Foundation S3E1 Recap and Analysis: Out of Time

The following recap contains spoilers for Foundation S3E1, “A Song for the End of Everything” (written by David S. Goyer & Jane Espenson and directed by David S. Goyer).

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Welcome, dear reader, as we begin our review the third season of the Apple TV+ series Foundation with Season 3 Episode 1: “A Song for the End of Everything.” We rejoin the story on the cusp of a lot of change in the universe. In three days, the Vault will open and Hari Seldon will address the Foundation regarding the Third Crisis. In ten days, Empire will undergo an Ascension, decanting a new baby Cleon and rotating the roles of the other clones. And in four months, all of humanity will be plunged into darkness.

The Third Crisis should be the main event here, but we can see just by the timeline that it’ll be over and done with by the third episode. The real conflict this season will be with The Mule, and previous hints have prepared us for his story arc to play out over this and next season. All the early reviews are lauding this as the best season yet, so here’s hoping we get at least that far.

Just a Little…Nudge

Give the writers credit, they didn’t make us wait to finally see The Mule. First episode, first scene. And did he live up to the hype? Well, he seems to be a bit off his rocker, but then again, he pretty well decimated the Kalgan navy and infantry all by himself. He requires no army. He has talents, you see?

This is everything the First Foundation feared about the Second Foundation, rolled up into one man. How do you stop someone with such “talents?” Archduke Bellarion seemed to be trying to resist, but in the end, he was little more than a puppet. His men, hundreds of them all at once, even more so. Yeah, he’s a threat alright.

Of course, based on what we know of Gaal’s visions, the Second Foundation can and will resist The Mule. He has now made himself known, and his initial move on Kalgan runs as a dark background chord playing throughout the rest of the episode.

Proceed as Planned

Meanwhile, Brother Dawn and Demerzel travel to Clarion Station, the Seat of the Galactic Council. Here, we are presented with the realization of another great megastructure of science fiction literature. Season 1 gave us a “space elevator” in the form of Trantor’s Star Bridge. Now, Clarion Station is a type of “ringworld,” as made popular by the author Larry Niven. It is a world turned inside-out, as Dawn puts it. Quite impressive and, of course, utterly impractical.

The council is at a deadlock, giving Empire a chance to address the assembly and sway some votes. We find out from Brother Dawn’s exposition that over the last century, Empire has “resized” to a sustainable 6,342 worlds, while Foundation has grown to over 800. However, through corruption and greed, the far-seeing Foundation is now mismanaging the breadbasket worlds of the inner reach. Dawn proposes Empire fund and supply the Merchant Princes, a faction who wishes to break free of Foundation’s chokehold. Helping the traders will weaken the Foundation from within, giving Empire a chance to claw back some of their losses.

During his address, several snarky councilors parry back at Dawn, but he deftly handles them and forces a vote, which ultimately lands in his favor. Demerzel looks on with pride at her young protégé, who even staged getting hit with the clump of hopefully sterile dirt.

Trantor

During their visit to the Galactic Council, we find out that Dawn is a mere 10 days away from ascending to the middle throne. But something is askew here. In the vids of previous Ascensions that Brother Dusk is obsessing over, we see the new baby Dawn, the adult (presumably 30 years old) Dawn-become-Day (played by Lee Pace), and the elder (presumably 60 years old) Day-become-Dusk (played by Terrence Mann) watch as Brother Darkness (presumably 90 years old) steps into the light, as it were.

However, here we are with Ascension 10 days away and Dawn is still the late-teen / early-20s Dawn (played by Cassian Bilton). Likewise, Dusk is not the 90-year-old Brother Darkness he should be. What’s going on here? It looks like the 30-60-90 schedule has been moved up to maybe 20-40-60? Dawn laments to Demerzel that they are going to lose a lot of wisdom when Dusk is gone, but she says better that than to risk his public decline. Since when?

Even though he told Dawn otherwise, there is not a doubt in my mind that Brother Dusk plans to “run, man, run!” He finds himself admiring this new pirate, The Mule, a little bit. “What a life that must be, living…and dying…on your own terms.” You don’t need the Prime Radiant to see where this is going. Of course, that means Demerzel can surely see it too.

Nulling the Null Field

What a pleasure to see Alexander Siddig (better known as Dr. Julian Bashir from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) return to the cast. This season he’s playing Professor Ebling Mis, a distant descendant of Advocate Xylas, who prosecuted Hari Seldon in the court of Cleon XII back in the pilot episode. That’s a fun way to allow actors to return to the series. Without having to cryosleep for three centuries, that is.

