Dune’s Fremen Origin Explained

The Fremen in 2021’s Dune are the indigenous inhabitants of the desert – but what are the origins of Arrakis’ native people? The Fremen who live, work, and fight in the deserts of Arrakis are central to the plot of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, the latest adaptation of the influential 1965 Frank Herbert novel. In Dune, the Fremen are essential to the survival of the main characters.

As the new stewards of Arrakis, the Atreides seek an alliance with the Fremen, whose knowledge of the desert and water-conserving technologies are crucial to surviving on the planet. After it’s revealed that the Padishah Emperor assigned the Atreides to Arrakis just for the Harkonnen to set up a trap, Paul and Jessica flee into the deserts where they meet the Fremen, with whom they find sanctuary. Despite not revealing much else about the Fremen, Dune 2021 is fairly faithful to the Dune books, which means that the origins of the Fremen are likely to be similar to what Frank Herbert envisioned.

Frank Herbert’s Dune books reveal that the Fremen are direct descendants of the nomadic Zensunni Wanderers, a religious group who fled into deep space and stayed on Arrakis to avoid persecution and enslavement by the empire. While it’s unclear when exactly they arrived on Arrakis, it was before the planet was discovered to be the only known source of the spice melange in the universe. This means that the Zensunni Wanderers first settled on Arrakis more than 10,190 years ago, before the Spacing Guild itself was even founded.

As Stilgar tells the Atreides in the Dune reboot, the Fremen have been on the planet of Arrakis long before any outworlders came for the spice, the drug which makes space travel possible. In short, the Fremen are an analog for the real religious and indigenous groups that have been persecuted throughout human history. Similar to the indigenous people of the Amazon, Africa, and West Asia, the Fremen also live on top of one of the richest and most contested places in the known universe. Moreover, as descendants of the Zensunni Wanderers, who practiced a combination of zen Buddhism and the Sunni branch of Islam, the religion and mysticism of the Fremen are a manifestation of how rituals and practices can evolve over thousands of years. The entire timeline of Dune spans 20,000 years, and the history of the Zensunni Wanderers and the Fremen play a big part in the religious and political evolution of this expansive world, which explains why Dune 2021’s Arrakis is steeped in mysticism.

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is yet to deeply explore the origins of the Fremen. Considering how Villeneuve plans to make two sequels, there’s more than enough time to reveal more about how the Fremen came to be on Arrakis. While the first film was promising, it remains to be seen whether or not the Dune sequels will do justice to the Fremen’s origins.

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