Zendaya's Chani Takes Dune: Part Three in a Radically Different Direction From the Books

Full text

The second trailer for Dune: Part Three has arrived. The biggest takeaway from this new footage is that Part Three is not a straightforward adaptation of 1969’s Dune Messiah. The story is moving in a very different direction in the third and final part of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune trilogy, and we couldn’t be more excited.

What makes this adaptation so different from the source material? It all has to do with Zendaya’s Chani, a character who looks to be playing a profoundly different role in this version of the Dune mythos. Let’s explore what’s changed and why Chani is the secret X-factor that’s transforming this iconic sci-fi saga.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Dune novels!

Chani’s Fate: The Dune Books vs. the Movies

2024’s Dune: Part Two already strongly hinted that Villeneuve was taking Chani’s story in a very different direction. In general, Chani is a much more passive character in Frank Herbert’s Dune novels. After being trained in the Atreides brand of combat (known as the weirding way), Chani mostly settles into her role as Paul’s lover and concubine. She stands back as Paul steps onto the Imperial throne and ushers in a cosmic jihad that kills billions.

In Dune Messiah, Chani remains a quiet but fierce supporter of her lover’s cause. She wants nothing more than to bear Paul’s children. Unfortunately for her, Chani is being secretly fed contraceptives by Paul’s wife, Irulan, as the Bene Gesserit have no desire to see their centuries-old breeding program upset by the addition of a random Fremen woman. Paul knows of Irulan’s actions. However, he foresees that the birth of a child will lead to Chani’s death, so he chooses not to act.

It’s only after Chani switches to a traditional, untainted Fremen diet that she finally becomes pregnant. Unfortunately, again, her years of exposure to Irulan’s contraceptives have left her body ill-equipped to deal with the strain of pregnancy. Chani ultimately dies in childbirth, leaving Paul one final surprise when he realizes that she was pregnant with twins.

Dune: Part Two doesn’t do anything to tee up that storyline for Chani in the sequel. Quite the opposite. Zendaya’s Chani is shown to be a much more active participant in Timothée Chalamet’s Paul’s war against the Harkonnens. But unlike Javier Bardem’s Stilgar and his band of religious fanatics, Chani doesn’t buy into the idea of Paul being a prophesied messiah. She sees through the deceptions and stories planted by the Bene Gesserit. She follows Paul because he seeks to fight alongside the Fremen and liberate Arrakis, not to take power for himself.

That all changes at the end of the film, when Paul crowns himself Emperor and takes Florence Pugh’s Irulan as his wife. Chani sees this as a deeply personal betrayal and a rejection of everything Paul claimed to stand for. She has no interest in being part of Paul’s holy war, so Chani retreats back to the desert. Paul wins his war, but in the process, he makes himself totally alone.

Zendaya’s Chani in Dune: Part Three

Again, everything we’ve seen of Dune: Part Three so far suggests Chani is playing a vastly different role compared to the source material. Her status quo is completely different. She isn’t Paul’s faithful concubine, pining for the day she can proudly bear his children. She’s rejected Paul and everything he stands for, preferring instead to live as a true Fremen, totally free and a servant to no one.

At this point, we can only guess as to the role Chani will play in Dune: Part Three. The marketing is certainly playing up the tragedy of her doomed romance with Paul. The film’s new poster highlights their growing rivalry, making it appear as though Paul and Chani will be forced to battle one another in the desert. The original teaser trailer features what appears to be a scene set during the events of Part Two, as Paul and Chani reflect on the names they want for their future children. The new trailer, meanwhile, shows us what is likely a flashback scene set just after Part Two, as Paul confronts an angry, disillusioned Chani and is accused of seizing undeserved power.

“At the end of the second film, Chani is obviously feeling a sense of betrayal toward Paul, and their relationship has crumbled,” Chalamet said at the fan event where the new trailer was screened . “Without giving too much away, in the third film I think it’s sort of Denis weaving in storylines that weren’t explicit in the book. Perhaps, I would say that’s where Denis took the most creative liberty, but it really ties the story together. Zendaya, as you guys see in that trailer, gives such a fantastic performance in this, as usual.”

For Chalamet, Paul’s fall from grace is a critical part of the Dune storyline, and this revamped approach to Chani feeds into that. It’s not that Paul is a villain, per se. He’s a man trapped by his visions of the future and trying to navigate the best path forward for his family and humanity at large.

