Foundation, David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman’s Apple TV+ sci-fi epic, is television’s grandest drama, and it continues to put the rest of its small-screen genre brethren to shame with its momentous, magnificent third season.
The series is a centuries-spanning saga about a futuristic galaxy that’s ruled by Empire (embodied by three clones of an ancient emperor) and slowly splintering under the strain of political strife, religious fanaticism, malevolent revolt, and portentous mathematical prophecy that foretells of a cataclysm now on the imminent horizon. It’s an operatic masterwork with the scale of Game of Thrones and a depth, personality, and sense of import all its own.
Adapted from the classic novels by Isaac Asimov, Goyer and Friedman’s series, returning July 11, is rooted in issues of agency, the nature of the self, the means by which societies evolve due to a cascading confluence of geopolitical and individual forces, and the push-pull between sovereignty and enslavement, free will and fate, and the ever-present specter of time—and man’s desire to predict, delay, and master it.
Suffice to say, Foundation trades in big ideas, yet its greatness comes from its skill at weaving such notions through a fittingly wide-ranging tale of love, honor, duty, courage, cowardice, and betrayal. And all of those are everywhere at the outset of its latest 10-episode run, which begins 152 years after the conclusion of Season 2 with the universe on the precipice of disaster.
In this new present, the Foundation created by late “psychohistory” quasi-messiah Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) has grown from a tiny exiled outfit into an autocracy that controls the outer reach and is making inroads even closer to Trantor. That planet is the seat of galactic power and governed by Empire, a monarchy split between a trio of clones of historic ruler Cleon I who are known by their ages: young Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton), middle-aged Brother Day (Lee Pace), and aged Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann).
Centuries earlier (in Season 1), Hari predicted—via a mathematical equation encapsulated in a multi-sided device called the Prime Radiant—that Empire was destined to fall. This process enters its final stages in the premiere, courtesy of the villainous Mule (Pilou Asbæk, replacing Mikael Persbrandt) whose psychic abilities allow him to murderously conquer the planet of Kalgan, thereby initiating a crisis that, the Prime Radius suggests, will peak in four months with the literal end of everything.
Empire’s reign is aided by majordomo Demerzel (the fantastic Laura Birn), the last living robot following the eons-ago extermination of her kind. Much of Foundation turns its attention to her, given that she’s torn between her prime-directive command to protect Empire at all costs and the paradoxical fact that doing so may be what brings about its destruction—and, in the process, might grant her the freedom she covets in violation of her programming.
As has been the case since the show’s debut, Empire and Demerzel are the series’ most enthralling characters, handcuffed by their inherently flawed natures and caught between their alternately noble and self-sabotaging desires. Those tensions are brought to brilliant life by Birn, Bilton, Mann, and Pace, whose Day is, in this era, a slovenly royal who’s essentially abdicated his responsibilities in favor of a drug-filled life in a wildlife-menagerie getaway with his concubine Song (Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing).
Empire’s crumbling fortunes (accelerated by an unsympathetic Galactic Council) should be good news for Foundation. It’s distracted, however, by mounting troubles with insurgent traders. More on the ball is Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), Hari’s psychic protégé, who after decades of intermittent cryo-sleep awakens for good to spearhead the Second Foundation, a clandestine group dedicated to realizing Hari’s dream of minimizing the impact of the forthcoming apocalypse.
Gaal’s visions have long foretold of a coming confrontation with the Mule, and much of her energy this season is spent attempting to prepare herself and her allies for this inevitable clash—an undertaking that compels her to partner with Dawn in a scheme that’s as complicated as it is surprising.
Per tradition, Foundation’s narrative direction remains clear despite an avalanche of plot convolutions and novel players, who this season include Gaal’s psychic mate Preem (Troy Kotsur) and her double-agent boyfriend Han Pritcher (Brandon P. Bell); jetsetter Toran Mallow (Cody Fern)—descendant of roguish Hober Mallow (Dimitri Leonidas)—and his socialite wife Bayta (Synnøve Karlsen); diplomatic Foundation Ambassador Quent (Cherry Jones); and Mule balladeer Magnifico Giganticus (Tómas Lemarquis), whose music enhances his master’s mental gifts.
Goyer and Friedman weave together these and numerous supplementary figures in a tapestry of good and evil whose jaw-dropping scope is reminiscent of Empire’s massive historical mural. More impressive than their tale’s size, however, is its dramatic urgency and anxiety, as well as its emotional impact, which reaches a crescendo as everything and everyone hurtles toward calamitous conflict.
Foundation is serious-minded science fiction with an imagination to match its ambition, and in its third go-round, it even more assuredly juggles its myriad concerns, such that it never drags, much less resorts to superfluous padding.
It’s also the rare television production to boast a truly cinematic aesthetic, with Goyer and Friedman—collaborating with sterling directors Tim Southam, Roxann Dawson, and Christopher J. Byrne—crafting evocative larger-than-life panoramas of disparate worlds, fascinating cultures, and unholy creatures. There are more thrilling and memorable sights in this Apple TV+ show than can be found in most modern sci-fi films, and in Empire, it boasts a conceit that continues to serve as a unique vehicle for all manner of intriguing practical and philosophical questions and conundrums.
So confident and poised is Foundation that even links which initially appear weak wind up growing stronger with each episode until, ultimately, they prove vital parts of its intricate chain. To be sure, the series requires an investment in—and rigorous attention to the details of—its sophisticated intergalactic story. Yet the rewards for such dedication are great.
As rich and satisfying as anything on TV, it deserves a following as vast as its universe—or, at least, numerous additional seasons to further develop its sweeping portrait of loyalty and treachery, power and powerlessness, and the eternal search for balance within reality, society, and the heart, mind, and soul.
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