Brien Allen
The following recap contains spoilers for Foundation S3E7, “Foundation’s End” (written by Jane Espenson & Greg Goetz and directed by Christopher J. Byrne).
Welcome, dear reader, as we continue our review of the third season of the Apple TV+ series Foundation with Season 3 Episode 7: “Foundation’s End.” Things are starting to ramp up with this episode, and we see a couple more key players removed from the board. This time dying on screen, so we can probably believe it.
However, we get a definite hint from Vault Hari that we shouldn’t believe everything we see. No doubt there are mind games afoot. The Mule’s backstory had some questionable elements even without Hari’s warning. Brother Day takes a long, strange trip to explore his own backstory. And Brother Dusk’s mind may be deteriorating faster than we were led to believe.
An Origin Story
We start out in fine Foundation fashion with a flashback. At last, we are going to see a little bit of The Mule’s origin story. It is years before and he is merely a young colt on the Outer Reach world of Rossem. This is apparently one of those breadbasket worlds that transitioned from Empire control to the Foundation, and they administer it with an indifferent efficiency.
His mom can sense the sadness on the Bartons, their neighbors, at their good fortune to have a new baby. However, like the Story of the Chinese Farmer, their good fortune turns to bad fortune when the Foundation assessors arrive and discover their violation of the one-child policy. No matter, the Foundation trusts in the mass deleter solution. They’ve been allotted a calorific intake for one child, so in 30 days’ time when the assessors return, there will be one child. While mom, dad and baby hug it out, the dad gives an ominous glare over at his son.
Surrender
We follow the assessors’ whisper ship through an amazing transition to bring us back to the present and the battle on New Terminus. Up above on Foundation Station, Pritcher remains locked up and can’t talk Sephone into releasing him. On the surface, Bayta remains knocked out as Toran dodges some wonderful practical FX trying to get them to the safety of the Chaser.
The Blacktongue lands on New Terminus and Mayor Indbur bends the knee and welcomes The Mule. Foundation has surrendered. Per the Warden’s insistence, it’s over. The Mule has his favorite sidekick and the cutest little pirate in the galaxy, Skirlet, do the honors and give the Mayor a little gift of some war paint to help toughen him up. Yay. In return, Indbur has a gift for The Mule. His captain of information, Han Pritcher. Some things are pre-or-dained.
When they arrive at the holding cell, Pritcher has escaped and almost gets the drop on The Mule, if it weren’t for his stolen blaster being encoded to only the original user. He flees and manages to steal a ship, but instead of jumping away, he goes planet-side. When later asked why, Sephone says it’s not in his nature to run. She guesses that he’s already halfway to planning an insurrection.
Family Drama
Toran finally reaches the Chaser and puts Bayta in the medical crèche. Randu arrives, but it’s not good news. He’s one of the leaders The Mule has converted, and all he can see is opportunity for the Traders. In him, The Mule’s mind control takes the form of a sales pitch, and a pretty good one, but there’s also the love. He’s never felt such love, and it seems he is also feeling it for his nephew.
Foundation soldiers arrive and Randu has to physically put Toran down while they carry Bayta away. Toran gets free and seals himself into an escape pod. Randu pounds on the window, but Toran regretfully hits the eject button. The mechanism apparently also releases firing bolts inside the ship, and with that, Randu Mallow, leader of the Trader Alliance and descendant of the great Hober Mallow, is shot dead by his own nephew’s hand.
Friends with Benefits
On Trantor, Brother Dusk is getting an earful from a gaggle of panicked political and military advisors. He’s having a bit of trouble focusing, however, because there’s a camel running around in the background. The dude’s got three days left and he doesn’t need this crap. He barks out a few obvious orders and abandons them for the Foundation chancery. He’s come there for his friend, Felice, to bring her back to the palace to guarantee her safety.
They have dinner and talk about the losses that have both recently gone through. Brother Day’s ferret, Capillus, lightens the mood and Dusk is nice to him at Quent’s urging. After dinner, they go for a stroll and wind up in front of a new mural depicting Empire’s struggle with Foundation that has defined the last three centuries. They kiss, something they both have obviously wanted to do for the past 30 years, and wind up in bed with each other.
