House of R - 'Dune: Prophecy' Episodes 2 and 3 Deep-ish Dive

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

Sisterhood above all! After that, it will be Ben and Van coming in to chat with Joanna about the latest episodes of 'Dune: Prophecy'. First, Ben Lindbergh comes in for a chat with Jo about the latest plot and themes of the new HBO drama (07:01). Later, Van Lathan drops by to talk about his experience with the Dune books and lore and how it can inform this new show (1:02:18). Host: Joanna Robinson Guests: Ben Lindbergh and Van Lathan Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Video Editor: Steve Ahlman Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal, John Richter Social: Jomi Adeniran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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on Paramount Plus. reflect on this would you devote your one small lifetime to better all of humanity are you able to put the sisterhood above all even above your families if the answer is yes you may return inside if not i encourage you to meditate on whether or not you belong here welcome back to you house of our i'm joanna robinson joining me today it is not mallory reuben it is one. Benjamin Lindbergh. Hey, Ben, how you doing? Things always go great in doing 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 mouth and you and mouth. 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 to, well, I wanted 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 run it out 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 after the episode to talk to us about, to me about just Dune, Dune stuff. Before we get into any of that, programming reminders,

and what's the latest in the greatest on button mash? What do you have 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 PSI, one, I couldn't tell you. 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 and House of R, we're covering skeleton crew. We're back in Star Wars Land, which means Ben Lindberg will be joining us this week on House of Art. 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 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 pause, 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.

Ben, are you on Blue Sky? I am. Any desire? Not particularly active, but I'm there. You're there. I stick my claim. it's fine. Yeah, exactly. I said I did immediately. I was like, no one's take my username for my cold dead hands. All the Ben imposters out there. All the fake Ben accounts. So you follow us on all that 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.

I'll hold her up. And your dog. There she is for those of you watching. 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 fee, The Ringerverse YouTube fee. So that is all the stuff that you should know except for last but not least. Hobbes and Dragons at 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, Hobbes and Dragons at Demel.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 beck and call. So Havasandragons 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 about Doom Prophecy coming off of episodes two and three. First things first, before we get into any of that, Ben, what is your relationship with Dune?

How intensive of a spicehead 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 Jessert school with less eugenics, maybe more agony, if anything. I immersed myself in the white guy sci-fi canon, which I somehow squeezed into my busy social calendar. So Asimov, Clark, 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 Sahn was somewhat disavent.

disturbed by the Lynch movie. And then probably like a lot of people, I lost touch with the Duneverse until the Villanouf 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. So 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, despite at least half of the original novels being Batchit 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 1, Episode 3, Sisterhood Above All. and I think you are much more versed than a lot of people are. 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 villain of 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 this season. There's only six episodes of the 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 Lauerian release it? 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. 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 world-building, this many characters, this much backstory and timeline hopping in several episodes. 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 had Mal crammed in last time. But it's also series like Foundation and raised by Wolves, which, to be fair, only I have seen. But those are- No, it's you and at least like five other people. Yeah. It's definitely the casting director on House of the Dragon, I will say that. Yes. Yes. 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.

But identical acting choices and costumes, it's kind of uncanny. So this is sort of Raised by Wolf Season 3 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 have. outlined last time, you know, Nes in episode two saying, we're all just pieces on the board to be played in the pursuit of power and spice. 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, I'm like fairly midly on this show so far. I actually really did like episode three. I do. I know some people were like thrown by the flashback, especially like Arjuna was like worried that we're

getting acolyte vibes, getting an entirely flashback episode in the middle of a short season, which is a really, a female accolate based short season episode three extended flashback. Yeah, the track records, 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 with the younger version of these two sisters. And so, yeah, so I'm optimistic, you know, that things could always go up and up and up from here. At least this isn't like the worst episode of the season. And, 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. I'm hearing all over the places, like this is like early afts sci-fi channel,

