Catching up with Foundation S2 as the Second Crisis unfolds

[Karlston]

The second season has faster pacing, more linear storytelling, and bits of levity.

Lee Pace as the latest incarnation of Brother Day, one of a trio of ruling Cleons in Apple TV's Foundation.

Apple TV+

 

We're now two episodes into the second season of Foundation, Apple TV's epic sci-fi series adapted—or remixed, per showrunner David Goyer—from the seminal series of stories by Isaac Asimov, and it's shaping up to be even better than its first. Goyer took great pains in S1 to carefully set up his expansive fictional world, and the scope has only broadened in the second season.

 

Goyer describes the new season as more emotional and romantic, with a bit more humor—or at least moments of levity—and faster paced now that the main characters and their key relationships have been well established. "Now it's a bit like jazz," he said. "We can riff on our creation and start to move the chess pieces around and create alliances or unusual pairings that didn't exist last season. Audiences have a certain expectation of how things are going to unfold, and part of the fun is subverting those expectations." The narrative is also more linear, with fewer time jumps forward and back—just the occasional traditional flashback.

 

(Major spoilers for S1 below. Some minor spoilers for S2 but no major reveals.)

 

As previously reported, Asimov's fundamental narrative arc remains intact, with the series taking place across multiple planets over 1,000 years and featuring a huge cast of characters. Mathematician Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) developed a controversial theory of "psychohistory," and his calculations predict the fall of the Empire, ushering in a Dark Ages that will last 30,000 years, after which a second Empire will emerge. The collapse of the Empire is inevitable, but Seldon has a plan to reduce the Dark Ages to a mere 1,000 years through the establishment of a Foundation to preserve all human knowledge so that civilization need not rebuild itself entirely from scratch. He is aided in this endeavor by his adoptive son and right-hand man, Raych Foss (Alfred Enoch), and his math prodigy protegé, Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell).

 

The biggest change from the books is the replacement of the Empire's ruling committee with a trio of Eternal Emperor clones called the Cleons—a genetic dynasty. Brother Day (Lee Pace) is the primary ruler, with Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann) serving in an advisory/legacy role. Meanwhile, Brother Dawn (played as a child by Cooper Carter and as a teenager by Cassian Bilton) is being groomed to take over as the new Brother Day. Technically, they are all perfect incarnations of the same man, at different ages, and this is both the source of their strength as a team and of their conflicts. Their guardian is an android, Eto Demerzel (Laura Birn), one of the last surviving androids from the ancient Robot Wars, who is programmed to protect the dynasty at all costs.

 

Reviews of the first season ranged from generally positive to mixed, which isn't surprising considering the unwieldy source material and how much exposition and world-building was required. There were inevitably diehard fans of the books who objected to the creative liberties Goyer implemented. Nonetheless, it was an Ars favorite.

 

"This series respects Asimov's sweeping visionary ideas without lapsing into slavish reverence and over-pontification," I wrote in my 2021 review of the first season. "That said, how much you like Goyer's vision might depend on how much of a stickler you are about remaining faithful to the source material." Ars Senior Technology Editor Lee Hutchinson loved the series, too, declaring Foundation to be "a fascinating tale that was told well, with a cast I enjoyed watching, and with a visual language that really connected with something in my head."

 

That first season ended with a major time jump of 138 years, as Gaal Dornick woke up in a cryopod on her former home planet of Synnax, now deserted, only to meet Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey), the former leader of Terminus who turned out to be Gaal's daughter. In the interim, the Foundation has flourished, growing from about 5,000 people to more than 50,000 and expanding its numbers to various outposts in the Outer Reach. There have also been several generations of Cleons.

 

As the second season begins, tensions are rising as the current Cleons' iron rule on Trantor begins to unravel, with war imminent between Empire and the Foundation. That war is the Second Crisis, along with an enemy seeking to destroy Empire from within. The Foundation, meanwhile, has adopted the propaganda tactics of religion to recruit new acolytes to the cause. And we'll also meet a colony of "Mentalics" with psionic abilities, only hinted at in the first season.

 

Let's take a closer look at where our primary players find themselves at the start of the second season.

 

Jared Harris reprises his role as Hari Seldon—or rather, a "digital ghost" and a second digital copy

of the original Hari's consciousness.

