Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for the Foundation Season 3 finale.
Foundation has never acted precious about keeping its revolving-door cast of characters alive. Beyond the cavalier murders, the noble sacrifices, and the tragic losses, of which Apple TV+’s sci-fi epic contains in abundance, each season opens with something of a soft reset; the significant time jumps in between every season leave the lucky survivors behind to perish off-screen from natural causes. Foundation‘s core figures, however, have always returned as new variations, digital copies, or via robotic immortality, respectively. This consistency lends the erudite series a familiar and flexible structure, but those same guardrails risk turning into redundancy, complacency, and a reluctance to sacrifice fan-favorites for the good of the story.
Season 3’s finale abandons all notions of playing things safe, ruthlessly killing its darlings before smashing those same beloved toys into smithereens. With the Foundation severely compromised and the Empire on its dying gasp, the situation has never been more dire for both semi-fallen kingdoms. From vision to execution to bold intent, Episode 10 is the kind of game-changing upheaval every applicable series should be fearless enough to attempt. If Season 4 holds firm where its predecessor’s choices are concerned, then Foundation will advance from its annual soft resets into a beast with a fundamentally different system and no-holds-barred stakes.
The Empire Couldn’t Fall in ‘Foundation’s Season 3 Finale Without Lasting Consequences
All Empires fall, and the Galactic Empire’s inevitable ruin is baked into Foundation‘s concept. That said, it’s still startling for the series to destroy its most reliable set-up and possibly eliminate several top-billed actors. Discussing why Foundation‘s creative team took their broadest swings yet with this third season, co-creator and showrunner David S. Goyer told The Wrap:
“Audiences are sophisticated these days, and you have to tell a good story — you don’t do this merely to surprise the audience — but one of the reasons why “Breaking Bad” or “Game of Thrones” is so exciting is they broke some of the conventions of storytelling by killing off lead characters. So I said, “What would be the most exciting thing?” And the most exciting thing would be if we end the season at a place where you think, “How can the show even survive after this? How can the Foundation prevail? […] I don’t know how else to tell you that the Empire is done now.”
Season 3’s finale, bleakly titled “The Darkness,” denies even the most upstanding of Foundation‘s morally complex figures more than the feeblest of hopes. Of everyone, Second Foundation emerges the most unscathed, having scored an elite new hiding spot on Trantor under the self-crowned Emperor Darkness’s (Terrence Mann) nose. Second Foundation’s former leader, Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), survives her first face-to-face meeting with her chaotic nemesis, the Mule/Bayta Mallow (Synnøve Karlsen), but at great cost — outmaneuvered on her own playing field, devoid of both her Mentalic army and the Prime Radiant’s guidance, and turning her best ally, Hari Seldon’s (Jared Harris) Vault-bound replica, into a potential enemy.
While turning its heroes into vulnerable reactionaries is the opposite of no small blow, Episode 10’s most jaw-severing shake-up arrives via the collapse of the Cleonic Dynasty from within. Even though nothing salvation is off the table for a series this well-versed in hyperfuturistic death reversals, inventing a workaround — say, resurrecting Day (Lee Pace) or letting an embryonic exponent survive the cloning chamber purge — would gut Dusk’s scorched-earth massacre of its thematic and emotional impact. How fitting is it for yet another Cleon in a long line of clones, not an outlier like the Mule, to circumvent his ancestor’s legacy? Dusk destroying Cleon I’s bid for joint immortality — himself and the Empire — is the epitome of the snake eating its own tail, and, as Hari stated early in Season 1, proof that the circle cannot hold; it was too dependent upon inherent flaws.
These moves don’t emerge from nowhere, either. Between the consequences of the Genetic Drift and Cleon I’s recurring traits, each successive clone has deviated more and more as they slide down their slippery, self-sabotaging slopes. Caught within their own cyclical traps, the places this doomed triumvirate ends by the time Season 3’s credits roll capitalize upon their drives and tragedies. Dawn’s (Cassian Bilton) quest for morality-chasing autonomy leaves him alive, but disillusioned and trapped. Dusk, usually the wisest strategist yet contending against insecurity, irrelevance, jealousy, and fear, essentially murders himself for power and egotism, and to delay his death for just a fraction longer. Day discovering selfless purpose after prioritizing his own malaise leaves him dead, his efforts on Demerzel’s behalf likewise in vain (and wiping Pace off the board might be the wildest move of all).
Demerzel’s Fate in the ‘Foundation’ Season 3 Finale Is a Bleak and Bitter Tragedy
As for Demerzel, the finale’s most devastating blow to the heart, Season 3 takes great pains to show her demise as reversible — in theory, at least. The Brazen Head establishes that a robot’s semi-dormant sentience can survive in ancient skull form, while Demerzel’s agonizing death shows her as offline but her skull as just half-melted, not golden goo. Yet without Day’s insight, and with the Inheritance at a tactical and informational disadvantage — not to mention whatever Dusk might do with Demerzel’s remains — restoring her would be a puzzle.
Goyer confirmed to /Filmthat “The act that actually frees [Demerzel] is Dusk destroying the clone tanks, because once the clone tanks and that baby are dead, there’s no genetic dynasty anymore,” but, fairly, refused to answer whether the production can or will devise a loophole for her. Few could argue against the character’s return, especially since losing Birn’s breathtaking performance is a heartfelt loss. If Demerzel doesn’t return to fight another day, however, thenher tragic end finalizes the very torment that made her captivating — circumstances refused to loosen her imposed chains until milliseconds before her death.
‘Foundation’ Season 4 Shouldn’t Undo Season 3’s Bold Swings
Whichever way Season 4 proceeds, it feels like a joint passing of batons. Kalle (Rowena King) seems poised to take over the robot-centric storylines, which raises enough questions for an entire season to answer: the puzzle that’s been Kalle’s presence, how robots survived the Robot Wars, whether they’ve been shaping humanity from clay all along, and their ultimate motivations behind such observation and strategic intervention. Regarding Pace’s nebulous return, for what it’s worth, the unidentified robot on Earth’s moon base sounds suspiciously familiar.
It’s wise of Foundation to realize there are only so many times it can remix its established rhythm without compromising the series’ credibility and cohesion. Although tragic, the carnage of the Season 3 finale doesn’t feel like a waste. A testament to the corrupt fragility of human civilization, it’s an earned slow burn to bloodsoaked grandeur that opens fresh corners of this ever-evolving universe.
Foundation
- Release Date
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September 23, 2021
- Network
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Apple TV+
- Showrunner
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David S. Goyer
- Directors
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Alex Graves, Roxann Dawson, Jennifer Phang, Mark Tonderai, Andrew Bernstein