something Mal and I talked about a little bit, but I'm just hearing this constantly. And, you know, and then a lot of people are like, well, a lot of 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. 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 this 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 had now alluded to last time. And this is an issue with a lot of sci-fi and fantasy franchises, mostly for off-screen, 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 Bill Nouve. And so you want to give people a way into this world by having it look somewhat familiar, even if there's a lot of lower that you're not familiar with. But then how do you square that with how has nothing changed over these eons? And I kind of wrestle with Star Wars or Alien or Blade Runner, all these shows that or series that kind of came to us in the late 70s, early 80s, are forever frozen in time looking like they looked 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 then. 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, they're in-universe reasons why it's so static, just because you have the Benjessor, manipulating everything. 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's. 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 like the idea that if we rid ourselves of AI concept, we might slow down as a, like 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, like, hold me up too much. I think the only one really is, is that is the hand-hand combat shield technology that just looks identical. Like, you know what I mean? If it didn't look identical, but almost the same, then maybe. But yeah, I mean, I also understand from like an, yeah, like you establish this look. Also for an IP, IP reasons, right? It's like the draw, the allure of IP is that you're serving at 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, that 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 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 stuff. I've also been struck, I think, by just what a world we're living in where HBO 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, prestige on HBO now is House of Our Ring orverse content. It's Thrones and the Last of Us. It's, 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 it. I thought the Peng was really good.

But as much as I love all this House of Our stuff and as much as we love to have content to cover, you don't want to miss that, like, 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 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, Zazlov and his various initiatives, you know, kept the IP TV machine going in that regard.

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 3 being my favorite so far. Not so much because of what I'm calling the red engagement because unlike in the red wedding, we'd didn't really know the victims here, RIP, ORI. So, you know, it's just... The golden retriever Atrates? Yeah. Yeah.

Is it just... Did ORI remind you, distractingly, of Steve? Or was it just me? Oh, that's the you thing, but I love that for you. From the neck up. I haven't seen the rest of Steve, but I was facially... 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 Thalia 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 sort of who are we rooting for standpoint, a front of me 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 Tula, kill all of these Atreides men and she's like, wow, that sucks. I was like, well, you know, and she's like, on the one hand, she's like, you know, she knows enough about noon to know Atreides, good, hearken, and 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, I don't know. They're a few, you know, and I was just like finding myself justifying a mass, you know, killing.

She, you know, she put stuff in the Kool-Aid at the Atreides Hunt. And I thought it was just a pretty compelling sequence. Even watching it, even figuring out, but even before they start chanting Atradis that she has infiltrated the Atradis camp. Watching her have her own conflict about what she's doing here. 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 blood on her hands than her older sister does?

These are questions. But I thought that was like, I don't know, I thought all of that was really well done. And even though we don't know the Atreidesmen, they were, except for, of course, R.T. Barnes and House of the Dragon, And that might be my last. No, it won't be my last Game of Thrones reference. But, like, I was, like, with her.

And I was really feeling it. I thought the young actress playing her was really, really good. And I was really intrigued by that plot. And also just intrigued by how much we didn't know. And how much can you justify in something like that? What is war? What isn't? All that source.

Yeah. And how much of that relationship was real? Was their 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 Harkening. And he doesn't. He's like, oh, that's cool. Like, we can chart our own future.

We are not who they say we are. Right. What is, what is, Paige? 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. Right.

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 Montague's and Capulet's situation? And we could have charted our own path. And is this Valia 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 Toul is 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? Because she was raised by a wolf herself sort of in Valiah. and, you know, in a way, I guess, did Valia engineer call, in a sense, by perpetuating and deepening this feud? Because even as she's worried about the sisterhood and the future, 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 hearken in first, she's the one who maybe leads, yons down the road, thousands of years down the road to Paul and everything that comes after that. And, you know, there are other parallels like Valia 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, And much like Valia's kind of pressing Tula to do with Lila, right?

Because Tula has that relationship with Lila and Valia doesn't really. If anything, I mean, there's no love loss between D'Artaya and Valia, 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 like how much how much do we lay on the machinations of one person, like obviously the Benazirate, the sisterhood in general, are manipulating things all around them. How much do we put that on value? And 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's,

that takes us to like my first official question that I want to ask you about this idea of like 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 that speaking of truth is we believe it. That's reference to something I've gotten to yet. How much is the show holding back certain things to 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 Balia talking, you know, speaking with her brother, to your point, sort of like urging her brother or urging her family into this vengeance path. I thought I actually liked the way that he, you know, he's like, I will go do this and then he just shut.

