Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for the Foundation Season 3 finale.
And with that, Foundation Season 3 ends not with a whimper, but with a monumental bang. I don’t think a finale this ruthlessly gamechanging was on anyone’s bingo card. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait too long until Season 4 graces our screens. Until then, “The Darkness,” written by Jane Espenson and series co-creator David S. Goyer, and directed once again by Roxann Dawson, lives up to its title by plunging Foundation into its bleakest timeline yet.
Dusk Destroys the Genetic Dynasty in the ‘Foundation’ Season 3 Finale
Hours away from death, Dusk (Terrence Mann), the destroyer of worlds, enters the chamber where the Cleon exponents are housed. He sneers at the baby as it floats unconscious in its tank, waiting to be decanted and declared the newest Brother Dawn, before returning to his room and letting his attendants dress his naked body in the black and gold robes that signify his transition into Brother Darkness. All affected politeness, Dusk convinces his chaperone, Zagreus (Ahir Shah), to let him walk to his next stop — the medical bay, where the doctors will remove his healing nanite implants — unaccompanied.
Of course, Dusk strides straight back to the exponent room. He triggers a small device three times, and one by one, the tanks housing Dawn, Day, and Dusk’s fully grown back-ups explode, spilling glass, fluid, blood, and decimated limbs onto the floor. Giggling and singing nonsense to himself, Dusk finishes the job by destroying the storage compartment above his head — the one lined wall-to-wall and top to bottom with exponents that will never draw breath. Viscera spills down from above, and Dusk sighs in relief before decanting the baby.
Dusk Murders Demerzel and Day in the ‘Foundation’ Season 3 Finale
Meanwhile, Day (Lee Pace) sneaks through the palace, clutching the concealed Brazen Head close. He finds Demerzel in her room and kneels. Surprised by his return and his gentle reverence, Demerzel welcomes him home with a brief yet meaningful embrace. When Day hands her the Brazen Head, telling her how the Inheritance has mythologized her past life, Demerzel — stunned, trembling, and tearful — cradles the skull like it’s a precious gift. She confirms Day’s suspicion that forming a clasp with another living robot would “overwrite Cleon I’s programming,” but her Imperial directive forbids her from making that choice.
Day offers a middle ground: since she can’t confirm whether this ancient robot skull is alive or dead, she needn’t decide just yet. Instead, Demerzel consents to silently showing Day how one checks for artificial sentient life. The skull sparks with electrical waves at the same moment Demerzel senses someone interfering with the cloning chamber. She sweeps away, leaving Day to guesswork his way through finishing the process. Ambassador Quent (Cherry Jones), surrounded by blaring sirens and panicked bodies, catches Demerzel long enough to ask why the palace is figuratively — and half-literally — collapsing around their ears. Without missing a step, Demerzel tells Quent to retrieve a “triangular book” from her quarters and take it to Trantor’s library. “[Seldon] would tell you it is the best path to the future,” she advises.
Day joins Demerzel in the exponent area. Both try to comprehend the grisly massacre in front of them, until a baby’s distant cries guide the pair to the ceremonial room where every previous Brother Darkness has ascended. Dusk places the infant Cleon in the middle of the circle and claims Demerzel denied him any other choice save this one. Demerzel asserts the opposite; she’s the only one who’s bound, and Dusk knows it. Day begs Demerzel not to go to her death, but in her words, Dusk “played it perfectly.”
When Dusk activates the disintegration beam, Demerzel flings herself over the baby. Because she’s a robot, it takes her a long time to dissolve. Yet dissolve she does; Demerzel’s and Day’s gazes lock as she melts down to her golden skeleton, but not before one final insult: the beam slices through her and turns the infant Dawn to ash, making Demerzel’s final sacrifice meaningless. All that remains of the tormented robot with a soul is the Prime Radiant she stored inside her chest, and her skull — half-intact and cooling, but the blue light behind one eye socket flickers off.
Dusk departs with the Prime Radiant in hand. Day chases him into the throne room and pins him to the floor, repeatedly punching his elder brother while screaming in hopeless grief. He only ceases his assault when Dusk, spitting up blood, laughs about the fact Day can’t kill him; unlike Day, Dusk’s nanites were never removed. With that, Dusk shoots his younger brother. As he sprawls on the floor next to a collapsed Day, the latter realizes how the former willingly became the catastrophic event that would usher in the Genetic Dynasty’s fall. As long as he survived and claimed his spiteful revenge, the consequences be damned. “And what comes after [the end of the Dynasty]?” Dusk rhetorically asks, then answers with the one word that defines the Radiant’s predictions and the eldest Cleon’s new title: “Darkness.” Dusk sips from the flask hidden inside his robes and closes his brother’s dead eyes.
Gaal Dornick Attacks the Mule in the ‘Foundation’ Season 3 Finale
As she meditates inside the Vault, Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) reflects on her youthful days. Once, she soothed her nerves by counting prime numbers. Now, she’s used her extensive Mentalic training to create a personal mental fortress. Gaal and Han Pritcher (Brandon Bell) share a tender moment before the Vault propels itself up through the atmosphere. As its dimensions merge with the space station orbiting New Terminus, the digital Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) distracts the waiting guards and allows Gaal’s group to sneak by undetected.
