10 Strongest 'Dune Part 3' Characters, Ranked By Power

The mouthwatering cast confirmed for Dune: Part Three will play some of the strongest characters Frank Herbert ever put on the page, with each one carrying a different kind of power into the final chapter of Denis Villeneuve's trilogy. The film features at least 10 powerful characters. Some are warriors raised in the deep desert, while others bend politics, religion, and prescience to their will. A few of them are so close to godhood that the rest of the empire trembles at the mere mention of their name.

Set 17 years after Dune: Part Two, Dune: Part Three adapts Dune Messiah and arrives in theaters on December 18. Timothee Chalamet's Paul Atreides now rules as Padishah Emperor, and his Holy War has stretched across the known universe. Around him is a tangle of allies, plotters, and family members with interesting and unique abilities that make them extremely formidable. 

Ranking the 10 Strongest Dune 3 Characters by Power

10. Chani 

Zendaya's Chani is one of the deadliest Fremen the trilogy has shown so far. Dune: Part Two established her as a warrior fighting on the front lines of the Arrakis war, gunning down Harkonnen soldiers, scaling cliffs, and riding sandworms into battle alongside Paul. She is fluent with a crysknife, comfortable in a stillsuit for days at a time, and has the kind of desert survival training that almost no off-worlder can match.

Her power is also tied to who she is. Chani is the daughter of Imperial Planetologist Liet-Kynes, a respected name among the Fremen, and her bond with Paul gives her a rare line directly to the emperor. She walked away from him at the end of Dune: Part Two on her own terms, riding off into the desert rather than bowing to his throne, which says plenty about her independence and her strong personality. 

9. Stilgar

Javier Bardem's Stilgar steps into Dune: Part Three as the Naib of Sietch Tabr and one of Paul's most loyal commanders. In the first two films, he was the man who took Paul and Lady Jessica in, taught them Fremen ways, and led the assault that broke the Sardaukar at the climax of Dune: Part Two. His fighting prowess comes from decades of life in the deep desert, and he calls a sandworm with the kind of confidence that’s amazing to watch.

What makes Stilgar dangerous in the threequel goes beyond personal combat. He commands the absolute loyalty of the Fremen legions that Paul rode to power, and his belief in Muad'Dib has hardened into religious devotion. This faith puts an entire holy army at his back, which is a weapon few characters can boast of. 

8. Scytale

Robert Pattinson's Scytale is the new face on the board in Dune: Part Three, and he is the kind of threat the trilogy has not really featured before. As a Tleilaxu Face Dancer, he can shapeshift, mimicking the appearance of others to slip past every level of imperial security. Pattinson has called him an unusual character whose true allegiances remain unclear.

Scytale is a key part of the conspiracy against Paul alongside the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, and the Bene Tleilax. What makes him lethal is the way he can get closer to the emperor than any traditional enemy ever could, and use the people Paul loves against him.

7. Hayt

Jason Momoa returns in Dune: Part Three, but he is not playing Duncan Idaho the way fans remember him from the first film. Hayt is a Tleilaxu ghola, a being grown in an axlotl tank from the dead flesh of the Atreides Swordmaster who fell protecting Paul and Lady Jessica on Arrakis. He looks like Duncan, fights like Duncan, and carries the body's old combat instincts, but he is something the Tleilaxu built for a specific job, to take Paul down from the inside.

This job makes him a terrifying character, heading into the film. Hayt has the Swordmaster of Ginaz blade work that defined the original Duncan, and on top of that, the Tleilaxu trained him as a Mentat, a human computer capable of out-thinking armies. In Dune Messiah, he is presented to Paul as a gift, but he is also a hidden weapon, programmed to strike at the emperor when triggered. There are not many characters in this universe who combine this kind of mind with that kind of swordsmanship. 

6. Princess Irulan

Florence Pugh's Princess Irulan brings a different flavor of power to Dune: Part Three. She is the eldest daughter of the deposed Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV, a woman who was raised from childhood to one day hold the Golden Lion Throne herself. Dune: Part Two positioned her as Paul's wife and Imperial Consort, the political seal that legitimized his rule over the Landsraad after the Sardaukar fell.

Irulan is also Bene Gesserit-trained, which gives her prana-bindu body control and the patient manipulation tactics the order spends decades drilling into its acolytes. She moves through Paul's court with the bearing of someone who has read every imperial archive, knows every great house, and watches every move on the political board. She does not need to swing a blade to be one of the most dangerous people in the room. 