“I hope it’s more nuanced than that,” Chalamet said. “I think it’s one of the great endings of Frank Herbert’s books. I think I read somewhere that it’s why he wrote Messiah as a follow-up to the first book, that people mistook Paul as a classic hero. He sort of wanted to warn the world what can happen when people blindly follow leaders, and that even the good can be corrupted.”

The real question is just how far Chani will go to oppose Paul now.

The real question is just how far Chani will go to oppose Paul now. Is she simply exiled in the desert, or is she actively resisting his regime? She won’t be the only Fremen who’s lost faith in Paul. Part Three also introduces a character named Farok (Isaach de Bankolé), one of Paul’s Fedaykin commandos who becomes disillusioned with the Lisan al-Gaib after encountering an ocean for the first time (we see part of that scene in the new trailer).

Like Dune Messiah, Part Three features an alliance of anti-Atreides power players like Reverend Mother Mohaim (Charlotte Rampling), Irulan (Florence Pugh), and a Tleilaxu named Scytale (Robert Pattinson). One intriguing possibility is that Chani joins this alliance in the film. She would certainly be a powerful ally in the war to unseat the Emperor, but would Chani stoop to colluding with Paul’s enemies in order to stop him?

Either way, many fans are beginning to speculate that Scytale uses Chani’s image against Paul in the film. Scytale is a shape-shifter known as a Face Dancer, meaning he can contort his muscles and take on the appearance of anyone he chooses. Some have pointed out that something seems off about Chani in the scene in the trailer where she taunts Paul, “How does it feel to be human like everyone else, Paul Atreides?” Is this the real Chani, or is it Scytale in disguise?

Paul and Chani’s Children

And then there are Paul and Chani’s children. We know those characters also have a part to play in Dune: Part Three. As mentioned, Leto II and Ghanima are born near the end of Dune Messiah, but they’re simply helpless infants in that story. Their true importance to the Dune saga doesn’t become apparent until the third book, 1976’s Children of Dune, when they replace Paul as the series’ main protagonists.

But here, again, Villeneuve is diverging significantly from the source material. Villeneuve has gone so far as to cast teen actors Nakoa-Wolf Momoa and Ida Brooke as Leto II and Ghanima, respectively. Perhaps the characters will appear only via spice-induced visions (as Anya Taylor-Joy’s Alia did in Dune: Part Two), but we suspect their role is more crucial. Given that Paul and Chani are clearly broken up in Part Three, it’s likely that Chani is already pregnant by the time she leaves Paul’s side. By the main timeline of the film, Paul will already be a father to twin teenagers. In that sense, Part Three may be drawing as much from Children of Dune as it is Dune Messiah.

Much like Chani’s rejection of Team Paul, the existence of these Atreides children changes everything for the film. It raises all manner of interesting questions. Is Chani raising the children herself? Is she teaching them to reject Paul’s jihad? How will the Fremen react to the discovery that Muad’Dib has two heirs? Perhaps most importantly, does Paul himself know about his children? Given his supernatural powers, we would imagine so, but he may also be keeping that information close to the stillsuit, out of a desire to protect his family from their many enemies.

It is worth reiterating that, in the book, Paul is surprised to discover Chani has given birth to twins rather than a single daughter. That’s because Leto II is born with prescience, making him invisible to Paul’s oracular sight. This could also play into their role in the film, if Leto II’s very existence shields him and his family from their father’s all-seeing gaze.

Leto II doesn’t appear in the new trailer as far as we can tell, but there may be a couple of brief shots of Ghanima. Honestly, Brooke looks so much like Zendaya that it’s hard to be sure. But despite the deceptive editing, that does appear to be Ghanima who stops the charging Sandworm in its tracks near the end of the trailer. It’s a sign that she, like her brother, has powerful abilities that promise to change the playing field in Dune: Part Three.

The first two films in the series were great, but they didn’t necessarily hold many surprises for fans of the Dune books. This time around, Chani and her children have the potential to completely shake up a familiar story and keep even the most hardcore Dune-heads on their toes. That’s why this latest sequel is so exciting.

For more on Dune: Part Three, learn who’s who in the first teaser trailer .

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky .