past…but only feminine avenues… Yet, there’s a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the [Truthsayer] drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot — into both masculine and feminine pasts.”

With that in mind, perhaps the strange space where Raquella sees the eyes is some form of that masculine past, one that prevents Raquella and the other Sisters from looking deeper. If it is, its presence in Dune: Prophecy could be the push the Sisters need to begin refining their breeding index and kick off the terrifying eugenics project that will one day result in Paul Atreides.

New episodes of Dune: Prophecy premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.