With that minor bit of exposition out of the way, Hari whisks Ebling Mis up to the Vault for a chat. Mis is a self-taught psychohistorian, and as such he’s pretty sure he’s figured out that the pending Third Crisis is all about the Traders. Confirming Dawn’s narrative to the Galactic Council, Mis tells Hari that the Foundation has become comfortable and possibly incapable of facing the coming crisis.

His real purpose though is to warn Hari that Empire is holding onto their power better than the original projections predicted. In the novels, Empire had ceased to exist by this point. Hari casually drops that he gave Empire the Prime Radiant and that’s probably why. No big deal. Let the chips fall where they may.

Despite his obvious hero worship of Seldon, Ebing Mis is a little put out that Hari would be aiding the enemy bent on destroying the Foundation. He feels they’re owed an explanation. For his audacity in questioning the Myth, Ebling Mis gets the boot and finds his null field nullifiers have been nullified.

Running the Moon Shadow

Ugh. Can we just pretend Haven never happened? For every marvel of classic sci-fi literature this show brings to life, they always have to throw in some pseudo-ridiculous sci-fi thrill ride. Something so awful that it must make their science advisor roll over in their grave, after they’ve died of a stroke from reading the script. With any luck, the writers got it out of their system with this “running the moon shadow” nonsense. Oof, that was painful to watch.

The result though is that Han Pritcher, the Foundation’s Captain of Information, missed getting the proof needed to confront Empire about supplying weapons to the Traders. Mayor Indbur needs that intel to make the Traders eager for peace. He wants to settle the conflict before the Vault opens—so that it hopefully doesn’t open.

Pritcher thinks the Traders are a distraction. He wants to investigate The Mule, believing him to be a mutant possessing psychic capabilities. He sees this as the real existential threat to the Foundation. Spot on there. Pritcher, at least, is good at his job.

When push comes to shove, literally, the Mayor could care less about Kalgan and Pritcher could care less about the Mayor’s candies. He crosses the line with his boss and Mayor Indbur gleefully suspends him. Handsome rogue that he is, though (did we mention his name is “Han”?), Pritcher steals the mayor’s key and sets off for Kalgan to go get proof about The Mule. Hopefully it goes better than his last attempt to get proof.

An Unburdening

This first episode is really giving us a lot of sci-fi fan service. At long last, during her Unburdening with Zephyr Vorellis, Demerzel reveals the Laws of Robotics. She even includes the Zeroeth Law, prioritizing the fate of humanity over the fate of any one human. Asimov fans are going to be beside themselves.

After the Robot Wars, Demerzel was reprogrammed to prioritize the fate of one human, Cleon the First, and his exponents. A complete reversal of the Zeroeth Law. That’s been great while Empire lasted, but now she not only knows that the fall of Empire is inevitable, she can hold it in her hands.

The question seems to be, once she outlives the Cleonic dynasty, will she go back to shepherding the human race? This would seem to be the gamble Hari made in giving her the Prime Radiant. It is the ultimate tool for someone trying to obey the Zeroeth Law, taking the guess work out of what is and is not good for the whole of humanity. She could be a powerful ally in implementing Hari’s vision.

The Day Abides

Along with the first Zephyr on Trantor, we have another new political player at court, Foundation Ambassador Quent. A bit surprising, given where we ended things between Foundation and Empire last season, but it has been 152 years. Relations between the two are now in more of a cold war phase, throwing the occasional sharp elbow, as Dusk puts it. He is the Conciliator, after all, having learned from Cleon XVII, who botched the hot war with Foundation and cost Empire all those Spacers.

By far though, the biggest surprise on Trantor—the biggest surprise of this episode—is the state of Brother Day. His absence was as much of an undercurrent to this episode as The Mule was, but of the two, I would say this reveal was far more glorious. Lee Pace is absolutely magnificent as this DGAF version of Brother Day. He is chewing up the scenery and clearly having a blast doing so. I want a spin-off series of just him and Song, dealing with his crazy family and the job that he hates.

We get a whiff of the conflict that led to this when he refers to Demerzel as “master” and “it.” For her part, she is showing some discomfort at having him attend her briefing on what the Prime Radiant has revealed. Though there is also maybe a hint of I-told-you-so triumph in her look towards him when she reveals that Empire will fall in just four months, and the events could even spell the extinction of their species.

Quick Takes

A couple of quick takes on the rest of the episode:

• Did you catch the brief mention of “the clown?” Archduke Bellarion’s second reminds him, “The clown said to herald his arrival.” This would be the character named Magnifico Giganticus in IMDb. Keep an eye out for this one.
• Will the Clarion Station ring world meet the same fate as the Star Bridge space elevator? I’m betting they didn’t put the effort into those special effects for it to only appear this one time and get by unscathed.
• Apparently Demerzel consults the Prime Radiant on a daily basis. She tells Dawn that the inflection point wasn’t evident when she consulted it yesterday. Just a tad obsessive.
• I do love that jacket Ebling Mis is wearing. Someone on Etsy needs to get on it and start churning those out. Size 42, please.
• It’s a little unclear why it’s so important to get physical proof that Empire is supplying the Traders. It’s the worst kept secret in the universe right now.
• Demerzel tells the Zephyr that a robot killed an important man in service of the Zeroeth Law, and their fate was sealed. Put a pin in that to be delved into in future seasons, I hope.
• Will The Mule be able to manipulate the mind of a robot? That could be an interesting confrontation awaiting us later this season.
• The one group we did not check in on with this first episode of the season was the Second Foundation. I presume the next episode will be more focused on them.
• The one-armed man who Pritcher identifies as the leader of the Traders is named Brandoo Mallow. Is this then a descendent of Hober Mallow from Season 2?
• Why hasn’t Demerzel just decanted a new Brother Day? Or wiped his memory of whatever conflict led to his abandoning his post?
• Ambassador Quent refers to Brother Dusk’s “plinth name” as being “The Conciliator.” A plinth is “a heavy base supporting a statue,” as in the holographic busts of all the previous emperors in the Hall of Cleons.
• Could Brother Dusk’s combative banter with Ambassador Quent be a ruse, and she is secretly working to whisk him away to safety with the Foundation?
• Pilou Asbæk (The Mule) is channeling Travis Fimmel hard in that opening scene. Fimmel has played this same powerful yet aloof mystic character in Raised by Wolves and Dune: Prophecy, at least. They even look a bit similar. I had to double-check my notes just to make sure I hadn’t missed something.
• The episode is titled “A Song for the End of Everything” and Day’s consort also happens to be named Song. Coincidence? I think not. Look for her to at least be an agent of The Mule, if not more.
• As I mentioned in the intro, initial spoiler-free reviews are calling this season “better than ever” (Inverse), a “stunning cerebral odyssey” (Empire), and Foundation’s “best season yet” (Gizmodo). That’s exciting to hear.
• Deadline also revealed back in February that the Season 4 writers’ room is already underway, although Ian Goldberg (of Fear the Walking Dead) has replaced showrunner David S. Goyer at the helm. That news is a little less exciting to hear, but hopefully the 8-season arc already laid out will provide a road map for the show to remain successful and make it to the end.
• There are many cast interviews out ahead of the season premiere. Jared Harris (Hari Seldon) seems to be hinting to Collider that we’ll finally learn who was behind the Star Bridge being destroyed back in the pilot episode. Speaking to Esquire, Lee Pace (Brother Day) has some great things to say about how the show, and sci-fi in general, provides a way of examining the tumultuous moments we live in today. Pilou Asbæk (The Mule) tells TechRadar that at the end of the day, his character is “just a little boy who wants to be loved.” Aw.
• Don’t forget to tune into the Official Podcast from Apple TV+ after the show. Always insightful and informative.

Best lines of the episode:

• “He’s thinking, “hey, why don’t I fire on my fellow ships?’”
• “I can never decide whether the runners were weak for showing their fear, or it was good they died honest.”
• “F***ing hell. You’ve nulled my null field.”
• “Well. You have the myth, at least. The man is…elsewhere.”
• “Of course. I gave Empire the Prime Radiant.” “You…what?!”
• “Make sure everyone who’d be insulted at not being invited gets invited. Except the ones I want to insult.”
• “Ah, so you imagined there was such thing as the greater good.” “Isn’t there?”
• “Why did Seldon give you an apple you can’t eat?”
• “Poor beast brought forth by human hands, to walk these floors instead of sands, friend you have what makes one whole, and…something, something, have a soul.”
• “It’s a clone. A navelless orphan, just like us.”
• “Well thanks, but I’m leaning into indignity.”

Conclusion

The Third Crisis is upon us. Vault Hari and the First Foundation think that the crisis is about dealing with the splinter faction within their ranks, the Traders. Gaal and Demerzel, and thus the Second Foundation and Empire, know otherwise. The real threat isn’t even part of the plan. It’s the end of the plan. Only four months to go.

That’s all for this week. Please let us know your thoughts and feelings about this week’s episode, and any theories you have on what’s to come, in the comments below. Remember that TV Obsessive will provide continuing coverage of Foundation throughout Season 3 and beyond.

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All images courtesy of Apple TV+