The sisters all have the same nightmare. Valya becomes the Harkonnen truthslayer. Every plot against the Emperor crashes into every other one.

Over halfway and the show is breaking into a dead sprint. Starting with the sisters, Olivia Williams and Emily Watson continue to be the show’s anchors and get some gloriously Blackadderian stuff to do. Watson in particular sparkles in every scene at House Harkonnen, sparring with Mark Addy as her Uncle the way a cat plays with a toy. What’s clear in these scenes is Valya’s desire to redeem House Harkonnen is pure in the exact way her actions aren’t. She will do everything to live up to her brother’s memory and that means she will do anything. That pays off this week in her magnificently byzantine plot to take someone else’s leak of Pruwett Richese’s murder and turn it into a means of elevating the House and bringing down the Emperor. This is what the Bene Gesserit, as they will be, are best at and the show lays the complex plot out brilliantly. Edward Davis is great as Harrow too, mixing the terrified young Noble thrust into the spotlight with the same raw ambition as Valya. It’s a great plan, and the fact it doesn’t work only makes the episode more interesting.

This is finally the episode where about half the cast really begin to engage with the plot. The novitiate sisters, who we’ve spent a lot of time with without ever quite getting to know them are front and centre and it’s a welcome spotlight and perspective shift that gifts the episode its two best, most intriguing moments. The first is the mass nightmare and Emmeline’s near suicide, which locks this generation of sisters into the wake of Valya’s era and their choices. There’s also the very intriguing offhand mention from Jen, played with exhausted competence by Faoileann Cunningham, that she doesn’t dream. That’s not remarked on, and the plot with Theodosia, played by Jade Annouka, hints at why. As the episode finishes, Valya has taken functional control of the House and Theo… becomes someone else. Possibly more than one person. The nature of her abilities is ambiguous but it’s obviously an ace that Valya’s had up her sleeve. Whether it’s the last one is unclear, but the power dynamic has shifted drastically at House Harkonnen and among the Sisters.

But the best moment of the episode is an automatic drawing session led by Tula. As the sisters dive into their minds, they begin to draw faster and faster and the images they see all begin to fall in line. Dunes. Darkness. A pair of blue eyes. It’s a chilling moment and one that remains wonderfully ambiguous. Is this Shai-Halud? Is it Paul Atreides glowering down the centuries at them? Or is it one of the thinking machines everyone thinks aren’t a threat anymore? It’s a great question, set up beautifully.

Sarah-Sofie Boussina and Josh Heuston as the Emperor’s children both get major developments this week too and not before time. Increasingly tired of both their father’s ineffectiveness and how loudly he complains about it, they become vital parts of Valya’s plans and the sabotage of them, without ever realising they were there. We also get some serious payoff for Chris Mason’s Keiran Atreides and the rebellion he’s part of. The offhand reference he makes to his father being the only survivor of a massacre strongly suggests he’s the son of Albert, the one survivor of Tula’s actions last episode. The rebellion, Valya, the Corrino kids trying to get their dad to wake up and Jodhi May’s deliciously ruthless Empress Natalya all go into the Landsraad council meeting. None of them gets what they want. But one of them maybe gets what they need.

Travis Fimmel’s whispering berserker routine is familiar to anyone who’s watched Vikings but he continues to find new dimensions to it here. Desmond is being played more and more like a hollow outline of a man, one who knows exactly what he is. Fimmel balances rage and grief here, making something very fragile, very powerful and incredibly dangerous out of the combination. As the episode finishes he’s shored up the Emperor in a way that makes it clear how powerless he is and you have no idea if that’s intentional or not. Only that you need to know what happens next.

Verdict: With two episodes to go, Prophecy feels more and more confident, fun and unique. The best episode so far. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart