The first official trailer for Dune: Part Two is finally here, and I don’t know about you, but I personally felt that Dune fever grab me by the throat when Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides finally rode that sandworm. So much for him agreeing with Stilgar (Javier Bardem)’s request to not do anything fancy.
Many familiar faces are returning to the world of Dune in this second installment of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s space opera, like the Fremen Chani, played by Zendaya, and the powerful Bene Gesserit Lady Jessica, played by Rebecca Ferguson. The trailer also featured a few shots of several new characters that will be introduced in Dune: Part Two.
We saw Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan, discussing the supposed end of House Atreides on Arrakis, and Austin Butler’s terrifyingly awesome Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen fighting in some location that is completely black and white and has left me wondering whether it’s a planet that’s just like that—because why not—or maybe some form of flashback or a character’s vision.
And we also got a few introductory shots of Léa Seydoux’s Lady Margot Fenring—a character who might not come with the hype attached to Feyd-Rautha, but who will still be pretty influential in the events to come. Let’s take a closer look at who Lady Margot is in the world of Dune and how she figures into the plot of the sequel.
So who is Lady Margot in Dune?
Like Lady Jessica, Lady Margot is a sister of the Bene Gesserit, the powerful matriarchal organization that moves all the threads of the Empire to influence the course of history and guide humanity towards the ending they planned. One of the ways in which they achieve this is by having their sisters marry—or become concubines—into various noble houses around the galaxy.
That’s exactly what happened to Lady Margot, who was sent by the sisterhood as a bride to Count Hasimir Fenring—unlike Lady Jessica, who never married Oscar Isaac’s Duke Leto Atreides and remained his concubine. Then again, Lady Jessica is pretty unusual in many other ways. Most notably, she acted against the Bene Gesserit breeding scheme to give Leto a son, whom he desired greatly, rather than a daughter as she was supposed to.
Her marriage to the Count put Lady Margot in the inner circle of the imperial court of the 81st Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV of House Corrino, who will played by Christopher Walken in Dune: Part Two. Like all Bene Gesserit, Lady Margot has been trained in strictly conditioning her body both mentally and physically, something that gives her almost superhuman abilities—like heightened awareness and perfect control of her body chemistry, which allows her to control when she conceives a child and which biological sex that child will be.
Margot applies all of her Bene Gesserit abilities to gain information that might be useful to the sisterhood as she moves through the imperial court, going so far as to share some of her skills with her husband— something the Bene Gesserit usually frown upon because they use their skills to communicate in secret.
What can we expect from Lady Margot in Dune: Part Two?
It might seem like Lady Margot works mostly on the sidelines, and while it’s true that she’s far away from the action on Arrakis (for the most part), she remains a pretty important character to the larger story. Discussing what she will do in Dune: Part Two, though, would definitely be considered a spoiler so if you want to sit down at your local cinema completely spoiler-free, I suggest you stop reading now.
If you’d like to refresh your knowledge ahead of the movie or don’t particularly care about spoilers, however, let’s start by saying that we can be certain Lady Margot will share the screen with Feyd-Rautha—as the trailer itself suggests with this shot of the two of them getting dangerously close:
In fact, it’s the Bene Gesserit who send Margot to Feyd-Rautha—maybe in that mysterious black-and-white location—with the precise purpose of conceiving a child by him so she can harness his genetic material. Feyd-Rautha is himself a product of the Bene Gesserit breeding scheme. The sisterhood originally planned for Feyd-Rautha to marry the daughter Lady Jessica would have had by Duke Leto, thus uniting the two Houses and ending their blood feud—while also probably producing the Kwisatz Haderach (i.e., the savior prophesied by the sisterhood).
Of course, Lady Jessica had a son instead, which means that Feyd-Rautha and that son—our beloved Paul—are on an inevitable collision course that will most likely lead to the demise of one of them. Hence why the Bene Gesserit want to preserve Feyd-Rautha’s genetic material through Margot.
It’s also important to notice that, while she’s seducing him, Margot implants in Feyd-Rautha a seed of conditioning, meaning he will be rendered completely immobile by a single, precise word. It’s something that will come back into play during the final duel, when Paul has to decide whether to use that conditioning to easily win against Feyd-Rautha—and owe his victory to the Bene Gesserit—or defeat him with his own strength.
(featured image: Warner Bros.)
