If you're feeling spicy about rebellious real-world metaphors and subversive mythmaking, then here's everything you need to know about the ending of Dune: Part Two. Dune: Part Two picks up right where the first film left off. Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and his army have wiped out most of the Atreides clan, while also taking over production of the precious substance known as spice on the planet Arrakis.
Meanwhile, Paul Atreides and his pregnant mother, Lady Jessica, meet the Fremen leader Stilgar, who takes them to a secret spot to remain safe. This is because Stilgar believes that Paul is the Lisan al Gaib, the Fremen's long-prophesied messiah. Paul is uneasy about this, though, as he knows that the myth of the Lisan al Gaib was made up centuries earlier by the secretive Bene Gesserit organization.
His mother is a Bene Gesserit member herself, and she stokes the myth to her benefit as she becomes a Reverend Mother to the Fremen. Paul then attempts to ingratiate himself with the Fremen, especially the skeptical Chani. He eventually earns his place in the tribe by destroying the Baron's spice mining operations and successfully riding a giant sandworm. At the end of Dune: Part Two, Paul begins to abuse his messianic reputation to control the Fremen more thoroughly.
How it all goes down
After Baron Harkonnen's nephew Rabban fails to contain the Fremen, the Baron employs Rabban's even more ruthless brother Feyd-Rautha to quell the rebellion. Feyd's ruthlessness eventually pushes Paul to accept his role as Lisan al Gaib in a bid to lead the Fremen against the Harkonnens. Paul also challenges Emperor Shaddam IV to show up on Arrakis as well, lest Paul expose his illegal collaboration with the Harkonnens to wipe out the Atreides.
What then unfolds is an epic, explosive battle as Paul unleashes his Fremen followers against the visiting Emperor's army, eventually overwhelming his forces and killing off the remaining Harkonnens. However, Paul leaves Shaddam alive so that he can ascend the throne by marrying Shaddam's daughter, Princess Irulan, much to the chagrin of Chani.
The rest of the Empire doesn't accept Paul's ascendancy, which leads him to order the Fremen to commandeer spaceships and begin the holy war that his visions warned of. "It's been a while since you've had one of those nightmares.". The ending of Dune: Part Two is partly a takedown of the white savior narrative. These types of stories have a reputation for justifying racism, classism, and colonialism.
Tackling the white savior
Science fiction is frequently guilty of this trope, in which a white character comes to a supposedly savage place to save the natives from their backward ways. Dune tackles this uncomfortable trope head-on, both in Frank Herbert's novels and the films directed by Denis Villeneuve. By making Paul a megalomaniacal tyrant at the end, it warns audiences how this kind of thinking has led to countless genocides.
In these types of narratives, cultures are othered in much the same way that the Fremen are mistreated on Arrakis. As Herbert himself explained during a talk at UCLA in 1985, "I wrote the Dune series because I had this idea that charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label on their forehead: 'May be dangerous to your health.'". The Dune novels are clearly critical of religious institutions, which is made explicit on screen in Dune: Part Two.
A critique of religion
In both the book and the film, the secretive Bene Gesserit plant fake prophecies and myths around the galaxy to exploit in the future. One of those false prophecies is that of the Lisan al Gaib on Arrakis, which is why part of the myth involves Paul's mother being a Bene Gesserit.
Herbert spelled out the problem with religion by writing in the first Dune novel, "Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. The teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax." Dune: Part Two does a great job of showcasing these themes. As the Reverend Mother, Lady Jessica utilizes the myth to incite and further radicalize the fundamentalist Fremen in the south of Arrakis, against Paul's wishes.
And then when he finally decides to use the Fremen to his own advantage and take revenge, it's clear just how effective and dangerous those myths are as a tool of colonial control. "This prophecy is how they control us!" Dune is the story of a rare resource that can only be mined in the harsh desert, as various colonial powers fight over its control.
Capitalism metaphor
Whereas the real world's precious resources are fossil fuels like oil, the commodity in Dune is melange, aka spice. Similar to how most of the world's oil is mined from the Middle East, spice only exists on Arrakis, and it's used for interstellar space travel. Unlike oil, though, spice isn't fuel, though it does give the ships' pilots the ability to navigate the cosmos at superhuman speeds. Frank Herbert makes these real-world connections unmistakably explicit.