Han splits off to rescue Bayta Mallow (Synnøve Karlsen), who wakes up to a flashing red light and distant alarm noises. Opening the medbay door and spotting no guards, she tries to haul Dawn (Cassian Bilton) away with her. He insists his wounds are too severe, so Bayta flees while Dawn, alone and helpless, suppresses his tears. Han’s search pays off when he prevents a trigger-happy soldier from shooting Bayta, but they’ve barely reunited before Han doubles over in distress — the Mule (Pilou Asbæk) is nearby.
Gaal’s team advances upon the former Mayor Indbur’s (Leo Bill) office, assuming the Mule has sealed himself inside. After some strategic thinking, courtesy of Ebling Mis (Alexander Siddig), they lay explosives and break in through the private bathroom connected to the late Indbur’s office. Ebling and Magnifico Giganticus (Tómas Lemarquis) hide behind the bathroom’s privacy wall while the rest charge ahead, guns blazing. Telling Skirlet (Isla Gie) to hide under the desk, the Mule shoots Leyda (Mark Ebulué) but lets everyone else take their shots — which never hit.
Having fooled them with a psychic mirage, the Mule launches a physical sneak attack and easily disarms his opponents. His mental coercion, meanwhile, fails to overpower Gall’s resolve. He tosses her onto the desk like a rag doll and chokes her with both hands, maniacally joyous that they’ve met at long last. Gaal’s thoughts flash between her original vision of this moment, how it compares to the present, and her mental fortress. She drags the Mule inside the latter and telepathically taunts him about how he could conquer planet after planet and never fill the void that wonders “why your parents loved that baby more than you.” Duped into a memory of his near-death, Gaal vanishes from the Mule’s grip. Once he’s disoriented and helpless, Gaal slits his throat.
The Real Mule Reveals Their Identity in the ‘Foundation’ Season 3 Finale
In the aftermath, Ebling and Magnifico emerge from hiding, Toran Mallow (Cody Fern) groans in pain from the floor, and Gaal collects herself. But a lingering presence drops her to her knees. Han arrives and encourages Gaal, who’s screaming in anguish, to “let it happen.” Bayta follows behind Han, cool, calm, and entirely in control — she’s been the real Mule all along. She promises to explain the truth to a confused Toran before putting her husband to sleep. Bayta addresses Gaal with quiet, predatory wonder, while Magnifico, ready and eager to amplify Bayta’s conversion powers, plays his viso-sonor. Yet Gaal’s offscreen preparations let her pull a reverse Uno: “We tampered with your balladeer. He only plays my song now.” The two women engage in a battle of wills, Magnifico’s normally seductive tune torturing Bayta with excruciating pain and the equally horrific memories of the terrified young girl from Rossem.
The next moment we see Gaal, she’s sprinting through the station and summoning Rasik (Jennifer Saayeng), her getaway pilot. She flings herself through one of the station’s windows and into space, steering her descent and achieving a midair rendezvous with Rasik. The Vault’s version of Hari taps into the ship’s network and manifests as soon as Gaal tosses herself onboard. He apologizes for not knowing the Mule’s real identity and tells Gaal how to retrieve his “neural imprint” from the Vault — and realizes Gaal’s promise to free him was a lie of omission. Gaal confesses that Hari died years earlier; his tortured pleas fall silent. The ship jumps, leaving Hari’s copy behind without any discernible way to escape his eternal, inhumane “tomb.”
‘Foundation’s Season 3 Finale Sets the Stage for a Robot Revolution
Despite betrayals, failures, and despair by the dozen, hope isn’t lost. Quent approaches Trantor’s head librarian, Nee Tellamarus (Vibeke Hastrup), and reveals the triangular book. Nee introduces the Ambassador to Preem Palver (Troy Kotsur), and, by extension, the rest of Second Foundation — relocated precisely where no one would look for them. Back inside Demerzel’s room, the Brazen Head sparks awake and establishes a successful clasp between Trantor and a distant moon. On that moon, inside a secret base, Kalle (Rowena King) and a tall, non-humanoid robot are surprised about “one of us” establishing contact. Aware that the call isn’t from Demerzel, the pair surmise “someone is seeking to embroil us in their struggle” and “all the pieces are in place.” As for the planet spinning outside their window? The same Earth that humanity abandoned millennia ago.
Foundation Season 3 is available to stream on Apple TV+.
Foundation
The Foundation Season 3 finale plunges the show into its bleakest timeline yet.
- Release Date
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September 23, 2021
- Network
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Apple TV+
Pros & Cons
- The finale’s radical moves push Season 4 in a different direction.
- Every actor offers a masterclass performance.
- Both the Mule’s identity and the robot survivors, while teased throughout the season, are fantastic and fascinating twists.