And then we just cut to corpse. Like harsh cut to corpse. I thought that unintentionally funny in a way. Yeah. It's, you know, we deserve to make it. We will. You'll see. Cut to corpse on slab. Cut to course. 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. My God, it's the Atrates. Yeah. 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? So the question is, are they holding back this information, I guess, three reasons. Number one, comedy, a Cepterps comedy moment. Number two, to twist the knife on us, the audience. by trying to surprise us with the Atradis clan, or to show that, like, Valdea specifically, who is the one who is often the most certain of the path forward,

despite not always having a grasp of the entire picture, she is frequently caught on the back foot. I would say she's caught on 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 Ben 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 operating 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, like, 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, like, theme versus plot mechanic? 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, Lindberg.

So I immediately clocked what was happening there. You felt at home? Yeah. You felt at home. But I think when it comes to Griffin, specifically, I got the sense that that was more just about efficiency, 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 Valia 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. All 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 go back to, let's start back at the beginning with sex, which is where I had intended to start. In order of Mal, who is not here today. Yes.

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 for or another in every single episode so far. Before you answer to that, I would say, we get it. It's HBO Sunday Night, and I know that 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. sex position interrogation scene between Constantine and Shannon Ruchese

but we've had a sex scene in every single episode 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 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 it did, 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 below.

Lovid 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 a method of violence. 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 odds 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 jessor, it's just willingness to be led by Valia 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. you know, just like slap each other, so dark, and then their giggling girlishness around it made it even darker. The fact that Raquelah Washington was like, yeah, that's the one.

That's what I like to see. It's disturbing. And I really like that about both Jessica Bartum's performance as Young Vallia and just sort of this idea that like of factions forming inside of the Benadjazzarate this idea of sort of like hardline virtuous versus like weird little slapping games is a is sort of an odd nature 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 um yeah just I mean intentionally uh quite disturbing yeah another thing I liked about episode

the three was that mirroring that parallelism of Rakella as a kind of mother to Valia, 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 Bennie Jeserite lie to a Bennie Jeserite, even if we're not

talking to 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 we learned from that, I guess, there's maybe still some doubt. We know

that the Bani Jesterit saved them, right? We don't necessarily know if they were behind the abduction in the first place. He feels like they probably were though, right? 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 Brady 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 conceded, insecure, 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, like, sexual encounter. And it was just like, he was just so outmatched that it was just so sad to watch and not even like that interesting. 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 pregnant mine based off of like one sexual encounter.

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 seat is in the Atreides household. if like every time you have sex with an Atreides, there is a secret Atradis baby somewhere. But there are some like Tula baby theory. Like if Tula on her not wedding, red wedding night had sex with Oriatrates, is pregnant, is off to the bed of Jesuit,

you know, as a teenage and pregnant, 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 Atrates, I don't know that she would give birth to an Atradis and then give it back to the Atreides or that they would take that baby or trust that that baby was in Atrates. One of the Acolytes, the Harkin and cousin, who is so obsessed with Whale Fur, is he actually, like, her child? 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. 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, 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 certain of. There's this theory going around that Albert Atradis, aka the Tully Lord, as he mentioned, for House of the Dragon, played by Archie Barnes, who is given mercy by Tula, is allowed to scamper away. Yes. Some people were wondering if Valias look when she finds out that Kieran Atrides 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 Betta Jesuit. She knows whether or not, she might not have known that there was Atreides at this very moment in the palace. But she knows that that they didn't wipe out every single. single Atradis 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 made. 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. I'm out of poison. I used my last dose on poor ori. Alas, for ari.

but I was wondering, are we to believe 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 is 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? Are you alluding to our guy Desmondard, you're raised by Wolves Favre, Travis Femel? What's your latest, greatest theory on what's going on with this particular character? Well, I liked the confrontation that he has with Valia 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 Valia put in her place or in a place that she really hasn't been on since she was on Harkinan, 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 sung happiness is a very warm nine-year-olds. Desmond just totally undoes Valia'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 Valia 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 looks real. It looked like a real struggle. 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

and raised by Wolfe, 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. Right. So there's this concept inside of this world that I was sort of like tiptoeing around in the first episode, but we might as well just talk about it. There are a couple options here. There's like cloning as an option, just like straight up cloning someone. Like 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 while 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 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 or or this is actually him and he survived whether he fulfills that prophecy language of born you know born by blood and spice right the lila dorothea prophecy quote the key of 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 this blonde weirdo who won't voice won't work with me what is true about doesman two things number one he believes that he whatever he's doing is for the Imperium. 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, 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. like what do you mean?

