Dune: Prophecy Season 2 Scales Up With More Episodes and a Wave of New Faces
The spice flow intensifies as Dune: Prophecy season 2 goes longer and packs in a wave of new characters, expanding the saga’s scope.
Quick update from the Dune corner of TV: Dune: Prophecy is back in the shop, and season 2 has officially started rolling cameras. And yeah, it is getting bigger.
What is actually new this time
- Episode count: Season 2 will run 8 episodes instead of 6. That is a 33% bump, which is not nothing.
- New faces: Indira Varma (Ellaria Sand in Game of Thrones), Ashley Walters (Emmy-nominated for Adolescence), and Tom Hollander (the impeccably slippery Quentin in The White Lotus season 2) are joining the cast.
Where this sits in the Dune timeline
If you are keeping score, Dune: Prophecy plays way, way before the movies. It is set roughly 10,000 years ahead of the events in the original Dune novels and Denis Villeneuve's film saga. Instead of Paul Atreides, the show zeroes in on the Harkonnen family in their earlier days and how the Bene Gesserit order came to be. That is the hook: origin stories for the power players who eventually shape the Dune universe.
How season 1 landed (and why season 2 is scaling up)
The first season had its moments, but not everyone was in love. As GamesRadar+ put it:
"mixed results, occasionally offering up moments that stand up to Villeneuve's genius works - but largely falling short of its big screen counterparts."
So now we are getting more episodes and a beefed-up ensemble. Read between the lines and it looks like the show is digging deeper into the lore. There is plenty of room to explore, too: the franchise spans almost two dozen novels, including the six Frank Herbert wrote himself.
The when of it all
No premiere date for season 2 yet. Production is underway, the scope is bigger, and the world of Arrakis-adjacent scheming is getting more crowded. We will see if the extra runway helps the show find its stride.