Diksha Sundriyal
Reaching its mid-mark, the third season of Apple TV+’s ‘Foundation’ pushes the characters to do some things that they deeply regret later. The previous episode ended with the escape of the two Cleons, Dawn and Day, with each focusing on their own desires. Dawn wants to help Gaal exercise an Enclosure on Kalgan, which hasn’t happened since the days of the Cleon that destroyed Terminus at the end of Season 2. Meanwhile, Day heads to Mycogen to find his lost love, Song. This episode opens with Day making his way through the treacherous streets of Mycogen, where he knows he is not welcome. For a moment, it seems that he is caught as a trespasser, but he is much smarter than that. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Demerzel Finds Out About Day and Dawn’s Journey Out of Trantor
In Mycogen, Day uses a decoy to distract the people who would have otherwise caught him and caged him. While the whole picture of his plan still remains hidden from view, Demerzel starts to catch up with him. She finds the dead body of Captain Mavon and discovers the nanites in his bloodstream, realising that Day used him as a decoy to buy some time. Still, she doesn’t need to give too much thought to where he’s gone. Moreover, she also knows that his actions are not going to impact the Empire, at least not in the current situation. In the midst of this, she gets a notification about Dawn. Noting that her Cleons are scattered, she decides to focus on Dawn.
Meanwhile, Dawn and Gaal are on the other side of the galaxy, having jumped quite a few times, which is a first for Dawn since his ancestor lost all jump ships during the Enclosure of Terminus. His current concern is Gaal’s powers. He asks her how she got into the heads of the soldiers, and gets scared when she talks telepathically to him. Moreover, he wonders if she used her powers to manipulate him into working with her. She assures him that she didn’t do anything like that, at least not intentionally. While she prepares for the next phase of the plan, Dawn leaves a message for Dusk, which begins with an apology.
Meanwhile, Captain Pritcher returns to New Terminus. He believes that his encounter with the Mule will make Indbur value his insights, but the leader is more interested in the fact that Pritcher stole his ship and then, against specific instructions, went to Kalgan and stirred more trouble in the form of Toran and Bayta Mallow who are now fugitives with the Mule’s clown, Magnifico, with them. Indbur does not appreciate this turn of events and decides to put Pritcher in a cell where the guards are being watched by other guards, just to make sure that the prisoner doesn’t try anything untoward.
The Mallows and Magnifico Find Shelter in Haven
The escape from Kalgan leads Bayta and Toran Mallow to realise that their ship has sustained significant damage. Moreover, they have only three jumps left before the ship goes out of order. With that in mind, there is only one place close enough for three jumps where they will be safe. However, Toran is not very excited about going there as this place is Haven, the home of the Traders. When they enter the planet, they are unable to communicate with the ground staff and are considered an unidentified foreign ship; they are shot down. Eventually, they are found by Randu Mallow, Toran’s uncle. It becomes clear pretty quickly that Randu does not approve of the path that Toran’s life has taken.
The uncle and nephew’s relationship is a little fraught, so to speak, and he expresses his disapproval of Toran and Bayta indulging in the long abandoned custom of getting married, how Toran has distanced himself from the family business of being Traders, and more importantly, how he has invited trouble in the form of the things that happened in Kalgan. Toran gets fed up with his uncle’s words and goes out to check up on Magnifico, aka Maggie, who is enjoying being in the new place. Toran tells him that when he was ten, there was a shuttle accident in which his parents died. Randu and his son were also in the same shuttle. While Randu survived, albeit losing his arm, his son died.
This left Toran in Randu’s care, and the latter left no opportunity to show him that Toran is not the son he wanted to raise. In fact, the nephew wonders whether his uncle refused to get a replacement hand out of spite for him. Meanwhile, Bayta tries to charm Randu into accompanying them to New Terminus. She talks about coming from a planet that Foundation jumps past and has forgotten. However, Bayta herself is a climber, which is how she has managed to reach where she is now. When asked whether Toran is yet another rung in the ladder for her, she confesses that initially he was so, but now, she has come to love him, and he is her ride or die.
She also points out that Magnifico’s music might be the key to how the Mule worked his way around annexing Kalgan without any proper army. She thinks that dear Maggie can become a bargaining chip with New Terminus, who will need someone like him to defeat the Mule. The more Bayta speaks, the more Randu is convinced that she is talking sense, and he agrees to join them at New Terminus. While it seems that Bayta’s charm has worked, one is also left to wonder how much role Maggie’s music played in it, because while she was talking, he played the music with the desire to further her cause.
