Oh, no! There's more!
Paul speaks to Irulan, not treating her all that nicely for what she did to Chani, but it turns out that he's foreseen Chani dying in childbirth. So, he's here to thank Irulan for prolonging her life. He thanks her by giving her a kiss, which upsets her because she has feelings for him that he does not return. Kinda sad, really. She certainly wasn't bad enough to deserve it in these two films.
Later, everyone leaves for the desert to have the child, though Alia stays behind to take care of administrative business.
Today, business means arresting some employee named Korba. No, she does not allow him to finish having sex with his girlfriend. He was involved in some traitor-type thing we don't know about yet.
Out somewhere far away, Chani is on a fairly obvious soundstage talking to Hayt about how things were when she lived out here—because listening to everyone vent is his job. It's right in the description—second line on the third page of the contract, next to the check box.
Of course this is when she goes into labor, as, according to the seventeenth line of page four, he is also designated to show up at exactly the right time, all the time.
Paul will be with her shortly, Hayt reassures her. Someone else can fetch a doctor; it didn't go well the last time he tried. Hey, wait—she points out that he referred to Paul by his first name. Either he read line one of page one, or he remembered it.
Oh, yeah; baby. Remember? He carries her inside.
Obligatory montage follows, with a bunch of scenes from several of places. Hey; not the worst accompanying song in the world, but a bit too happy for a dying people montage. Heh; they just used the same footage a second time.
Death count: Korba (1, execution), the steersman (2, execution), the old Reverend Mother (3, execution), Chani (4, childbirth), twins Leto II and Ghanima Atreides (-1 and -2)
Hayt brings Paul the bad and the good news, and we get to see how much taller Hayt is than his master (lots).
Wait—Chani isn't quite dead yet. She has only enough energy left to say her lover's name before dying. Paul's grief gets in the way of his prescience, leaving him completely blind. He stumbles into Hayt's arms muttering "she's gone."
Well, shit.
As Bijaz looks on, Hayt's conditioning kicks in. Before anything can be done, he draws his knife and, as the late Baron Harkonnen would say, reunites Paul with Chani. A stunned Hayt is led out by Bijaz, presumably to be taken back to Tleilax and vaporized, purpose served. Fade to black.
...no, no, not really. Really, Hayt catches himself at the last nanosecond and tosses the knife into Bijaz instead. Forcing him to kill his old friend broke his brain, allowing Duncan Idaho's memories to seep back in through the fractures, unprecedented. We know what this means—from this point forward, the guy begins acting!
But there's more—Scytale, as Otheym's daughter, appears and takes the bloodied knife, then points it at the babies. Eek—don't drip blood on the sheets! They're infants; shit needs to be sanitary! Oh, wait; yeah.
Scytale postpones the murder to turn back into Scytale and expresses his surprise at how the whole ghola plan took an unexpected direction. "What do you remember?" he asks. Duncan throws another knife in three...two...one...
...nope. At Paul's order, he just answers that he recalls everything.
Ha. Just as Planned—Scytale is not expressing surprise at all, but pleasure at his little experiment working. He can bring back Chani for Paul this way, but for a price—the whole damn empire. Eeeeeeeeeeerrrmmmmmm...bit high, ain't that?
Duncan (whilst acting): Can I kill him now?
Paul: No.
Paul has yet another vision of an older Leto II, who looks a lot like Daniel Radcliffe (Oh, man; I am going to have so much fun making Harry Potter jokes in parts two and three...). He and his sister are pre-born, so they know what's going on, and he wants to help. Use my eyes, he offers, a few more times than we need to get the point. Have I mentioned yet that that kid is a walking shirtless scene? Because he is.
Paul takes the hint, and he uses the moment of sight to stab Scytale, killing him, then reverting immediately back to blindness.
With his prescience finally turned off, he figures, it's time to leave the twins and follow the Fremen ritual for blind people—walk into the desert and sacrifice himself to the worms. Alia can raise these two.
Speaking of Alia, she and Duncan were not told where he was going until it was too late to stop him. They meet, upset, on a palace balcony—no one knows which way he went. Well, at least they still have each other—smooch.
That's also it for the Dune Messiah segment. I liked the book, really, despite the massive downgrade in pace. How I found 300 pages of mostly characters standing around and talking about their feelings exciting may be attributed to my latent girly side.
I'll be back next time for the titular story.