5. Gurney Halleck

Josh Brolin's Gurney Halleck is one of the deadliest pure fighters in the entire trilogy. The first Dune film established him as the weapons master of House Atreides and Paul's first combat instructor, the man who taught the future emperor how to handle a knife and a shield. Dune: Part Two brought him back leading smugglers in the desert, where he reunited with Paul, helped retrieve the Atreides family atomics, and fought on the front line of the final assault on Arrakeen.

Gurney's power is brutal and direct. He is a veteran soldier hardened by the kind of life that breaks most men. He fights with a discipline that few characters in the trilogy can match, and his loyalty to House Atreides is absolute. In a story where most of the heavy hitters rely on prescience or politics, Gurney is the man you put a sword in front of when there is nothing else left.

4. Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam

Charlotte Rampling returns as Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, and her position in Dune: Part Three is enormous. She is one of the most senior figures in the Bene Gesserit order and was the Imperial Truthsayer who served Shaddam IV before Paul's rise. She is also the woman who held the gom jabbar to a young Paul's neck in the first film, the test that confirmed he was something the Sisterhood had not seen before.

Mohiam carries the full Bene Gesserit toolkit and decades more experience with it than almost anyone alive. Truthsense, the Voice, prana-bindu control, and Other Memory through the spice agony are all hers. She also speaks for the entire Sisterhood, which means her power is not just personal. When she moves against the throne, she moves with the resources of an order that has been pulling strings in the imperium for thousands of years. 

3. Lady Jessica

Rebecca Ferguson's Lady Jessica is one of the most powerful women in the trilogy. She is a Bene Gesserit acolyte who became a full Reverend Mother in the deep desert during Dune: Part Two, surviving the spice agony to convert the Water of Life into a substance her body could handle. This ritual unlocked Other Memory, the inherited consciousness of every female ancestor in her line, and confirmed her place at the top of the Bene Gesserit order.

Jessica's abilities cover almost every Bene Gesserit discipline. She has the Voice, which lets her command others, and prana-bindu body control that turns her into a precise hand-to-hand fighter. She also personally trained Paul in those same arts from boyhood. Jessica was the one who broke the Bene Gesserit's 10,000-year breeding plan with a single move when she gave Duke Leto a son instead of a daughter.

2. Alia Atreides

Anya Taylor-Joy's Alia Atreides is the closest anyone gets to Paul's level in Dune: Part Three. Dune: Part Two teased her arrival when an unborn Alia spoke to Lady Jessica from inside the womb, then returned in a vision shared with Paul as a fully grown woman in a desert robe. The threequel finally gives her the spotlight.

Alia's powers are unlike anyone else's in the trilogy. Lady Jessica drank the Water of Life while pregnant, which means Alia was born with the full consciousness of a Reverend Mother. Per the source material, she has Other Memory from the moment of birth, with access to the inherited memories of every ancestor on both sides of her bloodline, including her grandfather Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. The Bene Gesserit are so disturbed by her that they label her an Abomination. Taylor-Joy has called her one of a kind, and the role she steps into in the threequel is co-regent of the empire, high priestess of Paul's religion, and a commander of imperial forces. She is, in every meaningful sense, a second emperor.

1. Paul Atreides

Timothee Chalamet's Paul Atreides is the most powerful character in Dune: Part Three, and there is no real argument otherwise. He is the Kwisatz Haderach, the male super-being the Bene Gesserit spent thousands of years trying to breed, arrived a generation early and outside their control. He is also the Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe, ruling from the Golden Lion Throne with a Holy War of Fremen at his back and a stranglehold on the spice melange that keeps interstellar travel possible.

His abilities are the full set. As the Kwisatz Haderach, Paul can access the genetic memory of ancestors in his line, think with the analytical clarity of a Mentat, and bridge space and time through full prescience. Dune: Part Two showed how far that prescience reached when he drank the Water of Life and saw every possible future at once, and the threequel pushes him further still. He is also a Bene Gesserit-trained fighter, taught by Lady Jessica from boyhood, with combat instruction from Gurney Halleck, Duncan Idaho, and the Fremen layered on top. Paul is part warrior, part prophet, and part god in the eyes of his followers.