TL;DR – This season has started to diverge considerably from the source material, and among its bombast and stunning visuals are some creeping worries.

Disclosure – I paid for the Apple TV+ service to view this episode.

Foundation Introduction –

When I first started watching the third season of Foundation with A Song for the End of Everything, I was concerned they would be trying to force all of The Mule’s story into this one season. While they avoided that particular pitfall, the season still shows signs of strain as it pushes further from Asimov’s framework, as you can start to feel the show beginning to wobble a bit and potentially head towards disaster as we move farther away from the source material.

So, to set the scene, it has been 152 years since the Second Crisis, and while the Empire continues to collapse, the Foundation grows, expanding further out of the outer reach. Now both the Empire and The Foundation are fighting to control Kalgan, a pleasure planet, and the key to controlling The Middle Band. But there may be a third player out there, ready to tear everything up. For after much prediction, or perhaps, not enough prediction, The Mule (Pilou Asbæk) is on the move, and both sides should fear him because with him comes calamity, and the galaxy is not prepared for what he is about to wreak. Now, from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.    

Production

Before we jump into the narrative exploration of the season, I wanted to take a moment to talk about the production side of things. This continues to be one of the most ambitious and stunningly beautiful shows that Apple TV has attempted. Every part of the show, from its majestic planet-scapes to its gore-filled waterfall moments, is brilliantly constructed. The combination of sets and locations elevates the story by grounding the world in something tangible. There are those horrific moments, like in The Paths That Choose Us, when billions are killed in an instant, or in the finale, The Darkness, where they straight up murder a baby, which is a taboo if there ever was. But at all times, the visual effects never slip.

Crises

The core of this season’s motivation is the overlapping crises that paralyse some characters and motivate others. When there is the brewing war between The Foundation and The Traders, the coming collapse of the Empire and its last gasp at relevance, and the manipulations of The Mule and the calamity they bring. Brother Day (Lee Pace) is off trying to cure Demerzel (Laura Birn) through the power of multiple intoxicants, Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) is being used as a pawn, and Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann) is planning a coup/genocide/regicide/familicide/patricide/filicide. Meanwhile, Gall (Lou Llobell) is betraying Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) on her way to try to kill The Mule because of some sort of destiny. Oh, and the Magnifico Giganticus (Tómas Lemarquis) is still around for some reason.   

Disentanglement

I have always been of the view that it would be tough to do a straight adaptation of The Foundation series because it was not written in a style that fits with modern narrative sensibilities. Isaac Asimov’s work is all about sifting times and characters almost at a whim, which would make it challenging to keep people connected to the work. Add to this a wad of stories, like Dune, created when Asimov started to smash all his works into one universe that could be added into the mix. The choice the creators of the series made to address that was by creating these artificial links between the seasons. Hari Seldon’s role gets boosted and doubled during the seasons rather than the instead in the rather ignoble way he dies in the novels. Gaal Dornick is almost a non-feature in the novels, and is now a nearly time-travelling mentalic who has lived well past when she should have died. Then, of course, we have the Empire’s Three, who are technically different characters each season, but the same actors.

Most of these choices I have understood, but they have come at a cost, and that cost is the original works. We have now diverged so much from the original works that instead of these changes feeling like brackets to keep the original story flowing, they feel like they are the original story. Now, it feels like the original stories are the barnacles on the side of a whale, being contorted to fit the current story, rather than the other way around. The whole plot line of Bayta Mallow (Synnøve Karlsen), Toran Mallow (Cody Fern), Dr Ebling Mis (Alexander Siddig), and Magnifico Giganticus from the moment war has broken out bears no resemblance to the book where they are the main characters rather than a side piece. You can’t send them to Trantor because that is not a burned heap yet. In this story, you can’t redo their story on Terminus because you have already set up the big confrontation with The Mule with Gaal, who is very, very, very dead in the books by this point.

Your way of getting through that twin problem is by trying a twist ending by revealing that Bayta Mallow is secretly The Mule rather than the Magnifico Giganticus. What a nothingburger moment, if there ever was one. Because it only exists to pull the rug out from underneath those who are fans of the book, who are the last people you should be doing that to, given all the other liberties that you have taken with the source material. However, more than that, it undercuts one of the only strong female characters in the original stories. Much like many of his contemporaries, Isaac Asimov was both a visionary and very much of his time. Bayta is at the core of Foundation and Empire, and it is her humanity and emotional intelligence that save the universe from being hoodwinked. We have turned one of the greatest and only female heroes in the novels into a villain in the show, and that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Recommendation

In the end, do we recommend Foundation: Season 3? While I have concerns that it is about to go off the railings, it has not hit Game of Thrones Season 8 yet, and there is still a lot of the show that I would recommend. However, choices made back in Season One have started to pile up, and I am not sure if the narrative has the strength to hold up to any more stress. Have you seen Foundation yet? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Bluesky at @Tldrmovrev, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Foundation
Directed by – Roxann Dawson, Christopher J. Byrne, David S. Goyer & Tim Southam
Written by – Jane Espenson, David S. Goyer, Eric Carrasco, Caitlin Parrish, Tyler Holmes, Greg Goetz, Leigh Dana Jackson & David Kob
Created by – David S. Goyer & Josh Friedman
Based On – Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Production/Distribution Companies – Skydance TV & Apple+
Starring – Jared Harris, Lee Pace, Lou Llobell, Laura Birn, Cassian Bilton,Terrence Mann, Cherry Jones, Brandon P. Bell, Synnøve Karlsen, Cody Fern, Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing, Troy Kotsur, Alexander Siddig, Tómas Lemarquis & Pilou Asbæk with Iðunn Ösp Hlynsdóttir, Ahir Shah, Isla Gie, Leo Bill, Darren Pettie, Krista Kosonen, Ibraheem Toure, Fisayo Akinade & Rebecca Ineson and Rowena King, Vibeke Hastrup, Adam Basil, Victoria Wyant, Jennifer Saayeng, Mark Ebulué, Ryan Ali, Scarlett Brookes, Toby Dixon, Richard Riddell, Angela Yeoh, Josh Morrison, Olive Walter, Laura Berlin, Blake Ritson, Miltos Yerolemou, Michelle Huirama, RitaKahn Chen, Marcus Fraser, Cobhan O’Brien, Tavia Pereira, Sule Rimi, Milena Staszuk, Paul S. Tracey, Sylwia Gola, Sandra Guldberg Kampp, Ralph Ineson & Jake Fairbrother
Episodes Covered – A Song for the End of Everything, Shadows in the Math, When a Book Finds You, The Stress of Her Regard, Where Tyrants Spend Eternity, The Shape of Time, Foundation’s End, Skin in the Game, The Paths That Choose Us & The Darkness