‘Dune’ Refresher: How Did Paul End Up on Arrakis in the First Place?

Dune: Part Two has finally dropped into theaters, meaning that moviegoers of all frequencies will soon know what it means to ride a sandworm, as Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides learns over the course of his bombastic acclimation from boy to man.

Denis Villeneuve’s follow-up to the Oscar-nominated Dune: Part One is the true meat and potatoes of Paul’s journey as he goes from a forsaken foreigner to honorary Fremen warrior all the way up to the cautionary status of Lisan al Gaib, and things are surely only going to escalate even more exponentially by the time Part Three is on our doorsteps.

But, for those of you who decided to skip the first Dune—or who have maybe forgotten some details in the years since—you may be wondering how exactly this all happened. Why was Paul, the young heir to House Atreides, put on this devastating path, and what prompted the Emperor to unknowingly put him on it in the first place? Here’s the lowdown on the Dune film series’ major inciting incident: the Emperor’s passing of planet Arrakis from House Harkonnen to House Atreides.

Why did the Emperor give Arrakis to House Atreides?

In a sentence, it was all part of the Emperor’s plan to destroy the Atreides bloodline.

By stripping House Harkonnen of the title and passing it on to House Atreides, the Emperor played upon the bad blood between the houses. The shift in power was meant to hide imperial involvement in the eventual attack from the Harkonnens upon the Atreides shortly after they arrived on Arrakis—an attack that the Emperor sent his own Sardaukar soldiers to aid the Harkonnens in.

It was the Emperor’s hope, then, that the Harkonnens—who were in on the Emperor’s plan—would wipe out House Atreides, who the Emperor saw as a threat to his own rule based on then-Duke Leto Atreides’ popularity with the other Houses, hence his decision to sneakily destroy House Atreides through the animus of House Harkonnen in the first place.

But, as one will find out in Dune: Part Two especially, his plan did not work.

(featured image: Warner Bros. Pictures)