Harkonnen Kiss

Editor's Note: This entry contains minor spoilers for the Dune novels and 2024 film Dune: Part Two; read at your own caution.

About

Harkonnen Kiss, also known as Mischievous Feyd-Rautha, refers to a scene turned GIF and reaction video from Dune Part Two in which Austin Butler's character Feyd-Rautha kisses his uncle Baron Harkonnen and then stares at the camera. The clip was shared on Twitter / X in early March 2024 and is often paired with captions jokingly mentioning mischievous and problematic behavior. Others remixed and re-edited the GIF.

Origin

On February 25th, 2024, during an interview for the Acess Hollywood^[1] YouTube channel, American actor Austin Butler confirmed that his kissing scene with Dune Part Two co-star Stellan Skarsgard was improvised. A few weeks later, after the movie premiered in theaters across the globe, the scene became a trending topic on the internet.

On March 5th, 2024, X^[2] user @thedrkling_ posted a clip of the scene in which Feyd-Rautha kisses his uncle Baron Harkonnen and then awkwardly stares at the camera (shown below). The post amassed 408,000 views and 9,900 likes in three days.

Spread

Netizens cropped the kissing scene, focusing on Feyd-Rautha's mischievous stare to create jokes and memes based on the character and Dune universe lore. For example, on March 6th, 2024, X^[3] user @fellawhomstdve posted a GIF version of the scene paired with the caption "when there will be uncles at the function," which amassed more than 11,000 likes and 429 retweets in a day. (shown below)

On March 6th, 2024, X^[4] user @hackermanjoe posted Feyd-Rautha's GIF paired with the caption "when the Applebee’s waiter comes to my table with a 6th round of dollaritas." The post (shown below) amassed over 11,000 likes and 451 retweets in a day.

On March 13th, 2024, X^[5] user @sabooschin shared a GIF of the kiss, captioning it, "what do you even say to your costar after shooting a scene like this," receiving over 34,000 likes in a week (shown below, left).

Others used then used the GIF, such as X^[6] user @Jtaylor0_3 on March 14th, 2024, who captioned it, "Me to the waiter when he serves my plate first," gaining over 40,000 likes in six days (shown below, right).

On March 16th, 2024, X^[7] user @grnformicatable posted a sped-up version of the kiss that froze at Feyd-Rautha's stare, captioning it, "The rythm is so beautiful," earning over 1,500 likes in four days (shown below, left).

Increasingly elaborate re-edits later emerged, like one shared by X^[8] user @yolko0no on March 19th, 2024, that sped-up and rewound the kiss, then faded in text reading, "I love you." In one day, it received over 96,000 likes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References