(courtesy AppleTV+)
Not surprisingly, given the lavishly rewarding dense text of Isaac Asimov’s series from which this stremaing juggernaut is sourced, there is a LOT going on in Foundation.
Not just over the four episodes under discussion here, but in each and every episode which cram so much in that you could be forgiven for wondering if it won’t feel like a crowded rush hour train – all jammed-in activity and very little coherence or comfort.
But what has distinguished the series from the start is its inspired ability to move metric tons of narrative heft in a way that feels measured and considered and even ruminatively languid at times.
It’s a real gift to be able to advance the story so much and yet not have it feel like you’re drowning in a pell-mell cacophony of significant moments, major character inflection points and scenes loaded with meaning and portent.
In these four episodes – “The Stresss of Her Regard”, “Where Tyrants Spend Eternity”, “The Shape of Time” and “Foundation’s End” – we see the vast sprawl of everything that had so brilliantly distinguished this series while still enjoying a sense of emotional intimacy and close impact that shouldn’t usually be the preserve of this kind of blockbuster storytelling.
Episode four, “The Stresss of Her Regard”, kicks things off with Demerzel (Laura Birn) admitting to Zephyr Vorellis (T’Nia Miller), in a kind of religious confessional that goes from intimately probing to terrifying in record time, that she has been actively working with the Foundation all along in a bid to satisfy her base coding which is to keep Empire safe.
Meanwhile, Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) is on Ignis with her lover from the first Foundation, Han Pritcher (Brandon P. Bell), a secluded catch up that comes loaded with all kinds of revelations and truths and which sets in train Gaal meeting up with Dawn (Cassian Bilton) who then gets drawn into plotting in later episodes which Gaal believes will save them against the insidiously encroaching evil of the Mule ((Pilou Asbæk) who is taking down not just Kalban but also ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- New Terminus itself.
As the episode title “Foundation’s End” suggests, the first Foundatio is ripped to shreds by the Mule who does some abhorrently awful things to everyone including Mayor Trenton Indbur (Leo Bill) who, under the Mule’s malicious control ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- drowns himself.
See what we mean about a LOT happening?
Dawn ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- dies, Day is off on Mycogen trying to find his lover only to find she’s not what she appears and Dusk is trying to forestall dying while every one of his brothers are MIA.
Meanwhile, Empire is sliding towards ignoble oblivion, Gaal plays ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- Dawn for the noblest but most tragic of reasons and the Mule and Gaal move ever closer to a massive showdown – who will prevail in the Third Crisis?
What is fascinating about the episodes, and it’s admitted to by Gaal herself in a moment of real honesty during an unexpected conversation with Demerzel, that while the maths behind the Foundation’s work has been held up as revelatorily infallible, that it falters and fails when it comes to taking into account herself and the Mule, who as outliers, defy the maths.
In other words Hari Seldon’s (Jared Harris) claim that maths is everything, is in fact not true, and in fact when the Mule builds up a real head of prophecy busting stream, as she does in these three episodes, it becomes abundantly clear that there’s a lot the maths cannot allow for.
Seldon himself, who opens the Vault just as the Mule attacks New Terminus, knows nothing of this psychically powerful outlier, and the limits of his much-vaunted work, which has been corrupted anyway to the point where the Foundation is as bad and corrupt as Empire itself, are exposed.
So the game is on but what game exactly? Gaal believes everything rests on her looming confrontation with the Mule but the reality is, no one really knows what will happen.
Life is massively unpredictable and many of the key players in Foundation are just beginning to work that out which promises the mother of all chaotic rides coming up in the final three episodes of season three.
Foundation streams on AppleTV+