Zendaya’s and Florence Pugh’s Dune characters are set up for a galactic rivalry

The latest trailer for Dune: part two starts just like in 2021 Dune: In the middle of a desert with Zendaya’s character Chani. But anyone expecting to see a lot of Zendaya in 2021s Dune would have been very disappointed: she’s barely in it to the end!

The good news is, if Dune: part two is something like that of Frank Herbert Dune (and those of 2021 Dune sure was), we’ll be seeing a lot more of Chani and Zendaya’s portrayal when the film hits theaters in November. Plenty of time to read between now and then Dune and find out what happens for yourself.

But if you’d rather not wait or read the book, here is a brief overview anyway.

Who is Chani, Zendaya’s character in the Dune movies?

Chani and Paul Atreides, daughter of the researcher/planetologist Liet Kynes (played by Sharon Duncan-Brewster) and a member of a Fremen tribe, meet in the book in exactly the same way as in the 2021 film: during a knife fight. Paul has recurring visions of a blue-eyed young woman who turns out to be Chani, a Fremen warrior assigned to guide him and his exiled mother as they integrate into the Fremen.

What can we expect in Dune: Part Two?

[Ed. note: I’m about to describe the whole ending of Dune. This is your spoiler warning for a 60-year-old book.]

Paul spends two years in exile with the Fremen before the forces of history force him to become their messianic leader. And during that time, Chani and Paul fall in love (without getting married) and have a child (although their baby is killed in an Imperial attack on a Fremen encampment before the book comes to a close). Chani assists Paul throughout the story of Duneand we can expect them to be a big part of it Dune: part two.

Dune director Denis Villeneuve recently told Vanity Fair“I kept saying to my crew, ‘The most important thing is that spark, that relationship between [Paul and Chani]If we don’t capture that, if we don’t have that on screen, there’s no movie. The epicenter of the story is this relationship.”

Who is Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan?

Image: Warner Bros.

Dune: part two will also be a major obstacle to the relationship between Paul and Chani: the politically capable Princess Irulan, daughter of the Padishah Emperor, played by Florence Pugh. In the very last moments of the novel, Fremen forces under Paul’s banner make a successful takeover of the planet Arrakis, threatening to destroy all spice production – on which all interstellar travel depends – if the Padishah Emperor does not abdicate.

But to become the next Emperor, Paul must marry the Emperor’s daughter; though he vows never to father an heir with Irulan so that he and Chani’s children will inherit.

Narratively, Irulan and Chani are foils, representing Paul’s personal desires and hopes, and the iron constraints of politics and fate – but they are also part of a cycle. Paul’s late father rejected politics by remaining unmarried in honor of the “mistress” (Paul’s mother, Lady Jessica) he had fallen in love with so that their son would become his heir. If you’ve seen it Dune (2021), you already know that politics finally broke him.

The last lines in the Dune novel is about Chani and Irulan – and about this tension between the small reality of two people in love contrasted with the massiveness of galactic history. Lady Jessica tells Chani not to place too much value on being called a concubine instead of an empress. “We,” she says, “who bear the name of concubines—history will call us wives.”