You always wonder, doesn't that sound like someone who has known Valiah for a long time? Like, obviously he's known of her. She's the head of the Benad Jesuit. 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 puppeteering this guy

and whoever that person is, has always wondered what the weakness Ravalia is, which just brings me back to my earlier Natalia theory, but I'm holding it loosely. 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 maybe 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 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 literal hot tip from Rakella that Desmond does 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 a faction 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. Exactly. You're not a Picante. Right. And I think most people watching this who came into Dune through the Villanouf 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 Tlalex. Bring on the Beni's. Molto Benny. I was, I was really just fondly hoping that you would be the one to try that pronunciation. And I am proud of you for doing it. So you crush it. You crush it. You crush. it. I don't even want to try it. Okay. Well, on the prophecy front, that brings us to another question. I put it Thessly. Lila, are you coming back anytime soon, girl? Because Lila

seems like she died in pursuit of the agony here. But, I mean, you don't put a corpse in a spice coffin and expect me to believe that that character is dead. No. 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 like if Valiah has her interpretation, which is it's Desmond, and Tula has her interpretation,

which is it's Valiah, and that they're both wrong in 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 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, our, like 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. So. Yeah. Love a self-fulfilling prophecy. Also love a related misinterpreted prophecy.

Same. Yeah, one of my favorites. So Lila's in the Boba Fitt Bakhta tank. So I'm guessing she's going to be. But so is Cobbant. And we haven't seen him in so. long, Ben. 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 Jesser

AI here, which again reminds me of other properties, Horizon Zero Dawn for the gamers out there. And Mother Raquelah'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 Raquelah 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 it doesn't take? All the ice from the Harkinanin planet needed to cool this thing down. So, yeah, the Betty Jeser, 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 Benny Jesteret. Similarly, a Lufthafah crypt? I love it. It's thematically appropriate, I guess, for the eugenics curious Betty Jeserate 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 need the little, you know, code bank, all the DNA samples and that thing to open the doors to the great work.

The, um, this reveal, which hopefully, yeah, like, hopefully people clocked that this is like, uh, fucked up and scary. The Ben of Jeserate, one of the loudest voices against, uh, AI in, in, uh, like, a lot of Frank Herbert's work is secretly using AI for their breeding program. 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 invention straight from the book. But that reveal, like we haven't really been fully in that space.

And to see that it is run by AI is a fascinating little turn for the plot there. By the way, Dorothea tries to kill her own granddaughter to get even with Valia. Harsh, right? I mean, Dorothea 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 ethos of the Harkinens 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, 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 like 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. I, 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 her, in the dark space of her, of her memory, her genetic memory. I thought that looked amazing. I thought that was very scary and suitably. Like, it worked better for me than whatever it was that happens to Alia in Dune, too, where it's just sort of like blue goo going into the womb.

when 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 back to tank, the spice back to tank. And I assume she will. And once again, much faster than Cobbant did, and I have some

objections about that. If she comes out, there is a strong possibility, according to sort of lore of the Herbert first, 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 ego's voices of her genetic memory. And so it's possible that, like, Dorothea herself will sort of, like, live again through Lila when she comes out of the tank. But I've made erroneous predictions like that in the past, so I'm just not going to, like, claim that John Snow is coming back with a dire wolf brain. She might come back totally fine and normal and unchanged,

by this horrifically traumatic experience. Yeah. Since I'm filling in for Mal, I'll note not enough pets in the Duniverse. That's something we're missing here. We need some familiars or some sort of dire wolves or something. Do you want to say something about Robert Barathean since you're doing the Malwarel here on the show? Yeah, great to get the gang together again. I guess, you know, he's setting the tone for the Harkinens 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 because, you know, he's been through some of those himself. And, you know, just I.

Oh, a deadly hunt. Yes, exactly. He's never going to hunt with Robert Barrett. And it's true. Right. Yeah, Mark Addy here, just doing the most, most Mark Addy thing you can possibly do. as the Harkinen Patriarch, we should note also, you know, we left them on an ice planet. We find them at the top of a glossy skyscraper.

So, you know, Vali may not have sent them their own Benegeserate, but she has not let them completely languish on a snow planet. Yeah. Yeah. And I liked the little hint of Harkinanen lore we got in the family scenes, which I kind of enjoy. 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 Abulurred, Harkinen, apologies if I'm mispronancing 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 long. And so Valia is convinced that actually he was not a traitorous guy who betrayed everyone. He was a victim of treachery himself by the supposed good guys by House of Traities, which again set the Harkinans 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 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 spermatoa is not this. Anyway, I don't care to know that. I care that my truth is my truth. I like your version, like Valia's version of Harkin and 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 do you want to mention, Ben? It did remind me very much of Obi-Wan making sushi untatween except colder. Yeah, not without the baking sun.

Absolutely rendering that meat rancet. Yes. What's your preferred balance of flashbacks in this series? Because in episode two, we got none, right? 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 to insert? And oh, no, we're halfway through the season. And I kind of wonder how much of the flashback stuff we have seen. how much you would want to see. Yeah, I tend to say I want more. The story of their rise to power. I want to know what happens when Tula shows up to the Benajasar, and 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 have we been doing this a long time of their characters that is less interesting to me than the younger sort of scrapping it altogether 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 like prequel to this prequel show, which is the girls. Those hard outer layers were built up.

Although, you know, I guess she did just mass murder the Atradis. So she's not exactly a softy at this point. But that's a first layer of many to come about it. Yeah, she really did. She let that boy live. There was a bull. Yeah. I will refrain from bringing up House of the Dragon again, but I could. But, but yeah, it's. How did you feel about the rebellion reveal that our sword master here is being manipulated by the Benegeserate? 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 Benad de Jesuit and their knowledge or involvement in the uprising in Iraqis 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. The Satrates 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 or stuff like that. But 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 Ackleite 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 Ackleite ever again. 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-emperous relationship. Yes.

And we did get what you forecasted to some extent, which was the empress pulling the strings of Desmond and being the one to encourage the emperor, hey, use this guy. Right. Don't take this, this pawn, this piece off the board to please your enemies. And again, from the official companion pod, your fave Jody 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. Was he bad? Did he kill some? people. Yeah, but he did therapy about it. That's what I know about Tony Supranos. 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 me a lot. Yeah. He's a big my wife guy. He's like, my wife, my wife loves religion. My wife

loves a debate. My wife. Yeah. But clearly she still wields a lot of influence over him, even if 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 Ducer-Cheese, but, you know, sort of flambase him a bit. I would watch her face in that scene. I have all my suspicions about Natalia are still in play here for sure. All right.

I think she's the main antagonist. I do. I think it's going to be the Bedoucester sisters versus the Empress, and we'll see how that turns out. 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 Shyalood's maw, just bigger and better than ever, even if Boba did it. it's not feasible. Yeah, where's your best car? Desmond Hart. I don't think you had any. I'm sorry to have imposed my manly energy on the sisterhood here, but as 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 Valia 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 our listeners, they always care. So it's always a pleasure to talk to them and to you. Oh, yeah. Thanks, Ben. You're the best. Bye. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terse appetite. The first and only FDA approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced

calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zetbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zetbound contains terseptitide and should not be used with other terseptitine-containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pins or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck.

Stop zep bound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zep bound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low. blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsened

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not be used with other terseptitide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pins or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction.

Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonel urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsened kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99 or visit Zepbound.lily.com. All right.

This is the second half the show. I'm still Joanna Robinson, and this is, I don't know, what? Super villain Van Lathen 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 Dems the rules. Lex and Superman won. Yeah. Superman comes to Lex's underground layer 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 the whole Hoosier's this thing but in telling a superhero what the plan is we're exactly equal we're here today and I'll 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 Doom 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 Lindberg about the last couple of episodes of Doom 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 lore-heavy sci-fi and fantasy series. and have you started fellowship?

