Dune: Part 2 will be darker than Part 1 in 5 brutal ways

The spice will keep flowing. Dune: Part Two has been confirmed, according to numerous sources, and Timothée Chalamet himself, the Dune sequel has been greenlit with a theatrical release on October 20, 2023.

But what will this movie even be like? Because Dune: Part One ends around page 500 into the first novel, we kind of already know! Toward the end of Dune: Part One, Paul says his path will “lead into the desert,” but where does it go from there? The short answer is that it will simply be the rest of the story. But the back-end of the novel Dune, arguably, gets more hardcore than the beginning.

Here are five ways the impending film Dune: Part Two could feel much darker than Part One.

5. More violence in Dune Part 2

There are a lot more straight-up battle scenes in the final pages of Dune than there are in the beginning. Despite some epic fight sequences in Dune: Part One, the sequel will have to focus on Paul and the Fremen actually taking the fight to the Harkonnens.

If the fights in Dune: Part One felt like The Fellowship of the Ring, think of the battles in Dune: Part Two as being closer to Battle of Helm’s Deep in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Desperate, epic, and hardcore.

4. Paul’s little sister will be in Dune Part 2

Paul’s sister Alia Atreides is a knife-wielding baby born with intergenerational memories. She can also talk right away even though she’s a baby. Spooky, right?

If you’ve seen the Lynch version of Dune, you know Alia is creepy. Yes, she’s on the side of the heroes, but that doesn’t make this super-baby any less frightening. Will she be CGI in the Villeneuve version? In Dune: Part One, Paul knows his mom Jessica is pregnant, but that’s all he knows. Things are about to get weird!

3. The grimmest Harkonnen baddie will be in Dune Part 2

Although the character of Feyd-Rautha isn’t in Dune: Part One, he’s certainly coming for Part Two. Played by Sting in the David Lynch movie, Feyd is the brother of “The Beast” Rabban (played by Dave Bautista in Part One).

While Rabban is overtly just evil, Feyd is scarier because he’s sadistic and acts super-happy about it. He enjoys killing slaves and watching people suffer. You get the sense that Rabban is bad, but he’s mostly just muscle for the Baron. Feyd is scarier than both of them though because he’s the Harkonnen who projects a civilized front. If Paul was secretly a perverse serial killer, he’d be Feyd.

2. Paul and Chani lose a child in Dune: Part 2

Although Chani and Paul eventually have twins in Dune Messiah, they also have another child who doesn’t make it out of the events of the novel Dune. This is by far, the grimmest aspect of the end of the novel. As a little baby, the child Leto II is murdered by a Sardauka attack. In the book, this is a turning point for Paul, and truly the moment when he changes from being the guy who wants to fix everything to the guy who wants to destroy everything.

Although Paul and Chani later have another baby also named Leto II in Dune Messiah, the death of this baby — later called Leto II, the Elder — is tragic and deeply disturbing. Let’s just let this sink in: Dune: Part Two will depict Rabban (Dave Bautista ) killing a baby.

1. Paul’s journey makes him a cynical tyrant in Dune: Part 2

Although director Denis Villeneuve has claimed the lack of exposition will “will be an opportunity to have much more fun,” in Dune: Part Two, the truth is, this sequel isn’t really about Paul’s ascendancy to the role of the mythical hero, but instead, his path to becoming a universal ruler with a deeply cynical view of religion, faith, and governance. Arguably, the path of Paul Atreides is that has a politician, he’s too shrewd, and as such, becomes an ultra-pragmatist, doing whatever is necessary to get what he wants. He’s arguably a more just ruler than Emperor Shaddam IV, but he also launches a huge war of revenge against his enemies.

The ending of Dune: Part Two will see Paul on the throne. But we might not be applauding when it happens.

Dune: Part Two will release in theaters sometime on October 20, 2023.