The ending of Dune: Prophecy Season 1 has finally brought its action to the eponymous spicy desert planet. But the journey of Mother Valya, Princess Ynez, and sword-master Keiran Atreides to Arrakis is only the consequence of everything that happens in the Prophecy finale. Most of the actual story deals with Valya’s internal and external struggles to defeat enemies both obvious and hidden.
And for longtime fans of Dune, the defeat of the primary threat throughout this season — “The Reckoning” — carries with it a significant retcon of very famous Bene Gesserit lore. It turns out that in Dune: Prophecy, the origin of one of the most famous speeches in all of science fiction isn’t what we originally thought it was at all.
Spoilers for the Dune: Prophecy finale ahead.
Toward the end of the final episode of Dune: Prophecy Season 1, “The High-Handed Enemy,” we’re taken inside of Valya’s mind as she fights against the virus that has been transmitted to her via Desmond Hart. We’ve now learned that this is a bio-weapon mind-virus, one that was seemingly created by Thinking Machines to take out specific targets. The Sisterhood has been referring to this as “The Burning Truth,” and also has viewed the deployment of this virus as part of the forteld “Reckoning.”
But the biggest twist is that the virus works on fear, meaning the more the intended target experiences fear, the quicker they’ll likely be killed. And so, although Valya and Tula don’t utter the phrase “Fear is the mind-killer,” the show comes pretty close to having some of those exact phrases from the litany occur in this much earlier context.
As Valya is facing her fear, manifested by a massive sandworm, Tula tells her, “You have to let it pass through you.” Valya worries that “the worm is coming.” Tula urges her to “let it come.”
The idea that Valya has to let her fear “pass through” her foreshadows the basic philosophy of the Bene Gesserit litany against fear. As created by Frank Herbert, and explained in the first Dune novel, that litany goes like this:
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
In the Prophecy finale, we’re basically told that the idea of fear being the mind-killer isn’t an abstraction, but rather, a science fictional imperative. The Sisterhood at this point in Dune history are literally being murdered by a mind-killing virus caused by fear. This idea retroactively makes the existence of the Bene Gesserit litany a concept that exists to keep the Sisterhood safe from their enemies in a very literal way.
While we don’t see Mother Valya fully introduce the litany to the Sisterhood, we can now safely say that it was Tula’s influence that allowed her to figure out how to let her fear “pass through her.” So, whether Dune fans love this fact or not, in this version of the lore, the co-authors of the Bene Gesserit litany against fear are two duplicitous Harkonnen sisters, with a taste for ongoing revenge.
If we see the Sisterhood morph into the Bene Gesserit we’re more familiar with in Season 2, it stands to reason that at least one character will be taught, and utter, the entire iconic speech. Because in the end, the Sisterhood is still standing when everything else has passed through and over them. At least, that is, until the Kwisatz Haderach.