The whole plot of Dune is about fighting for control of the spice, and that's the reason the Harkonnens massacre the Atreides in the first place. This leads Paul to seek revenge and eventually unleash the Fremen on an interstellar jihad that claims billions of lives. In essence, commerce and capitalistic greed are the root causes of all the tragedies in Dune.
Another possible explanation
Dune: Part Two, and the Dune series as a whole, are also about the philosophical push and pull between fate and free will. Paul Atreides has the power of prescience, which is essentially the ability to see the future. However, he can't make it out clearly at first, as he's initially only able to perceive flashing fragments. That changes when he inhales the "Water of Life," which opens up his abilities.
Furthermore, Paul can witness the flow of time splintering into multiple possibilities all at once. This is comparable to a crashing ocean wave: you can swim in many directions at first, but a choice has to be made before the wave of time eventually crashes upon you. This begs the question: does Paul freely choose his role as the genocidal Muad'Dib, or is that always the course he was going to take?
This is an interesting philosophical debate about the nature of free will and choice, which the story leaves purposely vague. However, it still brings up the question of what Paul's true nature is. If there really is only one path he sees in all the timelines where his revenge succeeds, is it worth galactic genocide? "There is a narrow way through.".
The future of the franchise
The ending of Dune: Part Two leads straight into the story of the second book, Dune Messiah, which would serve as the basis of a third film in a proposed trilogy. Messiah is set 12 years after the first Dune, as Paul's fanatic Fremen army has laid waste to the universe in a genocidal war.
Messiah presents Paul as both a leader and religious figure, with the legend of Muad'Dib having spread throughout the universe as someone to be feared and worshiped. While the galaxy is being torn apart by the Fremen's merciless jihad, Paul resides comfortably as Emperor with Chani as his mate, even though he's betrothed to Princess Irulan. This leads to palace intrigue as Irulan conspires to have him assassinated.
Meanwhile, Paul tries to manipulate his visions so that Chani and his future children can live, despite the conspiracy. This is all set up in Dune: Part Two, as Paul becomes more maniacal, and the romantic rivalry between Chani and Irulan comes into focus. One of the biggest changes that Dune: Part Two makes to the original book is the exclusion of Paul's younger sister Alia.
The vision of Alia
She does appear in the film as a fetus who talks to her pregnant mother. But in the book and all other filmed adaptations, there's a time jump of a few years that features Alia being born and walking around as a creepy little girl.
"Alia, now." "Come to me, Barron." In contrast, the only time that Alia appears in the flesh in Dune: Part Two is during a flash-forward vision in which Paul sees her as an adult played by Anya Taylor-Joy. This change was probably made to condense the story's timeline and lend it more urgency. However, this does bring up the question of whether or not there will be an even bigger time jump between the Dune and Dune Messiah films.
Messiah is set 12 years after the first book, but with the multiple-year time jump in the first novel, it's closer to 15 years in total. Anya Taylor-Joy will turn 28 in April 2024, but she could still play a teenager, or perhaps the narrative will move ahead even further into the future to more closely match her age.
Chani's possible new role
Denis Villeneuve's two Dune films are very faithful to the books, but like any adaptation, some changes had to be made. And in the case of this adaptation, Chani is made more aware of the centuries-old plot to create myths that supposedly predict the coming of a Messiah as a form of cultural control, thereby setting her up as a rebel.
This is a major departure, as the book version of Chani is a devoted believer in Paul once they fall in love. In fact, after he takes Princess Irulan's hand in marriage due to crass political maneuvering, he makes it clear to Irulan that she won't bear any children and that Chani is his romantic partner. This plays out very differently on screen, as Dune: Part Two ends with a close-up of Chani's distraught face.
It's unclear, though, how this will affect the Messiah film. That book's plot largely hinges on who will bear Paul's royal heir. Based on Part Two's ending, it seems very possible that Chani's role as a doting lover will be changed, and that she'll instead be a more antagonistic figure in the next sequel. Denis Villeneuve has talked in interviews about how Dune: Part Two closes on a cliffhanger.
Denis' designs
While the film's final sequence is similar to the novel's conclusion, there are some key differences. For instance, while Paul has nightmares about an upcoming holy war that'll happen once he becomes Emperor, we don't watch it come to pass the way that it happens on screen.
