The Dune: Part Three trailer dropped on March 17, 2026, and Anya Taylor-Joy has gone everywhere talking about her character since that time. She’s not downplaying how unsettling Alia Atreides actually is.
Alia is named ‘Abomination’ and Anya Taylor-Joy leans into it
On the Today Show, Taylor-Joy said it plainly. “There’s never been anybody like her. She’s named the ‘Abomination,’ and a lot of people find her really creepy, except for her brother. She has absolute prescience. She lives with the voice of generations of people in her head; she’s never in a singular conversation, and that can drive someone a little bit crazy.“
That last part tracks with what she told Deadline, too, “Alia has a very intense blessing/curse situation. She carries the weight and the wisdom of generations and generations in her head. She’s never in a singular conversation. It’s kind of everything everywhere all at once.” Then she gave a wink at the title reference.
The reason Alia is the way she is comes from Dune Part Two. Lady Jessica was pregnant when she went through the Reverend Mother ritual, which meant the unborn Alia absorbed all the memories of past Reverend Mothers in the womb.
She was having conversations before she was even born. Most people in the Dune universe find that horrifying. Her brother, Paul Atreides, doesn’t find it horrifying because he also has his own version of the same broken relationship with time and reality.
Taylor-Joy was briefly seen in Part Two during a dream sequence. Part Three will feature a lot more of the character. The film jumps 17 years forward from Part Two, so Alia has grown up now and is central to the whole story.
The film also has Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Florence Pugh, Robert Pattinson, Jason Momoa, Rebecca Ferguson, and Javier Bardem in key supporting roles. It opens December 18, 2026, the same day as Avengers: Doomsday. Chalamet and Robert Downey Jr. are already calling it “Dunesday,” which is similar to the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon back in 2023.
