REVIEW: Foundation Season 3 Episode 4 — “The Stress of Her Regard”

Nothing lasts forever. Everything changes. Foundation Season 3 Episode 4, titled “The Stress of Her Regard,” understands that. I’ve been thinking about purgatory, reader. About being trapped in a space between two points, two places, two states of being. Neither here nor there. I’m writing this from the middle seat of an airplane on its way to Las Vegas for EVO, the biggest fighting game tournament on the planet.

Like the series, I’m in a liminal space, heading away from something and toward something else. It’s equally ironic that just this morning, my wife and I finished moving out of our apartment of five years and into our first house. Most everything is still in boxes, caught between where it was and where it’s going to be, but our lives are in a fundamentally different place. 

Foundation is also in the middle of its season, and by the time it’s ended, many of the show’s characters are leaving the old behind, on their way to new things. Like me, they’re not quite there yet. But the journey is part of the story all the same, and so many things coming to a head, and to a moment of change, at once makes this episode one of the season’s strongest so far.

Foundation Season 3 Episode 4 opens with a conversation between Demerzel (Laura Birn) and Zephyr Vorellis (Rebecca Ineson). Vorellis asks Demerzel if she feels regret for asking for confession. Demerzel admits there’s a sequel she’s been hiding for more than three centuries: she was behind the attack on the Star Bridge that kicked all of this off.

Foundation Season 3 Episode 4 is the season’s best, continuing its increase in story quality and character depth.

She did it to ensure Hari Seldon’s (Jared Harris) survival and helped the Foundation, which she believed would also help the Empire. The Cleons, she tells Vorellis, respond to the strongest emotion, not the strongest argument. The death of the Star Bridge made them believe in the fall Seldon predicted.

When Vorellis says she makes it sound like nothing, Demerzel reminds her that she is built to watch and remember. And she does. Vorellis points out that Demerzel says helping Foundation would not violate her programming in the near term, but not in the long term.

Maybe, Vorellis says, all of this is intentional, so that Demerzel can gain her freedom eventually. She also points out that Demerzel, who is afraid she’ll never find Mother’s grace because she cannot die, has actually died multiple times. First, she was a Three Laws Robot. Then a Zeroth Law Robot. Now she serves the Empire. And when the Empire dies as all things must, she will die and be resurrected again, finally free. Even Demerzel admits that previous versions of her would have killed her.

This revelation clearly shakes Demerzel, who orders Vorellis to stop. Vorellis encourages her to embrace it, and Demerzel says that she cannot before reminding Vorellis that she is not human but showing her her true, robotic face and then ordering a stunned and frightened Vorellis to leave.

It’s an interesting scene. Vorells is clearly right, and Demerzel seems to know it, but admitting it is another matter. Birn is good in sequences where she lets us see behind Demerzel’s mask, and this scene, where she literally splits her disguise open with her finger to remind Vorellis what she is, is no exception.

Since it’s not Foundation unless we’re planet-hopping, we’re off to Ignis to meet up with Preem Palver (Troy Kotsur) and, unexpectedly, Captain Han Pritcher (Brandon P Bell), who is actually part of the second Foundation, not the OG. It’s a cool revelation that puts a lot of his previous behavior (and why he knows so much about The Mule) in context.

It’s fun to watch our boys go off on Indbur (again, a lot of Pritcher’s previous behavior makes way more sense in context), but then Pritcher sees Gaal (Lou Llobell), and you can tell by the way he looks at her that something’s up, and then passionate kissing! They’re together! Pritcher works for the Second Foundation! And somehow, this is the first time we’re learning about any of it.

Listen, I’m not against surprise revelations. But this feels like the writers are trying to be clever. Surely, somewhere in one of the previous three episodes, some of this would have come up, right? It’s like when something introduces a new character that has a Past With the Other Characters, but Somehow No One Has Mentioned Them Before, ever.

It just feels weird. Sometimes, you can try to be too clever.Anyway, Pritcher shows Preem and Gaal what happened with the Mule (Pilou Asbæk), and we learn that he was able to resist it because he’s a Mentalic. Pritcher doesn’t think the Mule has ever run into anyone like him before, but even reliving the event in Pritcher’s memories proves painful for everyone involved.

Worse, the Mule now knows who Gaal is because of linking minds with Pritcher. He doesn’t know where the Second Foundation is yet, but this is still bad. Ironically, in trying to prevent things from getting worse, our crew has made things worse. Whoops.

The Mule remains central to moving Foundation Season’s 3 plot forward for the better.

Preem also reminds them that they’ve learned a couple of things. First, the music is important because it amplifies whatever the Mule does, which probably explains why he was trying to play off how big losing  Magnifico Giganticus (Tómas Lemarquis) was. Secondly, it tells us that the Mule’s needs to surround himself, which means he’s lonely, which… yeah. Dude is obsessed with making people love him. Preem reasons that since the Mule is just now learning who they are, he can learn to fear them, too.

