While Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two sets up the highly anticipated Dune: Part Three, another film may not be the best way to conclude the epic saga. In fact, Dune 3 won’t serve the franchise as well as a Dune miniseries that tackles the fall of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and the rise of his children, Leto II and Ghanima. In Dune 2‘s ending, Paul liberates Arrakis, but his actions come at a huge cost — one that he tried to avoid. The Fremen, who are so inspired by their messiah figure, begin a bloody holy war in Paul’s name.
In Frank Herbert’s sequels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, the epic story reiterates that Dune‘s Paul Atreides is a villain. By stepping into the role of the Bene Gesserit’s Kwisatz Haderach, Paul knowingly chooses what he determines to be the lesser of two evils. Still, his actions reshape the galaxy and lead to the deaths of millions of people. The brutal conclusion to Paul’s story deserves more than a two-hour runtime, especially if Villeneuve plans to introduce Paul’s children, who not only carry on the Atreides’ legacy, but change the course of the Known Universe.
Following the success of its multipart Dune miniseries, the Syfy network collectively adapted Herbert’s sequels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, into a single show in 2003. Called Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune, the three-part Emmy-winning outing smartly divides its source material into digestible chapters. The first section picks up 12 years after the events of Dune and focuses on Paul’s time as Emperor. Able to foresee attempts on his life, Paul evades plenty of murder plots as the universe’s most powerful factions join forces to bring him down.
After his children are born, Paul ends up abdicating the throne and vanishing into the desert, which opens the way to the second section, “The Children,” which focuses on Paul’s and Chani’s young children, Leto II and Ghanima. While that second part of the miniseries sees the twins separated, the third installment, “The Golden Path,” looks toward the future. Ultimately, Leto’s prescient visions convince him that he must steer humankind along the so-called Golden Path. As a result, he becomes a worm-human hybrid and God Emperor of the Known Universe. Villeneuve’s Dune 3 can’t possibly tackle all of those threads.
Not only do Dune 2‘s massive book omissions create problems for a future film, but there’s simply too much ground to cover in a two-hour runtime, making the next chapter in Villeneuve’s epic well-suited to a miniseries format. While Dune 3 could stick to the story of Dune Messiah, the novel’s ending may invite film-only fans to wonder about the future of Paul’s children. That said, mimicking the 2003 miniseries’ structure would resolve all loose ends while providing a more satisfying conclusion to Paul’s story as a fallen “messiah” in Dune: Part Three.