Where are you with Fellowship? Started it. Started listening to it. I started listening to it. It 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. Yeah. And I feel like, you were, 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 would, I was doing Dune wrong. Hold on. Let me put my phone on. Do not just start. 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 listened 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. This is, this is, This is the term of Muadib.

Chapter 1-Dat-Dat-Dib. And then it goes into the entire thing. And it's very encyclopedic when you listen to it. I'm sure when you read it's different. These are the chapter one. She comes on there and she, of Mu-A-Dib. And then it tells the whole thing. And then you'll be sleep.

So I kept doing the thing that you do in an audiobook 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 in shooting basketball. And then I was able to get through it. And then I was, you know, I started, I went back to Lord 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 said?

still feel about it. Okay, so I don't want to offend the Dune fans. Mm-hmm. Okay. But, because obviously you've 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. Not, not, there was, there movies like the Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Dark Crystal and all of that stuff. It's odd. 80s. Legend. Legend. Legend. as weird as shit. Deeply weird. And so it's like, that movie was, it's weird.

They de-weirded these two Dune movies. Big time. Big time de-weirding of these two movies. What are you, what weirdness are you missing most in the Deni of the movie movies? Is it the, the little girl and it's not the metal diaper on the state? The metal diaper on stained, super duper weird. Yeah. The, uh, a lea of the knife.

Yeah. 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 Harkinans are, the whole thing, the Spacefaring 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 underscores 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 stuff that you've seen before

like a 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, Game of Thrones, there's some similarities in the way that the books are structured, right, in terms of the PLVs 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. 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 Gore and you feel all these old serials and stuff like that. Dune is like very I mean you have to You have to commit What having read Dune like the whole Observing 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 Doon Star Wars for sure Yeah

Star Wars very directly rips it off Yeah Like very directly rips it off Game of Thrones And not 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 you? 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. They're 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 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. I don't know which stories I'm supposed to be caring about. I'm not quite sure 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 just always... Yeah, you're just not stupid, but like 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 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 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's June 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 2, 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 2, the conversation about, like, the white saver narrative. And your point, which I agree with, that 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, like, 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 Deneville Nive did a good enough job of making us understand that Politides isn't the big damn hero of, of Dune, that Paula Trades 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 think about that. 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 Mouadib 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 afraid. At the point that the little girl reveals who she is, they're scared.

They're like, oh my God. Like they fear him, right? 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, once again, and this is not an opinion, it's a feeling, because there's less intellectualism that goes into it than anything out,

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 Arachis, and he's with the Fremant 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, towards the end of Dune 2. He's gone through the agony. He's had the, you know, the transformation. 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's, to you, that reads to you as, like, this is a fucking badass. is 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,

wider before he does his revenge ride. You know what I mean? 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. 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 would along with it, with no coercion, he just, once they went along with it, you felt like, oh my God, he's the man. But like, once they, when you read the book, just,

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 like 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 he made to, like, show the opposition to Paul, the, like, indigenous opposition to Paul.

But he... But it's not a personal heartbreak that it's like a... It is not a personal heartbreak, but it's also an intellectual point of view, 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?

We can do whatever the fuck we want Go ahead Joe drop a couple N words now I'm just joking So he robbed her of her agency a little bit he made it a matter of the heart and that

that reduces lady characters sometimes to emotion he didn't but having read Johnny in the book who's just sort of like Paul's great love Paul on team Paul Paul's biggest cheerleader

she's down with it forever exactly she's just like never interrogates him never questions him And I think that, like, what Denisville did with the Chani character is so much more interesting on the screen than on the page. 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. Like, I just read. But that really, that kind of enhanced the whole experience for me personally. I could not get over that. Like, 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. For people who don't know the ringer versus lore, Van, when Timothy Chalmay as Paul, chooses Florence Pugh as Princess Irrilon over Zendaya's character Chowning,

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. Yeah. 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 of 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. Okay. Did reading the book make you like the Dania 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 rewatching it now? Or what are you doing on your Lord video journey? I'll rewatch it. I'll tell people, like, you don't even know what they're talking about. You don't even know what he's, they're talking, 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 John Aaron is so important to both Baratian. 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. I'm so, like, pause on Dune. even though that's why we're here today. I cannot wait for your Dunkin' Egg coverage because you going into Duncan Egg, having read those books, is going to be incredible.

