One of the most memorable and stand-out aspects of the first Dune unfortunately did not return for the sequel – and that is sadly, Oscar Isaac‘s Duke Leto Atreides. But, before he departed, he did at least get a memorable ending – by controlling his own death and managing to take out several of House Harkonnen‘s underlings along with him.
The scene takes place around an hour and 30 minutes into the science fiction movie, with Stellan Skarsgard’s Baron Harkonnen feasting at an enormous table. Isaac’s Duke Atreides sits naked at the other end of the table, his head flung back, and he wheezes weekly. Harkonnen tells Atreides that his family is dead (which is not the case), and that his bloodline will end with him.
Atreides manages to say; “Here I am, here I remain” before biting into a gas capsule hidden in his mouth. The gas releases, killing everyone in the room, except Harkonnen, who has been a holographic projection this whole time.
“Everything about it was just so scary,” Isaac recalled about the thriller movie moment in a January 2022 interview with Entertainment Weekly. “He’s been stripped of his clothing. There was some thought, I think originally, like, ‘he doesn’t have to be naked.’ I was like, ‘No, he should be naked, man.’ It’s like a Christ on the cross kind of moment. So we came up with a few different ideas of what his posture would be.”
And Isaac left an unusual parting gift with the director. “At one point, when Denis [Villeneuve] wasn’t looking, I may have left my c–k sock in his pocket, just so he just had a little bit of me next to him when I left. Just a little, musty handkerchief.”