‘Foundation’ Recap, Season 2, Episode 1: In Seldon’s Shadow

Mar 20, 2024

Welcome, Vulture readers, to the second season of Foundation! While season one was full of striking imagery and some fascinating ideas, those episodes, to quote Yoda in The Last Jedi, “Page-turners they were not.” The groundwork (or foundations) laid in season one made those episodes convoluted and rather dense, as we were introduced to a whole galaxy, end-of-humanity stakes, a triumvirate of cloned emperors, and also the very idea of psychohistory. If you skipped the first season and came straight here, oh boy, this may be a tad confusing. That’s because Foundation is based on one of the most influential works of modern science fiction, but Isaac Asimov’s magnum opus is notoriously dense and complex, heavier in world-building than actual story or character.

Thankfully, season two is not that. On the contrary, now that the foundation was established and we know what the show is about, season two is free to focus on the bigger moments that will define the titular Foundation, and the history of humanity while somehow becoming more intimate and personal. This is particularly true of the season premiere, which focuses on a handful of characters we are already familiar with while only teasing the new characters we’ll spend time with this season.

Let’s start with the most naked one, shall we? We pick up over a century after the events of season one, where we found out the Cleon genetic dynasty was sabotaged generations ago and made every new clone flawed and not identical to one another. This seems to have deeply impacted Lee Pace’s Brother Day, who spends a good amount of time in this episode naked and talking about ending the dynasty as we know it. Turns out, he’s planning to get married and replace his genetic clones and co-emperors with an heir procreated the old-fashioned way. This is huge news and proof that both Seldon’s warning about the end of humanity as well as the tempering with the genetic code of the Cleons has finally made an impact because the unchanging and unending Empire is finally admitting he has no clothes.

And that is literal because when we first reunite with Brother Day, he’s having sex, not with his bride-to-be, but with Demerzel (Laura Birn), his human-like android who is both a butler, advisor, teacher, and mother figure (as Dusk says later, she “changed your diaper when you were a child”). This is the first sign that season two of Foundation will be different, both from the book and from season one, closer to space opera territory, an approach that’s more Game of Thrones meets Dune. And it’s not just about the sex, but about embracing fun and absurdity, like having Brother Day interrupted by elite assassins and having to fight them completely naked in a thrilling and fun action scene, or allowing Lee Pace to show off his comedic skills later when doctors treat Day without anesthesia (he doesn’t trust anyone to not replace him with another clone while he’s under), squealing and demanding a robe so his “manhood isn’t flapping around” — which is just some archaic use of language away from being a Spartacus line.

Before Day can become a detective for a day and figure out who tried to kill him or even spend more than 20 minutes with his young bride Queen Sareth (Ella-Rae Smith), another important development interrupts Empire’s day. A dead body floating in space is discovered and with it a message that confirms the Foundation is alive and thriving, forming alliances with nearby planets, seemingly with the help of “magicians who glow in the darkness and fly unaided through the air, and whom weapons cannot touch” and who follow a Galactic Spirit. It seems the Foundation has started a religion around Seldon, and the Cleons are worried, which they should be. In case you don’t remember, Hari Seldon and his Foundation were allowed to leave Trantor unharmed with the promise that they’d be building a massive encyclopedia, when in reality, they’re building a civilization to match and eventually replace the Empire.

Elsewhere, on Terminus, we see that the once-ramshackle community of shipping containers has grown into a flourishing city. Of course, we don’t know any of the people who live here since they are all dead. But what we do know about is the giant Vault left behind by Hari Seldon, which contains a digital copy of his brain. Turns out, the Vault is activating again, the first time in over a century, which means it is time for the Second Crisis, presumably the one Seldon predicted years earlier — war with Empire.

As for Hari Seldon himself, there was no way Foundation would part ways with Jared Harris, right? So it is not super-surprising that he is back even beyond the grave. Turns out, Hari has been trapped for a century in a prison of his own making, the device known as the Prime Radiant, where Harris has nothing to do but freak out and deliver great monologues to an empty room about Seldon’s past mistakes and his hubris. To make matters more confusing, it seems the Prime Radiant now has a consciousness and has taken the form of Hari’s wife for some reason. The Prime Radiant tells Seldon it is “something new” and that it has a “vested interest in humanity’s destiny,” but not necessarily its survival, as Hari points out with great concern.

We have no time to find out what any of that means because Hari finally leaves his prison as what looks like a projection of his consciousness who is very, very angry at Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) for imprisoning him for over a century. The two are going to need to put their differences aside because Gaal is in trouble. After waking up in Synnax next to her daughter Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey), who is her same age (it involves several decades in cryosleep, no big deal), the two discover that Hari’s psychohistory predictions are off, and humanity’s future has deviated from the plan since the last crisis. If they don’t put things back on track, humanity will head toward a catastrophic future, and the age of darkness Hari predicted will get longer, perhaps never-ending.

• So who sent the assassins? Day seems to suspect everyone, from his future bride to even his brothers/clones. Could Hari be involved?

• A cool little way Foundation illustrates the decline of the Empire and how Seldon’s predictions are coming true is the way Trantor looks bigger with the planet surrounded by rings that replaced the destroyed space elevator. Empire’s problems and their loss of territory literally covered in pretty decorations and grandeur.

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