Dune 3 Trailer Quietly Revealed A Secretly Pivotal Character — And It's Not Who You Think

Why does anything happen in Dune at all? The short answer is that the planet Arrakis, AKA Dune, has a substance called “the spice,” which allows the Guild Navigators to safely move spaceships through the space-folding technique of the Holtzman engines. Without the spice, these mutated humans wouldn’t be able to get the ships through space safely. And without the Spacing Guild and the Navigators, the commerce of the Dune universe would collapse. However, interestingly, Denis Villeneuve’s first two Dune films have kept the Spacing Guild in the background. But all of that has changed with Dune: Part Three.

The latest full-length trailer for Dune 3 not only doubles down on some plot twists with Paul (Timothée Chalamet) and Chani (Zendaya) but also suggests a few other changes from the second novel, 1969’s Dune Messiah. Some of those possible changes involve the shapeshifting Face Dancer named Scytale (Robert Pattinson), who, along with Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), is engaged in a plot to overthrow the rule of House Atreides. But there’s another co-conspirator in this scheme, and it's a member of the Spacing Guild, a crucial character hiding in plain sight in Dune 3.

Dune 3 Trailer Reveals the Guild Navigator, Edric

In 1984’s Dune film, from visionary director David Lynch, the entire film opened with one of the most important factions in the universe: The Spacing Guild, and a “Third Stage Guild Navigator.” In that version, the Spacing Guild makes it clear that Paul is a threat to their power, which turns out to be true. In theory, Lynch was setting up the seeds for a possible sequel, adapting the events of Messiah, which, at one point, was very much a film that was being planned and written by Lynch.

In contrast, Villeneuve’s Dune films haven’t really set up the Guild Navigators as characters at all, but rather as a presence. In Dune: Part One (2021), there are representatives from the Spacing Guild present on Caladan, but we only see these helmeted folks briefly, and there’s no real indication that they are actual Guild Navigators. (Keep in mind, all the characters in Dune, including the shapeshifting Face-Dancers and the mutated Guild Navigators, are, technically, human.)

But now, with the Dune 3 trailer, we see a Guild Navigator, specifically, Edric. The only other time Edric has been depicted on screen was in the 2003 Syfy miniseries Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune, which adapted both Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. In that depiction, Edric was a floating mutated human with flippers in a tank.

Now, in Dune 3, Edric is depicted in a kind of floating, spacey sarcophagus, which obscures the mutated features. (Whether the film will show us the face of Edric remains to be seen.) In another scene in the trailer, we see Edric sliding into what is probably a large spacecraft that Edric is navigating, with the aid of the spice. (Again, this process has not been depicted from the Navigator’s perspective in the Villeneuve Dune movies. Yet.)

Why Edric is a Dune game-changer

Edric’s presence in the Dune 3 trailer makes it clear that this film will be very focused on the plot against Paul, which comes from the 1969 novel Dune Messiah. As a major player in the conspiracy, Edric is doomed to eventually lose to House Atreides, though the fact that the film includes him is huge. How exactly this film will depict him, and whether or not he will speak, isn’t entirely clear. But along with Scytale and Irulan, and Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, Edric is the essential piece to the conspiracy.

Dune: Part Three is poised to end the Dune film trilogy. However, because the Face Dancers were actually introduced onscreen in the prequel series, Dune: Prophecy, it’s possible that the new design of the Guild Navigators will live on in future Dune spinoffs set in the same cinematic universe. After all, these are the people who are on the receiving end of that flowing spice.

Dune: Part Three hits theaters on December 18.