Foundation Season 2 picks up where Season 1 left off: some 130 years after the main climax of the season finale.
This is the ambitious scope of Foundation, the Apple TV Plus show based on the Isaac Asimov series of the same name, about centuries of universe history, across years and planets, complete with ruined lives and bloodshed. In season 2, Hari Seldon’s (Jared Harris) followers are still popping up in the universe (and in better numbers than ever, much to Empire’s dismay), but the show has jumped way ahead of where it once was. After all, psychohistory looks at the long arc of the universe, and Foundation must heed the call. The result is a space opera on a logarithmic scale, and Asimov in the form of a TV science fiction blockbuster – at least for some chapters.
If Foundation builds the show’s world, weaving storylines across the galaxy, leaping from the disciples of the Foundation settlements at the end of known space to the ever-changing murals in Empire’s halls. All the stories in the show take on their own flavors, hit their own pitfalls, and exist (sometimes) in their own bubbles. It can make it difficult to tackle the show as a whole; even if these threads inform each other, there is a distinct difference in how they feel and how well they work.
To that end, it’s worth breaking down the strengths and nuances of each of Season 2’s storylines. With Gaal (Lou Llobell) and Salvor (Leah Harvey) now together on Synnax, the modern (or “modern”) Foundation is attracting new Terminus players, now in its religious phase. Before them looms the second crisis – war with Empire – and a colony of Mentalics with psionic abilities that could threaten the course of psychohistory. There’s a lot of universe to cover, and Foundation breaks up the storylines pretty neatly.
Gaal and Salvor
Image: Apple TV Plus
The two most important people in the galaxy are a time-displaced mother-daughter duo who took over 100 years to find each other as the galaxy moved on without them. Foundation‘s first big task is to get them on the same page since they never communicated with each other before they met in the Season 1 cliffhanger.
It’s a good way to lead viewers back to the world of Foundation, though a little frustrating as it’s stuck in Season 1’s least developed storyline: Gaal feels so betrayed by Hari Seldon’s digital ghost over Raych’s (Alfred Enoch) death and Seldon’s meddling with what he sold her as the immutable math of psychohistory that she blows up the second half of Seldon’s plan for a second Foundation, hidden from the first. This is perhaps the most melodramatic of them all Foundation‘s plots – though the Cleons Certainly give it a run for its money, as we’ll see – and is mostly saved by a fun dynamic that emerges when Hari Gaal’s version walked away, revealed to be in the Prime Radiant Salvor brought with her on her cryo stasis journey to the future.
And this Seldon? He’s been conscious the whole time, and he is angry.
Unfortunately, Foundation can’t really make a meal out of this because these characters – the three Prime Movers of its massive plot – are isolated from everyone but each other in these early episodes. In their storyline, the tension between the imaginative sci-fi of Asimov’s works and the bombastic space opera that the show would rather be is most apparent. At the start of Season 2, Gaal and Salvor give the audience a glimpse of where the show is headed, and while it’s not a sharperit looks freaking to say the least cool. —Joshua Rivera
The New Foundation
Image: Apple TV Plus
One of the more compelling ideas that Season 1 of Foundation grazed but never dug into the hazy nature of faith and science when applied to humanity on such a grand scale. It’s the paradox of the show’s premise: If psychohistory is a mathematical model that can help humanity survive for centuries, what does that mean for self-determination? And for the countless people who are not scientists capable of understanding the beautiful visualizations of psychohistory and proving the science of it – they will just have to put their faith in it, and Hari Seldon. How does that differ from belief in a god?
In more than a century since founding on Terminus began, Foundation settles by playing with these questions, showing the Foundation – now a small collection of worlds on the edge of Imperial space – led by a small group of shadow puppeteers who guide the masses by propagating psychohistory as a belief among a population that does not know about their origin.
The result is an ouroboros of faith and science, where a deliberate blurring of lines has created a society where a civilization progresses rapidly, unaware that there are hands pushing them along. The juiciest part of this storyline lies in what the motivations are behind those hands.
The creator has shown that psychohistory is somewhat playable, so who’s to say the same isn’t true for today’s stewards? Are they motivated by self-interest or the dream of Hari’s plan? And does psychohistory explain this?
It’s a branch of Foundation‘s story that comes dangerously close to a fruitless chicken-or-egg thought experiment, and relies most on the other two storylines intersecting it in any meaningful way. Because there is one thing everyone is clear about right now: this version of the Foundation is about to go to war. —Jr
The Cleon Empire
Image: Apple TV Plus
While these Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton), Day (Lee Pace), and Dusk (Terrence Mann) look similar to their Season 1 counterparts, they’re anything but. This Dawn is much more confident, Dusk much more distracted, and they’re both tasked with taking on a much more brash day. For this trio, Cleon I’s genetic corruption is no longer a mystery, and Day – far more interested in his individuality than his former self – responds in the only way he knows how: to find an Empress and carry on the genetic line of the old . old-fashioned way.
This is the fun part Foundation‘s brand of science fiction, and why the Empire stands out as consistently the strongest storyline on the show throughout both seasons. With the same actors moving through new eras and challenges, everything feels relatable but new, as the story is baked in natural layers as the clones grapple with the legacy they embody. It’s perfectly calibrated sci-fi opacity (not derogatory). The world of Empire is so grand and so otherworldly, but equipped with such human frailties, the exact promise of an Asimov adaptation like this.
Pace’s Day stands out, a Cleon who sees the Empire almost more as a burden than a birthright. By him, Foundation focuses on the themes of power rising and falling as the world around you changes. Like so many others, he fights for survival and legitimacy in any way he can. Unlike so many others, he does so by ending a long line of clone emperors and having sex with his robot majordomo Demerzel (Laura Birn).
It leaves Pace’s Empire trio in a tight spot, but a deeply human one. Only psychohistory can explain how their lives and choices will take shape Foundation come. But with such a great scope of the show, it’s nice to have something earthy for scale. —Zosha Millman