Foundation Returns, and Finds Humanity on a Collision Course With Disaster

We cut to Synnax, Gaal’s completely waterlogged home planet, where she and Salvor met for the first time at the end of season two and Salvor revealed that she’s Gaal’s daughter. Gaal’s confused because as far as she knows, she doesn’t have a daughter, but she does remember preserving an embryo in the distant past—which, Salvor tells her, was implanted in the woman she believed was her biological mother until she learned about Gaal. Salvor points out they’ve both been in cryosleep for over a century—a sci-fi quirk that means Salvor is now actually older than Gaal—and tells Gaal that she always felt a connection to her. That’s how she knew to head to Synnax, for instance. But it’s weird to feel this sudden intimacy with a stranger, and the women quickly agree Salvor should call Gaal by her first name, rather than “Mom.”

“As waters rise, territories shrink. That’s what happened on Synnax, and that’s what happened with Empire,” Gaal narrates as the action shifts to Trantor. “Day by day, decade by decade, the first Foundation nibbled away planets from edges of Empire, and Empire steadily contracted.” We enter Brother Day’s palace bedchamber where he is having a vigorous roll in the hay with... Demerzel, his robot majordomo. Their tryst is interrupted when would-be assassins burst in, slicing off a piece of Demerzel’s skull and giving Foundation viewers eye candy in the form of a sweaty, naked (tastefully shadowed) Lee Pace battling a bunch of dudes in hand-to-hand combat. The injuries Demerzel and Day (whose high-tech royal “aura” mysteriously fails to shield him) receive are grave but the stakes aren’t exactly high; she’s a robot, and he’s a clone who can be easily replaced. The most concerning part of the incident is the question of who sent the assassins. Who would dare? It’s the first big question of season two.

Back to Hari, still wild-eyed and frustrated in his prison, which now has geometric facets that recall the shape of the Prime Radiant. His torment is briefly relieved by a flashback to his childhood on Helicon, where his mother praises him for holding up a 3D object (a folded piece of paper) before a fire and casting a 2D shadow. His father ruins the moment by slapping him, snapping that he paid for that book and Hari shouldn’t be tearing out its pages. That unpleasant part of the memory is overshadowed by Hari’s realization that the 3D shadow he’s now seeing is cast by a 4D object—and that he’s in a 4D space. Could he be inside the Prime Radiant? He’s not alone: a woman appears. “Yanna? My love! But you’re dead,” he gasps; she exactly resembles his late wife. “So are you,” she responds. They embrace and he tells her “something’s breaking the future” and that he needs her help to fix it. Then he realizes it’s not really Yanna, but he can’t quite tell who she is. She says it’s up to him to figure out her identity: “Free your mind.”

Hari’s scene ends with a cut to the Prime Radiant sitting next to a sleeping Gaal, in case there was any doubt about where his consciousness is being held captive. But there’s no time to dwell because Gaal is having one of her psychic dreams, quick glimpses of a fiery scene and a menacing figure outlined in shadow. She wakes up in a fright, searching for Salvor in a panic—before realizing Salvor has just paddled off a short distance to catch fish for their next meal. They have an awkward moment where Gaal says Salvor’s visions of her past aren’t the same thing as Gaal’s visions of the future, and then she says she hasn’t activated the Prime Radiant because she doesn’t have the right tools. Salvor calls her out, letting her know she can tell when someone’s lying.

On Terminus, home of the Foundation, over 100 years have passed since Hari Seldon stepped out of the Vault in season one, and almost 200 since the Foundation was first exiled from Trantor. “Just like Synnax, the dark waters were now rising everywhere,” Gaal’s narration tells us, but she means that metaphorically. “The Foundation had flourished, but a flourishing Foundation posed a threat. How long would it be before Empire thrashed like a drowning man? Not long at all, as it turned out.” We can see the former rustic settlement looks like a full-on city now, and an eerie alarm is waking everyone up in the dead of night. The Vault is stirring again, and the Foundation’s current Director and Warden nervously lead the crowd that approaches it. “I think the Prophet’s giving us time to get ready,” the Warden says, letting us know that Hari is now known as “the Prophet” among his followers. The Director agrees, grimly—he knows Hari’s return means the Foundation’s Second Crisis is near: the long-predicted war with Empire.

Speaking of Hari, he’s still trying to figure out who his mysterious companion might be. Her poetic rhythm of speaking gives her away: it’s Kalle, whose uniquely crafted mathematical proof helped Gaal (“my tormentor,” Hari mutters) solve the Abraxas Conjecture, the feat that brought her to Hari’s attention in season one. The woman adjusts her appearance accordingly, and he realizes what we’ve already suspected: he’s indeed inside the Prime Radiant.

As their conversation continues, he works out that she’s neither his wife nor Kalle, really—she’s got parts of both of them in her, but she’s something else entirely,“something new.” She is the Prime Radiant, and she has a “vested interest in humanity’s destiny.” Not survival, Hari notes with some concern—but destiny.

Cut to Gaal holding up the Prime Radiant and telling Salvor, “I’ve trapped Hari Seldon inside,” and Salvor revealing that Hari also left a digital copy back on Terminus. Gaal had been keeping Hari #1's consciousness on a data storage device, but recently transferred it into the Prime Radiant, which explains why his surroundings went from “blank room” to “geometric fantasia.” Salvor is confused—Hari is the hero of the Foundation, after all!—but Gaal has a differing point of view: “Hari sacrifices everyone for the plan. You don’t know him like I do, he’s always holding something back!” She doesn’t trust him. Salvor wonders if maybe Gaal is more afraid of the plan to save the human race than Hari himself. She also wonders if, in the 138 years they spent in cryosleep, maybe Empire’s already fallen? They’re not exactly up on current events, and at the moment—from their perch atop the roof of a nearly submerged house on Synnax—they have no way of getting up to speed.