During all of this, Dusk is having moments where he seems a little…off. He tells Ambassador Quent that there is a formidable clock on him, apparently no longer looking for an exemption from his personal impending doom. It seems the mental deterioration caused by their genetic drift might be more like a sharp cliff edge rather than a gentle slope. Given the gruesome death of Capillus, we might be dealing with two powerful madmen running the galaxy now.
Trippin’ for Truth
Day is all apologies for barging in on Song’s domestic bliss, though he does continue to not so subtly push the memory doc on her, dangling her having met a robot as the carrot to get her to just put it on. Songbird and Oceanglass aren’t sure whether to believe him about the robot, but if true, it could be the most important thing to happen to their people in 5,000 years. There’s only one way to know for sure: drugs.
They give him a spore tea that children drink at the dinner table, but it’s too much for him. He goes on a hallucinatory trip, constantly revisiting a scene of Demerzel crying because the three Cleons weren’t very good at dinner table practice. This is the source of his hate for “it.” He knows he disappoints her and feels that she’s just waiting for him to miss a step. So, he lashes out and misses all of them.
Day warns Song that Demerzel will kill anyone who tries to free it. It’s not for them to decide though, because just like Songbird called her secretly, Oceanglass has already secretly called Sunmaster-18. He validates Day’s peace offering as a tool pillaged from their reliquary almost a thousand years ago, but scoffs at the idea Day thought he could bargain with something he stole from them. He bares his staff with what appears to be the slagged head of a robot on the end. It is the brazen head of God and it will scream Day’s fate aloud. Looks like Empire is in for another bad trip.
A Bad Way to Go
Disappointed by the loss of Captain Pritcher, The Mule decides a little tug on the bridle is in order. Mayor Indbur is happy to help, and when asked to drown himself, he does so with pleasure. The sight of it brings The Mule back to his flashback, where we pick up the story on the edge of a reservoir. Hennet, his mom, and Orvi, his dad, have been arguing about what to do, but the father is firm on his decision to drown his son. In the throes of the life-or-death situation, the boy’s powers awaken. He makes them both want to stay under and be happy. And to love him. More than anything.
He takes his baby brother to the Bartons and runs off to join the pirate who harassed their land. The pirate who never took as much as the Foundation did. We transition back to the present and find The Mule has been standing before the Vault telling his tale in person. Hari appears and wonders aloud how much of the story is true. The Mule seems to know some truths about Hari, starting with his full name, Hariton Seldon.
Quick Takes
A couple of quick takes on the rest of the episode:
- Hennet, The Mule’s mother, apparently had mentalic abilities, being able to sense their neighbors’ thoughts and knowing where her son hid his candy. Though that last one could just be ordinary mom mojo, of course.
- The way Songbird-17 is freaking out to Oceanglass-49 about the emperor in their living room, you almost get the impression that the whole Gossamer Court thing wasn’t her idea but was actually Oceanglass-49’s idea. Or perhaps we’ll find out it was Sunmaster-18’s even.
- This episode’s big book reveal was Demerzel name dropping her past names: Chetter, Eto, Daneel. In the novels, Eto Demerzel was First Minister to Cleon I. He worked under the guise of Chetter Hummin, a reporter, to help Hari Seldon establish psychohistory. Eventually, he reveals himself to Hari as Daneel Olivaw, a character that bridges Asimov’s Robot and Foundation series. It’s been assumed by book readers that our gender-swapped Demerzel would eventually be revealed as Daneel (if they could get the rights to the Robot series secured from the Asimov estate). Now we have confirmation.
- One whacky thought this brings up is that maybe Kalle (who I assume is also a robot) could be Demerzel come back from the future. If we conjecture that there is a Third Foundation, something I could definitely see the television adaptation inventing, they would necessarily have to have some means beyond that of the Second Foundation to monitor them. If the First Foundation is made of normal humans, and Second Foundation has mind manipulation, it would make sense that a Third Foundation might have time manipulation. Perhaps a little bit of a wild conjecture there, but possible. She did tell Day (then Dawn) that if she could leave, she would make more creatures like herself, more robots.