This is a good scene for a couple of reasons: one, we see Preem come into his own a bit; and two, it’s entirely in sign language for Preem’s Benefit. Representation matters, of course, and it’s neat that a very prominent part of the Second Foundation is deaf because you rarely see prominent deaf characters in media. Still, it’s also just cool to see an entire scene in sign language.

Afterwards, we get a brief scene where Gaal is going for a swim and reliving The Horrors of her Mule vision. An apologetic Pritcher shows up, but Gaal isn’t deterred. The Foundation has accomplished amazing things, and Gaal is convinced she can get Dawn to go to war with the Mule. But Gaal needs Foundation to be ready, so she tells Pritcher to go back to New Terminus.

Gaal needs Dawn to get Indbur on board, but Pritcher isn’t convinced that they can’t change the future entirely. Meanwhile, Gaal admits that she sees that vision every day, and she can’t see past it. Pritcher says that assassination would be a failure, and they agree, but there’s no other path forward. After Pritcher admits he could just be with Gaal and the steamy implications that follow, we learn Pritcher is so smitten with Gaal that he even wears a necklace Gaal gave him. They’re cute.

Foundation Season 3 Episode 4 whisks us away to New Terminus, where we run into Indbur (Leo Bill) and Professor Ebling Mis (Alexander Sibbig). Remember these guys? It’s been a hot second. The former walks into the latter’s office and admits he’s met with Vault Hari, and tells Indbur to get Ambassador Quent (Cherry Jones) on Trantor. And then we’re on Trantor with her!

Over a holocall, Mis and Indbur tell Quent that the Vault will open during the crossing eclipse (two moons, apparently) in about seventy-five hours. Oh, and that Empire has the Prime Radiant. Quent is furious because, despite her relationship with Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann), he’s never mentioned it, and Mis does admit that Vault Hari did essentially kick him out. Quent plans to talk to Dusk, while Indbur brings up that they need to locate Pritcher’s fugitives, whom Quent knows nothing about. It’s a fun little sequence because everyone only has a little of the picture until this call.

The fugitives in question are naturally Toran Mallow (Cody Fern), Bayta Mallow (Synnøve Karlsen), and Maggie. In the throne room with Brother Day and Demerzel, Quent offers to have the Foundation capture and question the three of them, who she claims the Foundation had no prior knowledge of.

When Dusk asks if there’s anything for Empire to do, Quent tells him to consult the Prime Radiant. She points out that Dawn and Day are absent and that they need to start sharing. Dusk makes Demerzel hand over the Radiant, and they go off to look at it.

Demerzel keeps growing in importance throughout Foundation Season 3 Episode 4.

Dusk tells her it’s essentially useless now because of what’s happened, but he can’t get it to work immediately, which leads to an absolutely incredible joke about how things like that happen sometimes. Once Dusk gets it working, he shows Quent how it just stops four months from now. Quent fangirls out about the Prime Radiant and admits she wishes she’d known he had it earlier. In a very sweet moment, Dusk admits he wishes he’d told her. Aw.

Speaking of sweet moments, now we’re back to Pritcher and Gaal in bed. Pritcher can’t sleep, so he wanders off to look at Gaal’s cryopod, and she joins him. He doesn’t think it’s fair that everyone else gets to live while they wait for their lives to start, and even brings up Toran and Bayta’s marriage.

Gaal tells him they can’t get married. They’ve spent 32 days together. She recites how much time that is, almost down to the seconds, before Pritcher does it for her and reminds her that everyone on the planet is a mathematician. But Pritcher says normal people want to do things when they’re running out of time. 

Gaal reminds him that their entanglement is how the Mule knows who they are, but he reminds her that Hari (and Salvor, though Gaal doesn’t like that one as Pritcher never actually met her) wanted a better life for her than this. Understandably, this makes Gaal pretty upset, and she walks off with tears in her eyes. Drama!

It works, though, because Pritcher is clearly madly in love with her, and Gaal has lost everyone she’s ever cared about and is desperately afraid of being alone. There’s a lot of plot movement in Foundation Season 3 Episode 4, but it never forgets to let us have the character moments, too.

You know who we haven’t seen in Foundation Season 3 Episode 4 yet? Day (Lee Pace), so let’s fix that. Day and his ferret go ask the memory of Cleon I. Upon seeing Stoner Day, one of the first things Cleon I (who takes his Day form) asks if the Empire is in decline, which is an incredible gag. Day asks about the Inheritance, and about Cleon I’s own trip to Mycogen, the origin of the religion.