So Gaal activates the Prime Radiant to check up on Hari’s plan... and realizes that things have gone alarmingly off the rails. The Second Crisis is indeed almost here, and since the trajectory Hari had previously accounted for is now skewed, they’re at a turning point. There are many, many more crises to come unless someone (ahem, Gaal and Salvor) can nudge things back on track. “If we don’t start preparing for it now, the Age of Darkness that Hari predicted gets much longer,” Gaal says. “So long that it might never end.”

On Trantor, Brother Day is being treated for his wounds while wide awake and screaming in pain—he doesn’t want to risk being put under and then replaced by a fresh Cleon clone—but he’s coherent enough to start lobbing accusations around the room, including at Brother Dawn, since he hates “the alliance, the marriage.” The what now? Before that sinks in, Day heaves himself up (still fully naked) and yells, “Somebody get me a damn blasted robe so my manhood isn’t flappin’ around!” He and Dawn return to the bedchamber, where Empire’s security force is in CSI mode. Turns out the assassins had no eyes; they were “Blind Angels.” After implying that his head Shadowmaster either had something to do with the attack or is just guilty for allowing it to happen, Day has him executed and sends the rest of the force to be interrogated. Then, he admits to Dawn that he felt fear during the attack—an unusual awareness for a Cleon.

The marriage, we ascertain, is so that Day can produce heirs rather than continue the genetic dynasty of Cleons—meaning Dawn is soon to be obsolete along with the entire concept of Empire. He’s not thrilled. “Having children won’t make you immortal,” Dawn reminds him. “Just the opposite. Children are meant to replace us.” Day thanks him for his honesty, then tells him Dawn and Dusk will both have their memories combed to see if they had anything to do with the attack.

In her dressing room, Demerzel is putting herself back together. When Day asks if their secret sexual relationship is “indecent,” she says “any gift that’s given freely out of love is never indecent.” Can a robot love, though? What’s Demerzel up to really? In his next scene with Day, after Dusk expresses his dismay over their “dating,” Day says she’s the one who initiated the relationship.

New character alert! Flying into Trantor are Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion, the prospective bride-to-be; her top advisor, Rue; and a whole fancy royal landing party. As their ship touches down, Dusk—who, like Dawn, is opposed to ending the reign of endless Cleons—suggests to Day that Sareth is behind the assassination attempt; after all, she’s only queen because an accident wiped out the rest of the family, making her next in line for the throne. But it wouldn’t make sense for her to commit such a murder before they were married, Day insists—hell, they aren’t even engaged yet. Foundation has a bonafide mystery plot this season, folks!

In the throne room, Day and Sareth have a formal first meeting, though she’s a bit cheeky, calling herself “the usurper” in the eyes of Dawn and Dusk. As a gift, Cloud Dominion has brought samples of its famous pigments, which pleases Dusk—keeper of the elaborate murals recording Empire’s history that decorate the palace. Sareth gets a brass model of Trantor, representing “what is being offered to you,” Day says. She—again, cheeky!—holds it up and asks, “But Empire is larger than Trantor, surely? Or is this a vision of a diminished future?”

Demerzel interrupts this weirdly charged moment to tell Day that a body, floating in space for over 100 years, has been recovered and identified as Commander Dorwin—last seen heading to Terminus to check up on the Foundation. Suddenly, Empire realizes that the “megaflare” they thought wiped out all life in the Outer Reach (including on Terminus) might have been misdirection—and went unverified because it happened while Empire was distracted by the realization that their genetic dynasty had been corrupted. Now they know the truth, thanks to a message Dorwin recorded on his neural implant before his death, relaying what we all saw in season one: Anacreons, neighbors to Terminus and enemies of Empire, recovered a derelict Imperial warship with jump-drive capabilities. That technology is now outdated (the Empire now uses “spacers,” something to be explained later), but still functional. What’s worse, Demerzel’s turned up evidence that planets in the area have formed an alliance, “led by magicians who glow in the darkness and fly unaided through the air, and whom weapons cannot touch” and who follow a “Galactic Spirit” that will guide them to a new age—who Day immediately recognizes as Seldon. Dusk’s in favor of crushing them immediately; Demerzel recommends investigating the matter further before taking action. Day agrees with his robot boo, to Dusk’s disgust.

Back on Synnax, Gaal and Salvor are starting to plan their escape from the planet, where the waters are still rising and a violent storm is brewing. Salvor thinks her ship can still fly, despite being submerged for 138 years. She’ll just need to reboot it, which will involve pulling a Poseidon Adventure and swimming underwater for an uncomfortable amount of time. If they utilize Gaal’s freaky breath-holding skills, they might make it. Mom and daughter buddy mission time! They succeed in raising the battered ship to the surface, but the whole mother-daughter thing still feels weird. “We’ve known each other a day,” Gaal says, pointing out that she didn’t even know Salvor existed until she met her. They’re all each other has left, though, and they agree to play it by ear.

With a nudge from the Prime Radiant, who whispers to him where to meet her next (just quietly enough so that we can’t make out her words), Hari thinks back to his childhood memory again—about folds, dimensions, and shadows—and brainiacs his consciousness out of captivity. At the same moment, Salvor is begging Gaal to release Hari so that he can help them fix their ship as a hurricane closes in. The situation is dire! Just then, Hari blips into view and he is furious. “It’s time you and I had a reckoning,” he snarls at Gaal. Can a hologram punch you in the face? Because Gaal looks awfully worried.

New episodes of Foundation stream Fridays on Apple TV+.

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