Paul Atreides: Who He Is, Who Plays Him and What Happens to Him

Paul Atreides is the teenage heir of House Atreides, a noble family that the Emperor sends to rule the desert planet Arrakis, the only source of the valuable spice. He is credited simply as Paul Atreides in all three Dune films, and the story also gives him the names Muad'Dib and Lisan al Gaib as he rises among the Fremen.

Two separate casts carry him. Kyle MacLachlan, billed first, plays Paul in David Lynch's dune 1984. Timothée Chalamet, also billed first, plays him in Denis Villeneuve's dune 2021 and dune part two. These are different adaptations, so the 1984 story is not a prequel or a first half of the Villeneuve story. If you are sorting the order, the dune movies in order guide sets it out.

What is special about Paul? He has strange prophetic dreams and has been trained in unusual mental disciplines by his mother, lady jessica, who belongs to the Bene Gesserit. In Dune (2021) he keeps dreaming of a Fremen woman named Chani (see chani dune). Some people on Arrakis see him as a prophesied savior, and the question of whether that belief is real, invented or dangerous drives his whole arc.

What does the Bene Gesserit breeding plan mean for Paul? Part Two ties him to it directly: after he drinks the Water of Life and wakes from his coma, he learns the full truth about the breeding plan behind his birth. He then declares himself the Lisan al Gaib, and the Fremen rally behind him.

Paul's closest ties are to his parents, to Chani and to the loyal men of House Atreides, and the members of the house shift between the films. In the Villeneuve films the family is Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), Lady Jessica Atreides (Rebecca Ferguson) and Paul. Their followers include Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa), Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) and Thufir Hawat (Stephen McKinley Henderson). In the 1984 film, Francesca Annis plays Jessica, Patrick Stewart plays Gurney, and Paul's sister Alia announces at the end that he has brought the change the Fremen hoped for.

Who is Paul Atreides' wife? The answer depends on the film. In Dune (1984), he falls in love with the Fremen woman Chani. In Dune: Part Two, Zendaya's Chani is at his side during the raids, but the film ends with Paul agreeing to take Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) as his future wife, after Irulan agrees to marry him so that her father is spared. Chani is horrified by the political marriage and the coming war, refuses to bow to him and rides away alone on a sandworm.

His mother is the relationship that shapes him most. Jessica trains him, survives the Water of Life herself in Part Two, gains the memories of past Reverend Mothers and treats his war on the Great Houses as the start of a holy war. stilgar leads the Fremen who take Paul and Jessica in. His enemies are the baron harkonnen and feyd rautha, and for the wider setting see dune houses. For his father, see duke leto atreides, and for his companions, duncan idaho and gurney halleck.

In my opinion, the best Paul scenes are the ones where the films refuse to let him be simply heroic. The first is the duel with Jamis in Dune (2021), where Paul uses his gifts to fight Jamis and kills him. Stilgar's Fremen then take Paul and Jessica in, so the duel is the moment the tribe accepts them.

The second is Paul's choice in Dune: Part Two to drink the Water of Life after the Harkonnen assault. It could be argued that this is the pivot of the saga. He wakes with the full truth of the Bene Gesserit breeding plan, and what follows is the declaration as Lisan al Gaib, the Fremen rallying behind him and the threat to the spice fields. In my view, it shows a young man turning a tribe's belief into a weapon.

The third is the ending of Part Two, where the knife duel with Feyd-Rautha is followed at once by the demand for the throne and the arranged marriage to Irulan. Chani riding away alone is the cost. So, is Paul Atreides evil? Perhaps not in the way a villain is, but the films, in my view, make a stronger case that he is a ruler who accepts a holy war he foresaw and could not stop. Villeneuve's version leans harder on that than the 1984 film, which ends in rain and triumph.