- Here’s another whacky thought, Bayta could be The Mule’s sister. OK, yes, they refer to the baby in the flashbacks as “him” repeatedly. But it’s not like we haven’t been set up by unreliable narrators in past seasons, and Hari has already cast aspersions on The Mule’s tale. Bayta talked with Randu about having to work her way up the ladder, which would mesh with being on a Foundation planet raised by a poor family. She could very well be some sort of mentalic herself. She talked to Magnifico about both of them having a way of making people love them. Perhaps, as Gaal alluded to with Dawn, her powers could be working without her even realizing it. Or from the other side, because The Mule is so lonely, perhaps he has been subconsciously seeking out his sister, drawing her to him. Pre-or-dained. That’d be cool. This might even explain The Mule keeping Skirlet on as a tagalong. Kind of like a kid sister.
- Turning on the null field definitely did something to Bayta. Something that did not seem to affect anyone else, not even Magnifico.
- I asked last week how Song could possibly have put herself in that position with a Cleon. Perhaps she was not only keeping him drugged up all the time, but also keeping herself drugged up to endure it.
- Wow, Sunmaster-18 sure is ripped.
- Hari wondering at how much of The Mule’s backstory is true could have two implications. One would be that The Mule is knowingly lying about some or all of it. The other being that The Mule doesn’t know that some or all of it is untrue. He might be controlled by somebody else and having memories implanted in his own mind. Stuff that he has hinted at himself, feeling like his life is not his own.
- Springboarding off that, another perhaps more obvious possibility with The Mule’s younger sibling is that it really is a boy and it’s Magnifico. Or, if we speculate a little bit about The Mule’s feeling that he’s living someone else’s life, maybe the roles are swapped. These are Magnifico’s memories, and the baby is The Mule. If Maggie were deformed and perhaps not able to pull his weight around the farm, that might explain why the father would choose to keep the baby.
- Where are Magnifico and Ebling Mis?
- We also didn’t get any Demerzel or Gaal in this episode. Demerzel is definitely headed through the jump gates back to Trantor, but what about Gaal? Does she go back to Second Foundation, does she rush to the aid of First Foundation, or does she fall back to Trantor as well, to help with the their defense?
- Is Pritcher the only Second Foundation representative on New Terminus? For crying out loud, where are the rest of the mentalics? Or is organizing them perhaps the insurrection he went to the surface to start?
- OK, one more Bayta theory. We established last season that mentalics can actually jump into other host bodies. Could this be what has happened to Bayta? Or The Mule? Has somebody jumped into one or both of them, riding shotgun the way Tellem Bond did last season? Maybe the null field severed that connection in Bayta’s case and left her in this catatonic state.
- They seem to be setting up Brother Day for an attempt to free Demerzel from her enslavement.
- Looper has an interesting article about the name of The Mule’s origin story home world, Rossem, and possible ties it might have to Asimov’s Robot series and the definite ties it has to the Foundation series.
Best lines of the episode:
- “Here you go. A little treat from the Foundation.”
- “Is there still a Foundation to prosecute me?”
- “You are a soft man, and now you’re sticky too.”
- “There’s not supposed to be a f***ing Emperor in our living room.”
- “The Mule’s ships arrived over the planet and our entire orbital defense just sat there like betreasoned inerts.”
- “My midwife and my martinet, waiting for me to miss a step.”
- “Why did I think I could dive into that cesspool and come out clean?”
- “I cannot weigh love against freedom.” “Because freedom would win.”
- “You’ve turned my gallows walk into a pleasant stroll.”
- “You said the Mule hadn’t changed you. I have to disagree. My uncle never does anything quietly.”
- “Yeah, crack the world open, prizes inside.”
- “That’s a very tragic story. I wonder how much of it is true.”
Conclusion
Another great episode in a season that’s been full of them. All kinds of space battle action, another big book reveal from Demerzel, and finally some back story for our villain. And then they bring it to a close with that weirdly non-cliffhanger ending. “The truth comes banging on your door, Hariton Seldon.” The writers seem to be pitching that to us as a mic drop moment, like we should be jumping out of our seat pointing at the screen. Well, I guess we’ll see what comes of it next episode.
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.
All images courtesy of Apple TV+