Gaal and Dawn Come Up With a Plan to Enforce the Enclosure
Having sent his message to Dusk, Dawn finds Gaal looking at what is revealed as a zygote of her daughter, Salvor Hardin. Gaal reveals that it will someday become a girl, and the thought of securing her future pushes Gaal to do what’s needed. Right now, what’s needed is a fall guy. While Dawn can initiate the vote about Enclosure, he needs someone else to help sway it in his favour. This is where Vynod Tarisk comes into the picture. He represents a large sector of people on the council and is the only one who can get everyone in favour of an Enclosure. But he won’t do it willingly, so he must be blackmailed. The plan is for Dawn to sneak into Tarisk’s house, find his system, and plant the information about him receiving money from the Mule. Then, Gaal and Dawn can use the info to blackmail him. Unfortunately, Tarisk shows up while Dawn is planting evidence against him. Things almost go awry, especially as Tarisk threatens to out Dawn, pointing out that no one would believe the future Empire’s words over his own.
A major reason that Tarisk is against the vote is that his wife and two daughters were vacationing on Kalgan when the Mule and his forces arrived. Now, it has become impossible for them to escape. Unfortunately for him, Dawn notices he is hiding a mistress in the cupboard. What makes it worse is that she heard the entire conversation, which means that she cannot be allowed to live. Dawn kills the woman and tells Tarisk to do as he is asked. As much confidence as he exudes in the moment, Dawn is still shaken by the fact that he has someone’s blood on his hands. Still, the trick works. The council is immediately called into action, and sure enough, Tarisk votes in favour of the Enclosure, even when the others repeatedly point out that this is not a good plan. Anyway, the Enclosure moves forward, and once everything is in place, a massive twist arrives.
It turns out that the Mule anticipated this move, so he left Kalgan before the Enclosure was set up. He reveals that he took Kalgan because of its jump gate. Now that he has it, the planet is useless to him, and he has placed a parting gift for the Empire and its ships. The Mule used the cobalt spike to tap into endless energy that eventually becomes destructive and destroys the entire planet. The whole council, including Dawn, is horrified to see the events unfold this way, and sure enough, the young Cleon is held responsible for this destruction. As chaos erupts in the council, Gaal and her secret associate there help Dawn escape. The problem is that with all the forces looking for him, he has ended up on the opposite end of where the Beggar is. Gaal instructs him to stay where he is. While she makes her way to him, he must wear the gear that will allow him to slip out of the airlock, where she will be ready to catch him.
Dawn Discovers the True Motive Behind Gaal’s Plan
In the midst of all this, Dawn starts to put two and two together. He asks Gaal if she knew about the jump ships and the possibility of the Mule’s departure from Kalgan. When she tries to dodge it and gives vague answers, he realises that she did know about it after all. And yet still, she made him go forward with the Enclosure that she knew would end terribly. Eventually, Gaal confesses that the whole point was for the Enclosure to fail because it would terribly weaken the Empire, giving the First Foundation the upper hand in the situation, which is how it should be according to Seldon’s Plan. Things were a little out of sync because of Demerzel’s interference, since she had the Prime Radiant with her. But with the Enclosure, the Empire is weakened to bits again, and this puts things right where they should be.
Their weakened position will allow the rest of the planets to join the Foundation, making it stronger while the Empire becomes susceptible to attack from the Mule. Once he takes Trantor, Foudnation will be free to cut him off from things like whisper ships and breadbasket planets. Having cut off his supplies, he wouldn’t be able to hold on for much longer, which would give the Foundation the upper hand it needed in winning against the Mule. The realisation that he has been duped and used hits Dawn hard. But before he can do anything about it, Tarisk catches up with him. He is devastated about the deaths of his wife and daughters. He is so blinded by his grief that he doesn’t realise that by firing his weapon, he will be forcefully opening the airlock, for which he isn’t prepared at all.
While Dawn tries to point this out to him, Tarisk doesn’t pay any attention. He shoots, the door blows out, and Tarisk is sucked into the nothingness of space and dies. Dawn is also thrown out of the airlock, but at least, he is wearing the spacesuit that will keep him alive, at least until someone finds him, if they find him at all. Meanwhile, Dusk gets Dawn’s message, and the ominous tone of his words makes the older Cleon realise that something terrible has happened. In the Beggar, Gaal worries about Dawn since he threw away his only mode of communication. When she hears the airlock open, she believes that the Cleon has somehow found his way into the ship, but she is shocked to discover that it is not Dawn but Demerzel, who seems equally shocked, though not entirely surprised, to see Gaal Dornick in front of her after more than three hundred years.
Read More: Is Hari Seldon Dead? Did Jared Harris Leave Foundation Season 3?
