Diksha Sundriyal
The third season of Apple TV+’s ‘Foundation’ centers on the Third Crisis, as predicted by the Seldon Plan. It is one of the major steps that is bound to push the galaxy into an age of darkness. Hari Seldon and Gaal Dornick prepare for centuries to get through this crisis and keep humanity alive. However, all their plans are disrupted when the Mule comes into the equation. He is a powerful Mentallic whose arrival Gaal saw in her vision 150 years before he was born. In the season finale, she comes face to face with the man who’d been haunting her dreams for so long. In the end, however, the Mule turns out to be someone entirely unexpected. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Mule Had Been Hiding in Plain Sight
When the third season begins, Pilou Asbæk is introduced as the Mule as he takes over Kalgan without moving a muscle. His mental prowess is put on an exceptional display, and soon, he lands himself in a very powerful position, especially after the fall of the First Foundation. For everyone, he is the Mule, the most dangerous man in the entire galaxy who needs to be defeated at all costs. Gaal, too, sees his face in her visions, so it never crosses her mind that she could be wrong. She never gives a second thought to the possibility that the man is just a front, and the real Mule is someone else.
She realises this much later, after she has already defeated and killed the man she thought was the Mule. But even after he dies, she feels someone moving around in her mind and realises that the man she killed was just a puppet. Someone has been running the show from behind the scenes, and it is none other than Bayta. Bayta’s revelation as the Mule is shocking on a number of levels. To begin with, she was supposed to be one of the good guys. In the books by Isaac Asimov, which serve as the inspiration for the show, Bayta is a descendant of Hober Mallow and plays an important role in defeating the Mule.
The books, too, have the storyline of the surprise reveal of the Mule’s identity. Just as in the show, the real Mule had been hiding in plain sight all along. However, while Asimov’s version has Magnifico Giganticus as the Mule, the Apple TV+ series brings a shocking twist, especially for the book’s fans, by revealing Bayta as the Mule. While it might seem shocking in the beginning, in hindsight, the reveal had been set up since the beginning.
The Show Changes the Mule’s Storyline From the Books
To begin with, in the books, Bayta’s maiden name is Mallow, and she is the one connected to Hober Mallow by bloodline. She marries Toran Darell and becomes Bayta Darell. The show makes a subtle change by making Toran the descendant of Hober Mallow, which means that Bayta’s background is now a clean slate and can be written anew. Bayta’s presence at all the critical moments also explains how she has been operating so far. She was in Kalgan when the Mule took over it. It also explains why, when she was held hostage, she was not taken under the Mule’s spell like everyone else.
In a scene with Bayta, Dawn, and the Mule, when the villain pokes at Dawn too much, Bayta tells him to back off, and he does so, without showing his superiority over her. Bayta being the Mule also explains how Indbur and Randu’s minds were taken over by the Mule before New Terminus fell. She had met them face to face, but the man called the Mule hadn’t. He only met them when the planet had fallen and he landed on it with his crew. And yet, when he landed, the duo was already under his control. Since Bayta and Gaal never crossed paths before the finale, Gaal could never take a look into her mind or feel Bayta poking into her mind to realise that she was one of the Mentallics.
Further, this also explains why Bayta was so impacted by the Vault’s null field so much. It had the same effect on the Mule, who had blood coming out of his nose when Hari Seldon decided to show him who’s boss. It seems that the null field has a special effect on the Mentallics, except Gaal, which is why Bayta was rendered unconscious. Or perhaps, she had been awake the whole time, but she pretended to be unconscious because she didn’t want to leave New Terminus, knowing that Gaal would be headed there to fight the Mule. Thus, the finale clarifies that the story that the Mule told to Hari Seldon about his childhood wasn’t actually his, as Seldon correctly deduced. It was Bayta’s story all along. She was using the man whom the world knew as the Mule to work her machinations.
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