Diksha Sundriyal
The third season of ‘Foundation’ brings Gaal Dornick face-to-face with the Mule, but their confrontation doesn’t go as she had planned. A major revelation changes everything about the season, but Gaal and the Second Foundation are not the only ones in for a surprise. The finale begins with Dusk preparing for his final journey. It is his last day, and he is dressed up in black robes to signify his evolution to Brother Darkness as he dies and gives space for a new Cleon to rise. However, as has become clear since the opening episode of the season, Dusk is not so keen on being killed off. Moreover, the events following the Mule’s arrival have made him even more adamant about staying behind, and his desire to stay alive leads him to do something that will forever change the course of the Empire and the Galaxy. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Mule Reveals Their True Face
As Dusk is robed up for his ceremony, his next stop is to have his nanites removed, but that’s not where he goes next. Meanwhile, Day returns to the palace with the robot skull and goes directly to Demerzel. This time, instead of showing his disdain, he bows to her, and she welcomes him like a child. This is when he shows her the head, revealing the true purpose of his visit. On the other side of the galaxy, Gaal fortifies her mind by focusing on her cornerstones, the people she loved. The team arms up for the fight, and on cue, Hari moves the Vault right up to the Mule’s ship, where he distracts the soldiers to allow Gaal and her team to move in and locate the Mule. While the others accompany Gaal in the search, Pritcher decides to go find Bayta, who has also become aware of the attack as the Mule has cut off the power. The door is wide open for her to leave.
She tries to get Dawn out with her, but he encourages her to leave as his legs won’t allow him to run far, and he’d only be dragging down Bayta with her. Bayta doesn’t have to run far before Pritcher finds her, but their happy reunion is cut short as Pritcher realizes that the Mule is nearby. In the meantime, Gaal and the others have found their way to Indbur’s office, where the Mule finally comes face to face with Gaal. He tries to overpower her and discover the location of the Second Foundation, much like Gaal had seen in her vision 150 years ago. For a moment, it looks like she is losing, but then, she uses the fortress of her mind to gain an upper hand in the fight. The shift happens so quickly that before the Mule can realise he has lost, Gaal slits his throat and he is dead. But that’s not the end, as she still feels someone poking around her mind. This means the man she killed is not the Mule. It’s someone else, and at that exact moment, Pritcher walks in, with Bayta right behind him.
Pritcher encourages Gaal to give in to Bayta, claiming that with her by their side, they can crumble the Empire and speed up Seldon’s plan to save the galaxy. He also mentions that he has never felt such love, which leaves no doubt that his mind has been taken over by the Mule. As Gaal continues to resist, Bayta talks about how she has seen her in her dreams all these years. As she continues her assault on Gaal’s mind, she tells Magnifico to play his tune, as it brings down the walls in a person’s mind and makes them more susceptible to her manipulations. However, when Maggie begins to play, he plays a tune that helps Gaal, and she reveals that she has influenced Maggie to change his tune. Gaal successfully gets Bayta off her mind, and with everyone else under the Mule’s spell, she escapes the ship. As soon as she is safely on her ship, Hari’s virtual form shows up, asking her to take him along. But Gaal tells him that the real Hari is dead, and there is no way Vault Hari is getting a body.
Are Demerzel and Day Dead? Is Dusk the New Empire?
While Gaal barely escapes from the Mule’s clutches, trouble brews in Trantor in the worst way. While Day and Demerzel mend their bridges, the eldest Cleon goes on a rampage. Unable to accept his imminent death, he finds his way to the place where all the backup Cleons are kept. There are lines and lines of Dawns, Days, and Dusks, and Dusk decides to destroy everything. He brings the whole place down, and at the end, his eyes fall on the baby, the one who is supposed to become the next Dawn, restarting the Cleon cycle of the Genetic Dynasty, and he runs away with it. When Demerzel realises what’s happening, she immediately leaves her conversation with Day and leaves to find Dusk. She is shocked that he has the baby with him, and it’s clear that he intends to kill the baby, too. But that’s not it.
Dusk knows that Demerzel’s programming will force her to save the baby at all costs, so he puts the baby where he himself should have been. He intends to kill the baby, the way he was supposed to meet his death in the ceremony celebrating his departure. As expected, Demerzel puts herself in front of the baby right as the beam falls on them. Day tries to stop her from doing it, but her programming is so strong that she cannot think about saving herself, even if it means certain death. And so, Demerzel’s entire robotic frame melts in the power of the beam, and then it consumes the baby as well. The only thing that’s left behind is the Prime Radiant that Demerzel stored inside her body. Dusk is surprised but not shocked to see that Hari Seldon’s creation has survived what even Demerzel couldn’t.
