Dune: Part Two remains just as vague about what role Alia will play in the horrors to come. While Taylor-Joy provides an ethereal empathy in her scene, we’re also teased to dread the idea of an unborn fetus consuming the omnipotent powers offered by the Water of Life. “What have we done?!” gasps the old Fremen reverend mother when she realizes Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) is pregnant. And after that heavy deed, not only is Jessica far more aggressive and manipulative in her interactions with Paul and the other Fremen, but she speaks to her preborn daughter like a nefarious confidant. They conspire together in how best to sway the native population into Paul’s cult of influence, and Alia is likewise giving Paul orders through Jessica for the rest of the film.
So what will that relationship be and what will it mean for Dune: Part Three? It’s an open question since the inherent problem with Alia Atreides is her character arc spans beyond the events of Dune Messiah, the novel which will be the basis of Dune: Part Three, the conclusion of director Denis Villeneuve’s planned trilogy. Yet there might be an opportunity to ignore—or reshape—the destiny author Frank Herbert imagined for Paul’s little sister on the page…
What Is to Come for Alia in Dune Messiah
While a minor presence in the first Dune novel (although she had more to do than what Villeneuve gave her in the latest film), Alia takes centerstage in Dune Messiah. On the page, Alia is one of several key point-of-view characters, arguably more important than any other except Paul and a resurrected Duncan Idaho (yes, Jason Momoa is almost certainly coming back).
About 16 years old during the events of Dune Messiah, Alia is depicted as even more precocious and wayward than she was as a child during the climactic events of Dune. Like Emperor Paul Muad’Dib, Alia has developed a cult of worship on Arrakis where pilgrims from around the universe come to pay homage to her statues. She performs duties and religious rites to help control the masses, but she also shirks official political duties and prefers operating from the shadows. She even builds a hiding hole in the ceiling above Paul’s great throne (with his knowledge) to spy on his courtiers without their knowing of her presence.
One perceptive character describes her to Paul as “the virgin-harlot. She is vulgar, witty, knowledgeable to a depth that terrifies, cruel when she is most kind, unthinking while she thinks, and when she seeks to build she is as destructive as a Coriolis storm.” Honestly, Herbert seems unsure of exactly what to do with Alia in the second novel. He develops sympathy for her conflicting impulses of a teenager’s impetuosity clashing with her old soul knowledge and experience from consuming the memories of previous generations.
There are even two rather uncomfortable subplots regarding Alia’s indecision about who she is that Villeneuve may wish to sidestep or recontextualize. Firstly, there is the fact she develops an uncomfortable romance with Duncan Idaho’s reanimated corpse even though he is middle-aged and she is a teenager. The real-life Taylor-Joy is 28 and Momoa is 44, but we imagine even if the characters are presumably aged up for Part Three that it will still be a somewhat difficult plot point to adapt.
Discover more from Today Headline
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.