I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that Dune: Part Two rocked my world. Thanks to its glorious sandworms, Austin Butler’s freaky Feyd-Rautha, and so much more, it quickly became one of my favorite films of the year.
But just because you love something doesn’t mean you can’t have a problem with it, and boy, did I have a problem with how Dune: Part Two handled one scene in particular: Lady Jessica’s (Rebecca Ferguson) Spice Agony.
What’s the Spice Agony ritual?
The Spice Agony is a Bene Gesserit ritual where a Sister takes some of the Water of Life, a spice-rich poison derived from baby sandworms. Thanks to years of training, a Sister can transform the poison within her body and render it harmless. In return, she unlocks her genetic memory, meaning the memories and wisdom of all her ancestors, and becomes a Reverend Mother. Failure means death.
Jessica takes the Water of Life in order to replace the Fremen’s dying Reverend Mother. However, since she’s pregnant, the Water of Life also transforms her unborn daughter Alia Atreides (Anya Taylor-Joy), effectively giving her a Reverend Mother-level of consciousness and power in the womb.
This is all supremely strange stuff, brought to life in Frank Herbert’s Dune with a surreal scene where Lady Jessica communicates with the Fremen’s Reverend Mother Ramallo within their “mutual mind’s eye.” You can feel the deep connection between the two Bene Gesserit, the terror about what this means for Alia, and the overwhelming barrage of information Ramallo gives Jessica.
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Rebecca Ferguson in “Dune: Part Two.”
Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
But in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, this pivotal sequence is given short shrift. Jessica writhes around in agony, we see the vibrant blue Water of Life flowing through her body (and around her fetus), then the Reverend Mother cries out in fear about her being pregnant. There’s no sense of the memory aspect of it all, nor do we get any of the fascinating interiority of the scene in the novel. Understandably, there are many things Dune: Part Two had to change during the adaptation process. Yet dulling such a fascinating scene yields underwhelming results, to the point that the sequence almost feels like an afterthought.
Dune: Prophecy‘s portrayal of Spice Agony is terrifying — and great.
Enter Dune: Prophecy, HBO’s prequel series about the early days of the Bene Gesserit order. In the show’s second episode, young acolyte Sister Lila (Chloe Lea) goes through the Spice Agony in the hopes of gleaning information from her ancestors that could help the Sisters face down certain ruin. The circumstances of her Agony are far different from Jessica’s, yet the scenes are still in conversation with each other, given that they both portray different versions of the same ritual. And honestly? Dune: Prophecy‘s take comes out on top.
As Lila begins the Agony, we see shots of the Water of Life swirling with her blood, a visual straight out of Villeneuve’s film. But after that, we delve into something stranger and scarier. Lila winds up in a vast cavern full of faceless Sisters — a perfect physical representation of Lila’s ancestral memory. There, she meets her grandmother, Sister Dorotea (Camilla Beeput), who gives her cryptic messages about the oncoming reckoning. She also imparts the memory of her death to Lila, showing her how young Valya Harkonnen (Jessica Barden) murdered her with the Voice. Here, we see the memories of Lila’s ancestors pouring into her, similar to Jessica’s experience receiving Ramallo’s memories in Herbert’s Dune.
Dune: Prophecy takes the Agony one step farther, emphasizing the horror of the process. The Sisters in the cave don’t move naturally. Some shamble towards Lila. Others crawl along the ceiling and down the walls. They surround and attack her, falling on her body like zombies devouring a corpse. It’s an overwhelming sequence, both for Lila and the audience, and it captures the do-or-die panic of the Agony in a much more visceral sense than Dune: Part Two.
Dune: Part Two also has the added element of Alia’s presence, and she quickly becomes the focus of the scene. But in shifting that focus almost entirely to her, we lose some of Jessica’s journey. The Agony is a massive moment in her story, but her physical and mental experience falls to the wayside. With Dune: Prophecy, you stay with Lila the entire time, experiencing this taxing, deadly, and strange trial alongside her every step of the way. That immersion pushes Dune: Prophecy‘s Agony to the top, righting one of Dune: Part Two‘s (few) wrongs.
Dune: Prophecy is now streaming on Max. New episodes premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.