Turns out he went to get Demerzel’s tools, but they were considered holy relics. So he slaughtered 20,000 believers and took them. When Stoner Day asks why, if Cleon I loved her, and if she loved him, he refuses to answer. Day spits on him and leaves. P

ace remains one of the best parts of the show, and watching him face off against himself here is a joy. Past and present. Glory and decline. The man whose love for a robot spawned all this, and the man who hates her. Great stuff.

As if to drive home the fact that Demerzel isn’t human, we find her in her quarters, head removed, using her tools on her neck. Day bursts in and jokingly offers to “just watch” while Demerzel puts herself back together when she asks if he needs something. She’s about to finish when he interrupts her, remarking that Cleon I is reluctant to talk about her and human beings are, unlike robots, quite dirty, and wondering if robots dream of human bodily functions.

Lee Pace’s ability to make every acting moment around him better continues in “The Stress of Her Regard.”

Demerzel realizes he’s angry about Song Yootha (Wong-Loi-Sing), and Day asks her if she even understands what love is. Demerzel admits robots could share all of themselves if they wanted to. It was called the clasp. Birn does a great job of imbuing Demerzel with a sense of loneliness, and she nails the feeling here.

Day, however, is not impressed, and when she reminds him that she has no choice but to protect him and tries to acknowledge his pain, he mocks her lack of warmth and leaves Demerzel alone to stare at herself in the mirror.

Next, we meet up with Mavon (Ibraheem Toure), who comes home to find Day and Capillus (the ferret finally gets a name!) playing with Mavon’s wife and daughter. Mavon is understandably afraid and shocked that Day is here, but Day tells him they need to leave now.

They’re going to Mycogen, and Day promises to take care of his family. Mavon agrees, but warns that the Empire only goes to Mycogen in force. It’s too dangerous otherwise. Day just smiles and says he’s bringing them a peace offering, which probably doesn’t bode well for Demerzel. They speed off on some fancy hoverbikes.

Time to catch up with Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) as he gets another message from Gaal. They meet at the teahouse again, in person this time. Dawn tells Gaal the Enclosure is dead on arrival, and she says she has a plan. She just needs Dawn to leave Trantor with her. He’s reluctant, but there’s no time to argue. He was followed. Gaal tells him to trust her, and they manage to get away, for now.

Back to Day and Movan, who are on their own escape mission. Nice parallel. After they get out of the palace, Mavon tells Day where to go. He gets rid of his Aura and uses a machine to extract his nanites, as promised, for Mavon’s daughter. He even tells him that she can keep Capillus.

Mavon is acting a little strangely, but Day wishes him luck in his new life, and Mavon returns the favor. After Mavon places the nanites on his bike, Day shoots him. Turns out, it was a setup. Day had learned the Clavigers’ tells, and Mavon had flashed his lights as they passed the checkpoint.

Mavon compliments Day before going for his gun, but Day’s faster, and the second shot leaves Mavon lying flat on his back in the middle of the road. Before he shoots him in the head, Day says he’s sorry. Day puts the nanites into Mavon’s body that are traceable, and will delay Demerzal long enough for him to escape, and dumps him in a river before heading across it on his hoverbike. There are buildings in the distance. Day knows he probably can’t escape the Empire, but he wants to see how far he can get.

Back in the palace, Demerzel sits looking at a robot depicted in the mural when a servant appears and tells her that Day’s nanites have ceased functioning near the outer ward. She runs to her room to check her tools and discovers one of them is missing. That’s a hell of a peace offering.

Foundation Season 3 Episode 4 is the mid-point of the season, and it’s also the highest point too.\

Foundation Season 3 Episode 4 isn’t going to end there, though. We have another escape attempt going on, remember? Gaal and Dawn are running from a Claviger in pursuit on a hoverbike. Knowing they can’t escape, she pushes Dawn into a corner.

Gaal uses her abilities to hide from Calviger’s gaze and make him forget he was ever here, while communicating with Dawn telepathetically to let him know what’s happening. Dawn is amazed, and Gaal promises to show him everything if he comes off-world with her. The dynasty is going to end either way, she tells him—no reason to go down with the ship.

Speaking of ships, the Beggar is here, and after Dawn follows her in what might be a literal leap of faith, they board. Gaal finally reveals that she’s part of the Second Foundation, and the Beggar jumps away as Day races down a tunnel below them. Roll credits.

A lot happened in Foundation Season 3 Episode 4. Small character moments revealed new things and showed us who these characters are. Several characters made potentially life-altering decisions. And we’re in a fundamentally different place than we started in. I don’t know how these choices will play out, but I’m more excited about what’s coming (and what’s happened) than I have been at any point this season. There’s still a lot of Foundation to go, though. Let’s hope the writers can land the plane, and my pilot can land mine.

Foundation Season 3 Episode 4 is streaming now on Apple TV+ with new episodes every Friday.

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