Apple TV

Hari Seldon

Seldon, who set all these events in motion with his controversial predictions, was murdered in S1. At least, his human body was killed. A digital version of him emerged on Terminus in the S1 finale. Goyer describes his current incarnation as a "digital ghost" (referred to as Dr. Seldon). There is also a digital copy of Hari's consciousness uploaded into the hilt of a knife that traveled with Gaal in her escape pod, and the two incarnations are distinct personalities.

 

The latter copy of Hari was conscious the entire time Gaal was in cryosleep, "which basically would drive anyone permanently insane," said Harris. "It's not deliberate on Gaal's part, but her interventions have knocked Hari's plan seriously off course." That could have implications for the Second Crisis. Those intervening years have inevitably altered Hari's relationship with Gaal, although Harris insists the two are more alike than either might care to admit. "Both have brilliant minds and both think they're the smartest people in the room, so there's an arrogance about them," he said.

 

The Cleon dynasty—Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton), Brother Day, and Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann)—is in decline.

The Cleons

The Cleons might still rule Trantor, but a lot has changed since we learned in S1 that these so-called "pure" clones of the original Cleon actually aren't that pure: a rebel faction managed to introduce mutations or variables in their genetic code, which rather weakens the mythology of the Genetic Dynasty—and hence the legitimacy of their rule. Pace's Brother Day—the 18th in the cycle—is most definitely not a mere carbon copy of Cleon the First. "In the first season, we tried to establish this imperishable permanence, that they believe they're a continuation of the same man," Pace told Ars. "The Cleon I play in S2 is determined to assert his individuality. He knows in his heart that he's an individual, and he's going to write his own path, determine his own destiny. It takes courage to break free of this system that is extremely rigid and dangerous. But his emperor's ego makes him think he can do anything."

 

This new Brother Day has no illusions about who or what he is—so much so, that he plans to marry Queen Sareth (Ella-Rae Smith) of Cloud Dominion and produce natural-born heirs, effectively ending the line of clone emperors. "There's no doubt in his mind that he's just a man in the role of a god," said Pace. "He feels entitled to it, but he doesn't really want this job. It's the ego that is so interesting about him. He believes that he's the hero of his story, but there is a very vulnerable belly of failure. The consequence of failure, his humiliation, and the consequences for the rest of galaxy in turn. What Hari Seldon predicted is happening and everyone can feel it. The time is now. That thrilling meeting with destiny is interesting to me."

 

Goyer prefers to think of the Cleons as antagonists rather than bona fide villains, despite the violence they routinely unleash on those who try to defy them. The complexity of their individual selves and their relationships to each other was one of the most compelling storylines in S1. "I've never encountered a character like [Day]," said Pace. "He's deformed in the way that he thinks. He's a deformed man. He doesn't understand what love is, but he needs love. He's not actually a very sophisticated thinker. He's instinctual, primitive, in the way he thinks. The solution to every problem, when he feels overwhelmed, is violence." One of the seminal moments in S1 is an exchange between Brother Dawn and Demerzel after a brutal execution. A troubled Dawn asks, "How often do we choose this?" Demerzel tells him that he always chooses this.

 

Day's choices also make things challenging for Brothers Dawn and Dusk. "The wheels are coming off the wagon, and they're definitely scrambling to Day, because he's in charge to try and figure out what's going to be the best course of action," said Mann. Dusk will also get a bit of romantic action this season, in the form of Enjoiner Rue (Sandra Yi Sencindiver), an aide to Queen Sareth. As for Day, in S1 he was very much a tragic figure, undone by loving the wrong woman. This latest incarnation is "the inversion of that," per Bilton, who thinks the question of nature versus nurture is especially relevant in S2 as to why the Cleons are who they are.

 

The android Eto Demerzel (Laura Birn) is conflicted about her programming.

Apple TV

Eto Demerzel

Goyer deliberately made Demerzel's development as a character more of a slow burn: a silent, omnipresent observer, devoted solely to the welfare of the Cleons, whose own inner life up until now has been a bit of a cipher. "I think it's fascinating that every time there's a new Cleon, it's like an innocent baby," Birn told Ars. "She has to teach them everything. She controls them. But she is controlled by them also. They enslave her. So I think she has a twisted, very special relationship with all of them, and she guides them in a way that she thinks is needed for each of them. They are different, even though they are the same man. With Cleon the 18th, she has to use quite extreme ways to control him because he's drifting too far."

