Could ‘Dune: Prophecy’ Tie Into Anya Taylor-Joy’s Future With the ‘Dune’ Franchise?

Dune: Part Two is now streaming on Max, which means folks with the streaming service not only get the chance to relive Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) riding a sandworm, but you’ll also get a sense of Warner Bros. Discovery’s epic plans for Frank Herbert’s beloved, and freaky, science fiction series. We’re talking about how the introduction for the film is a first-look trailer for the Max show, Dune: Prophecy, and writer-director Denis Villeneuve‘s inventive approach to one of Herbert’s most beguiling characters…

**Spoilers for Dune: Part Two, now streaming on Max, and the Dune books ahead!**

So if you’ve seen Dune: Part Two, or followed the film’s press tour, you’ll know that The Queen’s Gambit and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga star Anya Taylor-Joy has an important cameo in the movie. Anya Taylor-Joy is Alia Atreides, the baby Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) is pregnant with throughout Dune: Part Two.

Paul sees Alia in a vision of the future after he takes the Water of Life, aka that hallucinogenic blue baby sandworm piss. She reveals there can be water on Arrakis and that the secret truth about their family — that they are not just Atreides, but Harkonnen on their mother’s side — will be difficult to accept. Later, we hear her talking from the womb to her mother, something Rebecca Ferguson’s performance hints has been happening the whole time since Lady Jessica drank the Water of Life.

This is all difficult enough to explain to folks not steeped in the bizarre corners of Frank Herbert’s lore, but what’s even more wild is that it seems like Warner Bros. Discovery, Denis Villeneuve, and Max are all now committed to exploring the wildest nooks and crannies of the Dune saga. Anya Taylor-Joy’s splashy cameo plus the decision to queue up the Dune: Prophecy trailer before Dune: Part Two are a one-two punch promising freaky-deaky science fiction to come…and I couldn’t be more excited.

If you’re new to Dune, welcome. Here’s everything you need to know about Anya Taylor-Joy in Dune: Part Two, Max’s upcoming show Dune: Prophecy, and the odds on Jason Momoa making a comeback to the franchise…

Who is Anya Taylor-Joy in Dune: Part Two? All About Paul’s Sister Alia Atreides

Anya Taylor-Joy plays Alia Atreides in Dune: Part Two, a cameo performance that all but confirms that Denis Villeneuve is going to make a third (and possible fourth) Dune movie.

Alia Atreides is the baby that Lady Jessica is pregnant with throughout the Dune movies. A key moment in Dune: Part Two is when Jessica is asked to become the Reverend Mother of the local Fremen tribe. This involves a dangerous trial that is designed to kill the unworthy and “level up” the survivors. Jessica is asked to drink the “Water of Life,” which contains a highly-concentrated, lethal dose of the ubiquitous spice. In small doses, the spice is medicinal. Larger, continued use can unlock superpowers. If Lady Jessica can ingest the Water of Life and transform its poison on a molecular level using her Bene Gesserit training, she will have access to the memories of all the Reverend Mothers before her.

So here’s the thing: Jessica can do this no sweat. (Well, there’s some sweat.) However, she neglects to tell the Fremen women she is pregnant. This means Alia also gets the memories of all the people who came before her. She is also brought to consciousness in utero, which is considered its own hellacious experience, called being “pre-born.” This is why she can gab with her mom.

Now, in the book, there’s a time jump and we see a pint-sized Alia use her eerie knowledge to murder her unwitting, evil grandfather, Baron Harkonnen. Rather than cast a small child to play a creepy being of unfathomable knowledge, Denis Villeneuve kept the timeline of Dune: Part Two confined to a few months, not four years. He also came up with the idea to make Alia a talking embryo who appears as a fully-grown woman from the future in Paul’s visions. You could argue that rather than do something weird, he did something weirder.

He also did something that all but confirms he wants to keep making Dune movies since Alia has a juicy run in the next two books, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. One in which she is fated to perhaps fall in love with a clone of Jason Momoa’s dead warrior, Duncan Idaho! And that’s not all! Alia eventually finds her consciousness overtaken by the psyche of none other than the Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard)! Making her a full tilt villain!!!

Something that could help signal to the Dune-loving audience just how far Alia’s pre-born memories go? Having maybe some other ancestors around to haunt her visions in future Dune movies…

What Is Dune: Prophecy? Max’s Dune Prequel Show About the Origins of the Bene Gesserit

Curious about Dune: Prophecy, the prequel show executive produced by Denis Villeneuve? The Dune show takes place about 10,000 years before Paul Atreides is even born. The woman narrating the trailer is Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson), a key figure in creating both the Bene Gesserit sisterhood and the blood feud between House Atreides and House Harkonnen.

If you’re like, wait, what? How can there be a House Atreides and a House Harkonnen (and a House Corrino!) 10,000 years before Dune even begins? Like how is that possible? Family names change! Lineages die out! Well, consider what the Bene Gesserit do. Besides advising the great houses on politics, they also collect the DNA of the ruling men through seduction. (Like the whole sequence with Lea Seydoux’s Margot Fenring and Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha!) Their whole purpose is to carefully manipulate the bloodlines of the major house in the hopes of producing a superpowered man they call the Kwisatz Haderach. That man would eventually be Paul Atreides.

Dune: Prophecy will show us how Valya set humanity on the long road that would lead to Paul Atreides, and in doing so, we’ll meet ancestors of the main Dune characters.

Between Max pushing Dune: Prophecy and Denis Villeneuve setting Alia Atreides up for bigger, weirder things, the future is indeed looking bright for Dune-heads.

There are six epsiodes in Dune: Prophecy Season 1 and the series will premiere exclusively on Max this Fall.