After a long wait, TV's most complex and large-scale space opera returns: Foundation season 3 premiered on Friday, July 11 with an episode entitled 'A Song for the End of Everything' landing on Apple TV Plus.
It's been two years of our time since the Foundation season 2 finale but 152 years in the world of the show, with this newest season set to depict the showdown between the titular Foundation and the big baddie set up in the past season: The Mule.
Fans of Foundation will be glad to know that season 3 is just as complicated as the past 20 episodes, jumping between different characters and plots in disparate regions of the galaxy. And so a Foundation season 3 episode 1 recap like this one is basically required reading to help you understand what's taken place.
This recap of 'A Song for the End of Everything' will contain plenty of spoilers, not just for this episode but for past seasons, so you've been warned. No spoilers for future episodes though!
A century and a half down the road
An opening narration from Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) catches us up to speed: it's been 152 years since season 2 and Foundation's influence has spread from the Outer Reaches of the Galaxy to the Middle Band (more on how that happened after they were wiped out in the last season later). Both Foundation and their foes in Empire want control of a strategic 'pleasure planet' called Kalgan because whoever owns it effectively owns the Middle Band.
We go to Kalgan and see a band of troops and ships waiting for someone... The Mule (Pilou Asbæk, replacing Mikael Persbrandt in the role). We learn he captured the daughter of Kalgan's Archduke and wants the planet in exchange for her safety. The Archduke warns that this will begin military action from Empire and Foundation but the Mule counts on it — he uses his psychic powers to get the massed ships and soldiers to begin firing on each other, after which he takes the Archduke's ring and gets the former leader to shoot himself.
Over to Empire, and we learn that the Genetic Dynasty is rapidly losing control of the Empire, and even the previously-ineffectual Galactic Council has more power than the Emperors. We also learn that the rebellion of the Spacers in season 2 means Empire's ships have lost the power to individually jump across space, making them reliant on jump gates which has affected their ability to control a large amount of space.
Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) and Demerzel (Laura Birn) use the Prime Radiant to analyze the map of psychohistory, which shows another crisis coming. However they decide that there's nothing they can do about it and proceed to a place called Clarion Station. This is where the Galactic Council is based, and as the two arrive some protests are taking place due to trade tariffs from Foundation's agricultural planets.
Dawn (who's 10 days off becoming Day, and therefore the most powerful of the three) talks to the Council about how Foundation is running many of its newly-acquired planets into the ground, and how he wants to open communication with a faction within Foundation called the Merchant Princes. This group is looking to break away from Foundation and Dawn thinks their doing so will slow Foundation's spread. On the way out, Dawn admits to Demerzel that he created the protests to help sway the Council.
The old guard of Foundation and Empire
Over on the former center of the Empire of Trantor, Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann) is constantly rewatching footage of past Cleonic clones getting killed at the end of their life span, clearly worried about his impending end. He talks to a newly-returned Brother Dawn about Cleon 17 (Brother Day from season 2) and maligns what his failures did for the fate of Empire. The two also briefly discuss Kalgan and The Mule but Dusk dismisses the impending psychohistory crisis.
Finally, we learn what happened to Foundation after the season 2 finale: the survivors (in that big vault) go to a new planet and slowly begin anew, ending their religious phase and embracing expansionism. However over time it's begun to splinter into various smaller factions, as we previously learned, and a man named Ebling Mis (Alexander Siddig) visits The Vault to speak to the residing version of Hari Seldon (Jared Harris).
Mis tells Seldon that he's his biographer and wants to help with his "upcoming manifestion", describing the status of New Foundation as it's called but revealing that Empire is holding onto its power better than anyone predicted. Seldon admits that he gave Demerzel the Prime Radiant which confuses and enrages Mis, and so Seldon kicks Mis out of the Vault after revealing that he'll give a speech about the next crisis in three days.
Haven and the garden of Trantor
Now we visit a new planet: Haven, which is the base of the Foundation offshoot Alliance of Traders (presumably a different group than the Merchant Prices). We learn that Empire has been providing them arms to prepare for a rebellion against the ruling elite and we see a drop go down... as do two Foundation spies. As the Alliance of Traders try to collect the weapons the spies attack, hoping to collect the weapons as proof to bring to Foundation.
After a space-bike-chase across the rapidly-heating-up surface of the planet the spies narrowly escape, but without the cargo. The man of the two spies is Han Pritcher (Brandon P. Bell), the Captain of Information for Mayor Indbur (Leo Bill), the Mayor of New Foundation. He tells the Mayor that the impending civil war with the traders is a distraction and that The Mule is the real threat but he's ignored and he gets aggressive about it. After having his title stripped, he steals the Mayor's ship to go and investigate for himself.
In a garden of Trantor Demerzel meets a sister of Zephyr, a member of the religious order we met in the first season, who she wants to speak to for a confessional (the person's memory will, she assures, be wiped). Demerzel admits that she's an Android and tells her story, explaining the three laws of robotics (which have been explained in the series before and are widespread in sci-fi) but also a 'Zero Law': that preservation of humanity as a whole takes precedent over individual humans. She explains how this helps her work around the programming that makes her subservient to Empire, but also that she doesn't feel like she has an identity beyond Empire, and wouldn't know what to do if they fell.
We've been hearing all episode that Brother Day (Lee Pace) is "busy" and finally we find out why. This version of Empire has become rather 'bohemian' and lives in a paradisical villa, taking drugs and reciting poetry with his girlfriend who's also his drug dealer. Dusk visits to tell him that Demerzel has summoned him so he visits the Palace. There Demerzel tells the three Emperors that in only four months, Empire will fall which will usher in a dark ages, because immiment events will render Seldon's numbers meaningless.
Finally, we briefly visit Ignis, where Gaal and Hari (the real one) are in cryosleep... until they wake up.
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