Throughout all six episodes of Dune: Prophecy, the journey of Valya Harkonnen — from an outcast of a disgraced house to the leader of the powerful Sisterhood — is central to nearly everything that happens in the series. And, because the role is so big and formative for the Dune saga, it’s taken two actresses to pull it off. In the present tense of the show, the venerable Emily Watson is Mother Valya, but in the flashbacks in the first and third episodes of the show, Jessica Barden plays a younger version of Valya.
Arguably, although Watson carries the heavier burden of leading the entire show, it’s Barden’s younger version of Valya who we see making formative, galaxy-shaking decisions. So, which Valya is the most pivotal? And could we see Barden’s version again, even outside of the Prophecy flashbacks? Smack dab in the middle of Dune: Prophecy’s explosive run of episodes, Inverse chatted with Jessica Barden to get her “truth-sense” on the past, present, and future of Dune.
