Who are Zendaya’s Chani and Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan in Dune 2?

This is the latest trailer. The Dune Part Deux starts just like 2021’s Dune: In the middle of a desert with Zendaya’s character Chani. But anyone who expected to see a lot of Zendaya in 2021’s Dune would have been sorely disappointed: She’s barely in the thing until the very end!

It’s good news if The Dune Part Deux is anything like Frank Herbert’s Dune (and 2021’s Dune certainly was), we’ll be seeing a lot more of Chani, and Zendaya’s portrayal, when the movie hits theaters in November. There’s plenty of time to read between now and November. DuneSee for yourself.

But if you’d rather not wait You can also find out more about read the book, here’s a quick rundown anyway.

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

Niko T. Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures

Daughter of the researcher/planetologist Liet Kynes (played by Sharon Duncan-Brewster) and a fremen tribesperson, Chani and Paul Atreides meet in the book in exactly the same way they do in the 2021 movie — at a knife fight. Paul sees Chani in his dreams, a fremen woman assigned to him to assist with the integration of Paul and his exiled mom into Fremen.

What is the Dune Part Two release date?

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

Paul is forced to spend two years in exile among the Fremen. The forces of the past will eventually make him their leader. Chani, Paul and their son have been together for two years (although they never married) but the baby was killed by an imperial raid at a Fremen settlement before the story ended. Chani is with Paul throughout the entire story. DuneWe can count on them being a major part of Part two of Dune.

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 onscreen, there’s no movie. The epicenter of the story is this relationship.”

Who is Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan?

Warner Bros.

The Dune Part Deux will also put a big hurdle in the way of Paul and Chani’s relationship: the politically capable Princess Irulan, daughter of the Padishah Emperor, played by Florence Pugh. In the very final moments of the novel, Fremen forces under Paul’s banner make a successful takeover of the planet Arrakis, and threaten to destroy all spice production — on which all interstellar travel depends — if the Padishah Emperor does not abdicate.

But in order to become the next Emperor, Paul has to marry the Emperor’s daughter; though he swears to never sire 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 restrictions of politics and fate — but they’re also part of a cycle. Paul’s late father rejected politics by remaining unmarried in honor of the “mistress” (Paul’s mother, Lady Jessica) that he’d fallen in love with, so that their son would become his heir. If you’ve seen DuneYou already know what happened to him.

Final lines of the Dune novel are about Chani and Irulan — and about this tension between the small reality of two people in love contrasted against the massiveness of galactic history. Lady Jessica warns Chani to not put too much emphasis on being called an empress rather than a concubine. “We,” she says, “who carry the name of concubine — history will call us wives.”