Desmond Hart showed the whole Imperium his “great power” in Dune: Prophecy’s fourth episode. His display came with a cost, one that went beyond his physical pain. It cost him his anonymity. The bloody wounds that formed on his back when he used his mind to burn those men alive gave Valya Harkonnen the genetic code she needed to learn who he really is. In the show’s next episode, the aptly titled “In Blood, Truth,” Tula Harkonnen used the Sisterhood’s illegal thinking machine and genetic archive to identify the soldier’s secret heritage. What she discovered shook her to her core because Desmond Hart is the son we didn’t know Tula had on Dune: Prophecy, a son she abandoned long ago.
That’s where Desmond Hart’s personal animosity for the “witches” comes from on the Dune series. But the revelation he is both Harkonnen and Atreides is important beyond his own story and Dune: Prophecy itself. It seemingly answers an old mystery from the novels. And Desmond’s birth, combined with his incredible abilities, might be the very thing that leads the Bene Gesserit to launch its Kwisatz Haderach program.
“Bloodline: Atreides. Bloodline: Harkonnen. Match Identified.” When the computer uttered those words and showed the baby Desmond had been, Tula Harkonnen learned what happened to the son she deserted long ago. The man who threatens everything Tula and her sister Valya have built on Dune: Prophecy is the son she bore after she killed Desmond’s father, Orry Atreides.
When Empress Natalya asked Desmond what the “witches” did to him, he revealed exactly what Tula had done. “The woman who gave birth to me sent me away to live among scavengers, who left me fighting for scraps just to survive,” he said. “She was a Sister.”
On Dune: Prophecy, Desmond Hart said he’s from Balut. Long before his birth, humanity’s war with the thinking machines left the planet in tatters. One of the groups who took advantage of the destruction are the organ farmers who made Theo into a shape-shifting Face Dancer. Balut was also ravaged by the same deadly disease Raquella (through Lila) identified in episode five. The planet was an even worse place to grow up than Desmond Hart suggested, but even if Tula had left him in a good home, no one could fault him for resenting the mother, who did not want him. Nor could they fault him for hating the Sisterhood that Tula chose over her own son in Dune: Prophecy.
The truth about Desmond Hart’s birth answers a question from Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s book Navigators of Dune. Navigators of Dune never revealed what happened to Tula’s child. (In the Dune book, we knew she was pregnant with Orry’s child, the first known Atreides and Harkonnen offspring.) The HBO series is the first Dune project of any kind to address the fate of that baby. Some book readers will be happy to have a resolution to this Dune mystery, but since Desmond Hart is an entirely original character created for the show, others might not consider this to be a definitive answer to what happened to book Tula’s baby.
There’s no debate over what Desmond wants for his mother and all her Sisters, though. He wants the same thing Empress Natalya wants, to “rid the Imperium of these witches forever.” Only we also know they will fail. The Sisterhood will become the even more powerful and influential Bene Gesserit. The group that will covertly shape and guide the Known Universe for the next 10,000 years. It will also implement its Kwisatz Haderach program that will end with Paul Atreides, another child of both House Atreides and House Harkonnen, a mirror of Dune: Prophecy‘s Desmond Hart.
During the era of Dune: Prophecy the Sisterhood is running a secret breeding program to produce better leaders en masse. Eventually, its singular goal will be to breed a super being. Desmond Hart—born of both Atreides and Harkonnen, a man who survived Shai-Hulud and was reborn with incredible powers beyond mankind’s known abilities—could be the inspiration for the Bene Gesserit’s Kwisatz Haderach. Unlike Desmond, who they cannot control, the Sisters believe the Kwisatz Haderach will work for them. And that might be why Desmond Hart is not doomed to fail in his ultimate quest.
The Bene Gesserit will be unable to control Paul Atreides just as they were unable to control Desmond Hart on Dune: Prophecy. In trying to create a version of Tula’s son who answers to them, the witches will spend millennia making an even more powerful child born of Atreides and Harkonnen.
Editor’s Note: Dune: Prophecy is a Legendary Entertainment production. Nerdist is a subsidiary of Legendary Digital Networks.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist and #TeamDesmond. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
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