A United of the Seven Kingdoms, check it out on the reverse next year. Dune, it hasn't really changed very much. Yeah. Doom was a very dense experience. And what you're doing when you're watching the Dune stuff is, and I have re-watched both of the movies since I finished. I actually re-watched Dune 2 on Saturday. And that was because I watched the first episode of Dune Prophecy.

And I was like, I liked it so much more than I thought. Everybody was talking so much shit. I thought it was whack. And then I watched it is decidedly not whack. Like, it's very good. Have you watched, you watch just that first episode or all three? Okay. What do you?

I'm, 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 really, I like the third episode, the best out of all of them. What are you, what are you liking about it? Okay, so take like the first 15 minutes of the pilot. Benny Jesuit, young Harkening, all of that stuff.

The first time she uses the voice. Spoilers for everyone. Spoilers. That's okay. They already know. They're this far into. a podcast about the

first time she uses the voice there is a betrayal she murders another member of the Benid Jesuit

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 Bened Jesuit. 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 expected in 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 Ben of Jesuit. 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 unconfused. 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 out 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 eight by the worm? 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 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 it 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 doing prophecy. This is the literal only problem.

It's 10,000 years before. Is it because sisters are doing it for themselves? They're by themselves. And it's 10,000 years before, right? Yeah, 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 Iraqis 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. The same family? I mean, this is true in the text, but the same family is, they're still the emperors. 10,000 years?

It's the same exact family for 10,000 years. Game of Thrones don't do that. No. The, I'm freaking their names. The Targaryians were on top, what, 300 years? Long as time, yeah. But a 300-year dynasty makes sense. Yeah.

Like, that makes sense. They end up fucking it up. Anyway, but I enjoyed the show. I think I enjoy the show. and maybe for the same reasons that I'm enjoying Skeleton and Crew so much. Number one is because there was a void

for something that I was super into besides Superman and Lewis 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 doing 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 Benny Jesuit ritual, that agony, right? She's going through the agony and she's fighting it with her cells and she's seeing her, 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 Vali 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 like especially when they go into the clubs, like that stuff all feels very like, I don't know, like 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. 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 like really. 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. It's a Game of Thrones knockoff. I mean, to be honest, it's a Game of Thrones knockoff. And even the way they've oriented the story is a Game of Thrones knockoff. Sirius Warrior, emperor, everybody coming forward shit,

Dukes and all of that stuff. And then just the random fucking, which for some reason in Game of Thrones would make sense. It would deepen a character to show them 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 got his wiener cut off. Dionne 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,

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 out. I don't mean to be like a weird prude about it. It's just like, it seems desperate, 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. I'm 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. 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 a, or hype meter that we did the other day.

Dragon Lance, have you ever heard of Dragon Lance? What was that? This is like so extremely your nerdy 80 shit that I think you would. Really love it. Like, do you think you can go there with me? You think you can... I'm into it. What is the premise?

It's like, it's like similar. It's like D&D, Lord of the Ringsy sort of thing, but it's like the best version of that. Dragon Lance. 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, yeah, I'll also rewatch a little bit of the movie with Matthew Broderick and

Rutger Hauer. Remember that? Yeah. Lady Hawk. Lady Hawk. I was on and I just watched it. I normally would cut that shit off, but I just watched it again. 80s fantasy is 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 Our, 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 resurgent. Are you showing people the hairline or are you keeping it in the hat showing? Oh. Yeah. I love it. All this hair is going to fall out though.

Then it's the hair's going to grow up. Then it'll really research. All right. Stay tuned for the hair growth cycle on Van Lathen's head. I can't wait to see how that all develops. Mallory and I will be back with Skeleton Crew, which Van Lathen, like, Yes. 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 Raqa Pall for everything, including helping me figure out my travel today. You're the best, Arjuna, and to show me a dinner round on this. social and we will see you soon. Bye.