Paul Atreides

On Caladan, Paul dreams of Arrakis and of a blue-eyed girl he has never seen. He trains with Gurney Halleck and Duncan Idaho and learns from his mother how to use the Voice.

Before the move, Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam of the Bene Gesserit makes him put his hand in a box that causes intense pain, with the poisoned gom jabbar at his neck. If he pulls his hand out, he dies. Paul endures, and Mohiam starts to consider that he may be more than an ordinary heir.

On Arrakis, Paul joins his father on a spice harvester attacked by a sandworm and sees up close what the planet demands of anyone who lives there. The Fremen look at him and Jessica as if they were expecting someone.

Dr. Yueh betrays the Atreides and shuts down the shields of Arrakeen. The Harkonnens and the Emperor's Sardaukar take the city, and Duke Leto dies. Paul and Jessica are flown out to die in the desert, but they escape thanks to the Voice and to Duncan, who dies protecting them.

In the tent where they hide in the desert, the spice in the air fully awakens Paul's visions. They get sharper: he sees a holy war in his name and realizes his mother is pregnant.

When they meet Stilgar's Fremen, the warrior Jamis challenges the outsiders. Paul fights, kills Jamis and earns the right to stay with the tribe. Chani, the girl from his dreams, walks beside him: this is only the beginning.

At Sietch Tabr, Paul is given the name Usul among those close to him and picks Muad'Dib, the desert mouse, as his public name. He learns to walk without rhythm on the sand, joins the raids on Harkonnen harvesters and rides a sandworm for the first time. He and Chani fall in love.

Meanwhile, Jessica spreads the prophecy of the Lisan al Gaib, and the southern Fremen start to see Paul as their messiah. Paul is afraid: in his visions, going south means millions dead. So he holds out as long as he can.

After Feyd-Rautha destroys Sietch Tabr, Paul goes south and drinks the Water of Life, the poison only Reverend Mothers survive. He falls into a coma, and Chani is the one who brings him back.

He wakes up seeing past and future. He learns that Jessica is the daughter of Baron Harkonnen, a product of the Bene Gesserit breeding program, and that he himself is the Kwisatz Haderach. At the southern war council he takes on the role of the Lisan al Gaib and wins over the fundamentalists.

The Fremen use the Atreides atomics and the sandworms to beat the Sardaukar. Paul kills the Baron, defeats Feyd-Rautha in a duel, takes the throne from Shaddam IV and demands Princess Irulan's hand. When the Great Houses reject his rise, he orders the Fremen to lead them to paradise. The holy war begins, and Chani walks away.

Dune: Part Three opens on December 18, 2026, again directed by Denis Villeneuve, and adapts the novel Dune Messiah. Timothée Chalamet returns as Paul, now emperor, alongside Zendaya (Chani), Florence Pugh (Irulan), Rebecca Ferguson (Jessica), Javier Bardem (Stilgar) and Josh Brolin (Gurney). Anya Taylor-Joy joins as Alia, and Robert Pattinson joins the cast as Scytale.

In Frank Herbert's novels, Paul is 15 when the story starts, and already in the desert tent, in the first book, he learns he is the Baron's grandson. Chani is the daughter of the planetologist Liet-Kynes, a man, and believes in Paul early on. They have a son, Leto, who is killed in a Sardaukar raid. In the end, Paul marries Irulan purely for politics and Chani agrees to stay by his side as his concubine, without the break the movie shows. And it's Alia, already born, who kills the Baron, not Paul.