 

Thematically, the character of Demerzel evokes the age-old tension between consciousness and free will, as well as a handy lens through which to explore Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics in S2: a robot may not hurt a human or allow them to come to harm through inaction; a robot must obey human orders unless an order conflicts with the first rule; and a robot must protect its own existence unless doing so conflicts with the first and second laws. We only caught glimpses in S1 of Demerzel experiencing conflicting impulses regarding her programmed purpose—to protect the Cleon dynasty at all costs—and those become amplified in the second season.

 

"There's a seed that's growing in her mind," said Birn. "She's troubled by all the things that she has to do to defend the genetic dynasty. She's not able to fight that programming, but she's able to feel the consequences of her actions. This is driving her to a new direction that is dangerous for her as well. This idea of Cleon the 18th marrying and wanting to end the genetic dynasty would mean freedom for her. But then again, she must fight against that with every particle of her being."

 

Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey) and Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) explore their mother/daughter dynamic on Synnax.

Apple TV

Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin

Gaal began S1 as a wide-eyed young woman with a mathematical gift who traveled to Trantor from her home planet, Synnax, to study with Hari Seldon. She was banished to Terminus with him by the Cleons, along with followers of Seldon who believed his predictions for the future would come to pass. When Hari was murdered en route by her lover Raych, Gaal was jettisoned into space and found herself on a ship called the Raven, which Hari had intended for Raych. Eventually, she found her way back to Synnax. Llobell said that S2's Gaal would be much more in control after her long cryosleep. And per Goyer, she'll have to come to terms with how to be a mother to a daughter she never knew she had.

 

Salvor, meanwhile, learned she was adopted in S1 and has just come face to face with her biological mother, Gaal—who is younger than she is, thanks to the vagaries of interstellar travel—on a remote and deserted planet. The two of them will be working through the complications of their relationship over the course of the second season, as well as exploring their unusual abilities (Gaal can see into the future; Salvor can see into the past). "The writers gave us opportunities to be vulnerable with each other and, in the case of Salvor, to find moments of an almost child-like need for connection," Harvey told Ars. "Sometimes when we see kids have tantrums, it all comes from this need to connect and to communicate." Harvey and Llobell happen to be practically unbeatable in charades, per Harvey, and they used that real-world bond while playing off each other in S2.

 

Toughness and iron resolve in the face of adversity were hallmarks of Salvor's character in S1, so it's nice to see a more vulnerable side come through in this new season, although for Harvey, both elements have always influenced their performance. "I think that being tough means you have to be vulnerable," they said. "You can't have light without dark, you can't have strength without weakness. Being vulnerable is part of that character that makes her unique, as well as relatable. We all get scared. But we all have to keep going." Harvey also found their dance training invaluable when training for the intense choreographed fight scenes.

 

Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion (Ella-Rae Smith) isn't exactly thrilled about a potential union with Brother Day.

Apple TV

 

There are also a number of new faces this season, most notably Smith's Queen Sareth, whose family was killed under mysterious circumstances—and who is not the malleable, easily controlled potential bride Day assumes she is. Also joining the S2 cast season are Isabella Laughland as Brother Constant, a novice in the Foundation's Church of the Galactic Spirit, and Kulvinder Ghir as High Cleric Poly Verisof, who travel the Outer Reaches seeking converts. In addition, Holt McCallany plays Warden Jaegger Fount; Rachel House plays Tellem Bond; Nimrat Kaur plays Yanna Seldon; Ben Daniels plays Bel Riose; and Dimitri Leonidas plays a young trader named Hober Mallow, who will be familiar to readers of the novels.

 

And, of course, the series will continue to explore Asimov's various themes more deeply, which Goyer considers timeless. "The only constant is change," he said. "I think that Foundation is probably more relevant today than it was when Asimov was first writing it. Foundation is about people studying history, the patterns of society, and realizing that so many of the things that we think are unique challenges each generation, humanity has dealt with them again and again and again. And if we can learn from those mistakes, we can be better suited to face those challenges in the present and the future."

 

New episodes of Foundation air every Friday through September 15, 2023, on Apple TV+.

 

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[Nuclear Fallout]

Either a good hearted person will posting season II or latest when For All Mankind arrives with Season IV I'll have to get me Apple TV as well.