Warning: spoilers for Foundation Season 2 are in play. If you’re not caught up with the finale just yet, you’ve been warned.
Two out of the planned eight seasons of Apple TV+’s Foundation are now in existence, acting as only the beginning of a much wider story to be told. We’ve learned a lot in the twenty episode we’ve seen so far, and co-creator/showrunner David S. Goyer has plenty of secrets up his sleeve for the future.
That didn’t stop the Dark Knight Trilogy writer from revealing some advice as to what clues fans should keep in mind from past episodes. Not to mention, there’s a villain besides the Cleon Genetic Empire that’s rising to become Season 3’s potential big bad. As this still growing series continues to be adapt a sci-fi book series that lives up to the hype, its televised counterpart is just as pleasing to behold. Especially with its wide ranging plans still unfurling!
Foundation Season 3’s Current Status, And The Season 2 Villain In Its Focus
If you haven’t finished watching Foundation Season 2 with your Apple TV+ subscription, this is your last call before getting super spoiled. Just know that at this moment, Apple has not yet granted a greenlight for Season 3. However, David S. Goyer did confirm in our interview that all of the season’s episodes have been written, and some pre-production work has been completed.
Now it’s time to get to the spoilery details. Still with me? Good, because the very last scene of Episode 10, “Creation Myths,” has shown us exactly when most of Season 3 will take place, and who the main villain happens to be. While speaking with CinemaBlend, here’s what Goyer said about Season 3:
The Mule’s the big bad in Season 3, I will say that. You’ll be seeing a lot of The Mule in Season 3, so the vast majority of the season will be taking place 150 years down the line.
A major Season 2 subplot saw Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey), Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), and a recently re-humanized Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) trying to figure out how stave off catastrophe at the hands of The Mule (Mikael Persbrandt). A Mentalic who represents a huge deviation from the Prime Radiant’s plan to shorten the coming dark age, Gaal’s future visions saw Salvor dying by his hand over a century down the line.
However, as we saw in the heartbreaking Foundation Season 2 finale, Salvor sacrificed her life to protect Gaal’s future. Dying to protect her mother, the hero from Terminus used her last breath to prove to her mother and Hari that the future devastation from The Mule could still be prevented.
While fans should naturally continue to expect resistance from the Cleon Genetic Dynasty (Cassian Bilton, Lee Pace, and Terrance Mann) as well as its newly revealed puppet master Demerzel (Laura Birn), it sounds like The Mule will be the centerpiece of villainy in the hypothetical Foundation Season 3. And that’s only one of the two major developments that David S. Goyer has confirmed will have a huge impact on any potential seasons that follow.
Hari Seldon’s Huge Foundation Season 2 Moment That Will Affect The Future
Revealed throughout the later parts of Foundation Season 1 and reinforced during Season 2 is the fact that there are two versions of Hari Seldon in play. One is the newly rehumanized AI consciousness from the Beggar, while the other is the digital copy that sits in The Vault on Terminus.
Terminus Hari wasn’t supposed to know that he was one of two potential Foundations that were a part of the original Hari’s plan. But due to extenuating circumstances, and in a scene as intriguing as any space battle, this version of Dr. Seldon realizes his purpose in the world. Reflecting on that twist, David S. Goyer reinforced just what that means for the future of Foundation:
One of my favorite scenes in Season 2 is when Dr. Seldon figures out that there’s another Foundation, and that he’s ‘the left hand.’ Which is crazy, because that’s information the audience already knows! But I think that’s a completely thrilling moment that will have massive consequences… That’s not just a one-off, the fact that he puzzled that out. It’s going to drastically affect the trajectory of the show.
With all of the hints for the future that have been dropped in Season 2, there’s apparently even more that are held in Season 1. And what’s more, the hints scattered through Foundation’s first ten episodes are more wide ranging in their impact.
The Foundation Season 1 Episodes David S. Goyer Recommends Rewatching
One more question I had for David S. Goyer was about the clues Foundation fans should look for when rewatching past episodes. As a fan myself of this Isaac Asimov adaptation, I’m already primed to rewatch every chapter and take even deeper notes.
So that led to me asking for some prompts as to what myself and others should look for in the wait for a potential Season 3 announcement. That question yielded not only a good sampling of specific episodes to revisit, but also the largest hints as to just how forward thinking Season 1 turned out to be:
Start with everything in the first three episodes of Season 1. … I think a lot of that viewers would take in a new light. All the flashbacks between Cleon I and Demerzel, for instance. Having seen Episode 209, I think [they] take on a very different light. I will say, even in Season 1, there are little hints that we’ve embedded throughout the season that will point to some cards that we’re gonna turn over in Season 3. There’s another one that we’re gonna turn over in 4, and another one even beyond that. There were some unanswered questions in Season 1, we answered a lot of them later on in Season 2. But some of those cards are going to be turned over in Season 3. I tried my best with my incredible team to create a show that one could watch more than once, and would pick up new nuances and things.
For as secretive as David S. Goyer is, he was certainly generous with what he shared with me. As I certainly look forward to the potential announcement of Foundation Season 3 going into production, I’m even more pumped to go back through all twenty episodes of the first two seasons. Those of you looking for how to watch Foundation Season 2, as well as the previous season to one of the best Apple TV+ shows, all you need to do is head to that very platform and enjoy.