However, in Dune: Part Two, after Paul receives word that the other major houses in the Imperium won't support his ascension to the throne, Stilgar leads the Fremen toward the ships to attack.
Villeneuve explained his downbeat ending by noting to Vanity Fair, "The Dune book ends with the beginning of something that is out of control, and I thought this was a very powerful ending." Villeneuve also spoke about his desire to adapt Dune Messiah, which he described as "the end of the arc of Paul Atreides." "It would make absolute-absolute sense for me to make a final film and revisit Arrakis a very last time." It also seems likely that Villeneuve won't direct any more Dune sequels after Messiah.
As he admitted to Entertainment Weekly, "Herbert wrote six books, and the more he was writing, the more it was getting psychedelic. So I don't know how some of them could be adapted." Dune: Part Two clocks in at a running time of two hours and 48 minutes, but there were still some things left on the cutting room floor. This includes entire subplots and characters that were completely excised, including one played by Tim Blake Nelson.
Alternate ending
He was officially cast, but he doesn't show up at all in the finished cut. There have been persistent rumors that Nelson was set to portray Count Hasimir Fenring, as he looks similar to how the character is described in the book. However, this speculation hasn't been officially confirmed. The Count is a deadly assassin and trusted friend of Emperor Shaddam IV.
At the end of the book, he's ordered to kill Paul after Paul defeats Feyd-Rautha, though he refuses. The Count's supposedly deleted appearance is further evidenced by the fact that Léa Seydoux plays his wife Lady Margot Fenring. In the film, she's the Bene Gesserit who watches Feyd-Rautha fight in the arena on the Harkonnens' home planet, and she later seduces him to control him for her order. Date: 2024-03-02
mikeat2637 Waaaaaay too much is made over the white savior trope. Despite how it evolved and his attempts to curtail the holy war he envisioned, Paul Muad'Dib Atreides was a villain, plain and simple. That's the way Frank Herbert wrote it. And his mother and the Bene Gesserit put him in this position where he could not stop it. And then after taking the Water of Life he was basically a different person, despite telling Chani he would love her as long as he breathes. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And there was no way that Denis would follow the book more closely and intimate that Irulan would never bear Paul's child and Chani would in effect be a concubine, he would have been run out of town with the fems on his heels with pitchforks. They could have never done a stand by your man moment with Chani, the Hollyweird Harpies would go feral and rabid, lol. That said, the film was magnificent and truly brought the world of Dune to life. Timothee Chalamet, despite my initial misgivings, was the perfect casting for Paul, in both appearance and sheer acting ability. He is Paul Atreides. Zendaya was the perfect casting for Chani and it flows all the way down the line for the rest of the main cast. I have to see it another time or two to get the full effect. I think Frank Herbert would be very impressed.
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ObsidianMonarch Damn these cash grabs are awful. The bargain bin Feyd rattles off, You killed nine of my men with one single blade. Last time I checked one or single would have sufficed however whoever knocked out this script also had Paul say, HEY YOU GUYS! The best part is people are raving about this poorly cast trite shit.
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chrismeyers4836 That last scene with the duel between Paul and feyd-rautha was almost exactly how I imagined it. I remember my heart pounding as I read it even though I knew Paul would win; I felt the same way watching it.
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looper 10/10 Masterpiece. This is my generation's our LOTR Return of the King, Our Ben Hur and Our Lawrence of Arabia. Denis Villenueve has made a movie that will be spoken of 50 years later as a masterpiece
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angies6096 It bothers me that the film left out the fact that Chani and Paul had a son together Leto II the Elder and their son was killed however the movie was really good
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MrScotty5877304 Is it just me or does that Zendaya constantly have a look on her face like shes trying to work out who farted Seriously look at the thumbnail for this video
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Nightsight971 Did anyone else notice actor Everett McGill (the 1984 Dune's Stilgar) as the Sardukaur leader in the throne room when the Fremen break in Great cameo!
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anitabalaski8666 Saw the movie today and loved it. When you started talking about colonialism and racism I stopped the video and gave you a thumbs down.
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looper I'm glad you mentioned the betrothal would not bare offspring. it's an important point highlighting Paul's love for Chani. reply