With Demerzel gone and the future of the Genetic Dynasty almost completely destroyed, Dusk runs towards the throne room. He is followed by Day, who is shocked to see this sudden turn of character in him, and he is especially shaken after Demerzel’s death, because she was the only one who could have helped save the world. The two Cleons engage in a fight where Day punches Dusk, but the latter has nanites, so there is no way he can hurt the elder Cleon. Day, on the other hand, gave up his nanites before he left for Mycogen, so Dusk takes his chance and shoots Day.
As his younger brother lies bleeding to death, Dusk tells him that he has moved on from being a Cleon and has now evolved into Brother Darkness. The color of his robes, which is now black instead of royal blue, reflects this change in him. Once Day is dead, Dusk sits on the middle throne, calls for his assistant, and tells him to have the two other thrones removed, as there is no need for them now. He also nonchalantly asks him to dispose of Day’s body, and while the assistant is shocked, there is no choice but to follow Dusk, now Darkness, as he is the only Emperor of the Galactic Empire.
What Happens to the Second Foundation?
While Dusk goes on a killing spree, Ambassador Quent finds a safe spot for herself. She’d met Demerzel in the hallway before the latter ended up finding Dusk with the Cleon baby, and the robot advised her to go to the library, citing it as the safest place for her at the moment. Quent shows up at the library, and when the librarian asks what book she wants, the ambassador tells her she is there to give a book, not take it. It turns out to be the original Kalle’s ninth proof of folding, which makes the librarian realise that Quent has received the green light to be let in on the secrets. She takes Quent into the library, where she introduces him to Preem Palver, the First Speaker of the Second Foundation. It turns out that when Gaal left Ignis to fight the Mule, Preem Palver took the entire Second Foundation out of the planet, as was planned.
She’d told him to go somewhere no one, including herself and Pritcher, could guess. This has turned out to be a great decision because Pritcher is already under the Mule’s influence, and Gaal has had the Mule in her mind, even if briefly. This means Ignis has already been compromised, and this will most certainly be the Mule’s next destination. The most difficult decision for Preem Palver would have been to find a place where no one could follow them, and this is where Demerzel comes in. In the last episode, she had a heart-to-heart with the Prime Radiant, in Kalle’s form, about the desire to explore all possible paths of her life. This thought was spurred by the revelation from Gaal’s vision about the final fight with the Mule taking place at the library, the same place where Demerzel’s people once hid and were brutally ripped out and killed.
She realises that the final fight happening here means that she has brought the Second Foundation here, but she doesn’t know if it is to save them or to give them over to the Mule in a bid to save the Empire. Kalle encourages her to focus on her present decisions and let the future decide her intentions. It seems Demerzel took her advice to heart, and when the Second Foundation needed a new home, she brought them to Trantor to keep them safe in the one place no one would expect them to be. Now, not only is the Second Foundation safe from the Mule, but they also have Quent on their side, perhaps the only remaining person from the First Foundation who has not been influenced by the Mule.
Who is with Kalle? Where are They?
While so much happens on Trantor and New Terminus, the most interesting thing to happen in the finale is in the last scene. At the beginning of the episode, Day brings the robot skull to Demerzel’s place. He asks for her help in activating the robot, but her programming doesn’t allow her to do it because she worries that once the robot comes back to life, it might kickstart a process that will undo her programming and free her, releasing her from the service of Cleons and the Empire. So, Day encourages her to tell him how to do it, but before he can complete the process, Demerzel realises that Dusk is causing considerable damage to the Empire, and she is forced to leave. She and Day never get to come back and take a look at the robot because they are both killed by Dusk. However, Day’s actions turn out to be enough to leave a spark in the robot, which it uses to go back to full power. The moment it comes to life, it sends out a signal again, looking for others like it, and the signal is received far, far away by two people.
One of them is Kalle, and the other is a robot. A zoom out reveals that the duo is on a base on the Moon with Earth in the background. In the books, this robot is Daneel Olivaw, the first humanoid robot who has been influencing the flow of humanity for a very long time. This includes, but is not limited to, helping the humans settle away from Earth on a planet in Alpha Centauri and sowing the seeds of psychohistory, which is later developed into practical applications by Hari Seldon. However, the twist is that Daneel is none other than Demerzel. The show sticks to keeping Daneel and Demerzel the same robot and even reveals that she helped build the psychohistory to the point that it led to the creation of the Foundation. However, since Demerzel dies in the finale, the one next to Kalle is some other robot.
Since there is very little that we know about the humans vs robots war, there is no way to know who this robot is and what role it played in the wars and the events that followed. However, it is clear that this is the robot that has been working with Kalle (or whatever form of hers has survived for so long). They were the ones who gave Hari Seldon his body back because they wanted his skin in the game. While Seldon thought that he, Gaal, and the Second Foundation had been influencing the events to save humanity, another force, much stronger than they, had been in play all along. The revelation of Kalle and the robot on the Moon also points towards the fact that the next season might start adapting the events of Asimov’s book, ‘Foundation and Earth,’ and deliver the answers that have been kept in the dark since the first season.
Read More: Who is Sunmaster-18? Who Plays Him in Foundation?
