RECAP: Foundation Season 3 Episode 7 “Foundation’s End”

This recap features spoilers for Foundation Season 3 Episode 7, “Foundation’s End.”

Origins and omens. We ended the last episode at the start of a showdown between the Mule and the Foundation, and things weren’t looking good for the home team. Foundation Season 3 Episode 7’s quality is going to be dependent on its ability to pay off that setup, to give us a conflict with stakes and consequences. This is a pivotal episode this season, not only from a plot perspective, but from a larger, “was all his build-up worth it?” perspective. Let’s get into it.

Foundation Season 3 Episode 7, “Foundation’s End,” opens with a woman smiling and holding a baby. So that’s going to end well. We’re on Rossem, a planet on the edges of the Outer Reach, and said unnamed woman, her baby, and her son are walking through the fields to grab some food when the pullers, giant mechanical wheels, show up.

They’re either early or the woman has her dates wrong, but either way, there are assessors on those ships, and our little family needs to beat them home. The assessors are arriving on Foundation whisper ships, so I guess we know who’s coming to dinner.

At home, the family hides the baby, giving him some of the older son’s candied fruit and shoving them in a wall, then hiding his bottle. Turns out the Foundation is allocating food (and handing out candies to the older son), and our family almost gets away with meddling with the kids when the baby starts crying.

Foundation Season 3 Episode 7 starts off quickly and doesn’t slow.

The excuse that it’s the Bartons’ next door, but it’s maybe the worst lie ever. It doesn’t fool the Foundation’s assessors, who very calmly hand the baby back to his parents and tell him that they’ve been allocated enough food for one baby. When the assessors come back in 30 days, there will only be one child. Brutal.

All of this, plus the fact we’re very pointedly not getting any names and that the older son dresses like (and looks like) the Mule (Pilou Asbæk) makes me think this is a Mule Origin Story. It would certainly explain his dislike of the Foundation. I guess we’ll see.

Speaking of the Mule hating the Foundation, New Terminus is under attack, and Captain Han Pritcher (Brandon P Bell) is stuck in a cell watching Foundation ships fire on each other. He knows it’s the Mule, but nobody will let him out, so all he can do is sit there. Gotta say, the aerial combat sequences are pretty impressive in Foundation Season 3 Episode 7, and it’s nice to see all that Apple TV money get put to use making some cool effects in a world where visual effects are often bad.

Aerial combat highlights Foundation and Apple TV+’s high production value.

Things aren’t any better on the ground, either. Toran Mallow (Cody Fern) is carrying a still unconscious Bayta (Synnøve Karlsen), who is still feeling the effects of the null field from the last episode, toward their ship. The fighting is tearing the streets apart. Toran watches a woman and her baby get gunned down right in front of him. But if he can just get to their ship, he might have a chance.

On Trantor, everyone is trying to get Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann) to pay attention to the imminent crisis of the Mule potentially having whisper ships, but he’s distracted by the potent cocktail of (I assume) his impending death, Brother Dawn’s (Cassian Bilton) death, the fact that Brother Day (Lee Pace) is gone, and the loss of most of the Imperial fleet. Times are bad. Also, the animals from Day’s collection are loose, and there’s a camel in the palace.

An Empire in decline, huh? Dusk deals with it the best he can and then heads to the Foundation’s chancery to meet up with Ambassador Quent (Cherry Jones) and figure out if the Mule has taken New Terminus. He wisely tells her he’s here for her (and he probably, mostly is) and then offers to protect her because, well… the Foundation’s basically done. At least, the first one is. It’s a great scene for Mann and Jones that sells the history between these two characters.

“Foundation’s End” captures just how badly everything is going for everyone but The Mule.

As if to make the end of the Foundation abundantly clear, the Mule sets down on New Terminus, and after a display of the whole “I can make people do stuff” thing, including one of those Vulgar Displays of Power.

This one is where he has Skirlet (Alie Gie) use the brains of one of the poor Foundation cats unlucky enough to be Foundation Season 3 Episode 7’s example of The Mule’s Power to give Indbur (Leo Bill) some war paint. I reckon he, and most of the Foundation’s leadership, probably isn’t long for this world. Indbur offers the Mule Pritcher as a gift. Not a good day for the good guys.

On Mycogen, Day apologizes to Song (Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing) for not knowing she already had someone, and offers Demerzel’s stolen tool as proof of his story’s truthfulness. Oceanglass-49 (Laura Berlin) tells Song not to put on the memory device. Still, the two of them also know how important Demerzel (Laura Birn) would be to their religion. How to determine if Stoner Day is telling the truth? Drugs! Really, really strong drugs with far more of a kick than the spores Day is used to. Our former emperor is in for a heck of a ride.

Speaking of guys who might also be in for a bad trip, Pritcher has realized that desperate times call for desperate measures and bites into his wrist and starts screaming to attract a guard. Escape attempt? We’ll have to see.

“Foundation’s End” is an unsettling episode of Foundation.

On Trantor, Quent is at dinner with Dusk and clearly trying to work through the incredible trauma of watching a planet get conquered, and Dusk is trying to get her to eat and to convince her she’s safe here. Eventually, Quent notices that Dawn and Day are gone, and asks what’s up.

Dusk tells her, and Quent, in a moment of extreme empathy, puts aside what she’s dealing with to focus on Dusk. At that point, Capillus shows up, which frustrates Dusk, but Quent reminds him that he’s just hungry, and they end up feeding him. It’s cute.

Capillus is a natural transition to Day, and now that he’s hopped up on the good stuff, the interrogation can begin. Day is tripping hard, and the scene that follows, full of distorted images, memories, and interactions with Song and Oceanglass that may or may not happen, is a really remarkable piece of filmmaking.

I’m not going to recap every piece of it, since we’d be here for days, but at the core of it is Day’s relationship with Demerzel, the burden of being Empire (and a clone), and his relationship with Song. Pace’s performance during all of this is excellent.

Lee Pace delivers another excelent performance as Day, this time, even more unsettling.

Still, there are a couple of scenes with a younger, child Day and Demerzel that drive home how the Genetic Dynasty screws up everyone involved. From the Cleons to Demerzel herself, it allows Birn to showcase the really subtle performance that makes Demerzel fascinating. By the end of it all, Day’s pretty messed up. And Song seems convinced he’s telling the truth.

One Cleon with problems deserves another, and on Trantor, we learn that Dusk has secured a safe place for Quent, but he’s getting zapped in three days. Oof. He thanks her for making his last few days more pleasant, and she kisses him, claiming she’s wanted to do that for more than 30 years. It’s cute.

From the Foundation’s ambassador to the Foundation. Indbur takes the Mule and crew to see Pritcher, but our intrepid captain has escaped. He tries to kill the Mule, but he can’t use the guard’s gun, and settles for an escape planetside.

On the planet, Toran has gotten Beyta on their ship when Randu (Darren Pettie) shows up and tries to convince Toran to join the Mule, who has gotten into his head. Toran is visibly torn by Randu’s attempt to convince he that he loves him and wants the best for him, but when the Mule’s men show up, things get violent. Beyta is taken, and Toran manages to escape. Just as he does, the Mule’s men shoot Randu in the head. Foundation Season 3 Episode 7 has been rough, but the scene works on the performances of Fern and Pettie.

Speaking of bad days, Dusk wakes up with Cherry next to him to find Capillus outside their room, whom he promptly crushes to death with his shoe. It’s probably the single most upsetting thing in an episode full of upsetting things and a reminder of how incredibly cruel the Cleons can be.

In case we forget just because this Dusk can be nice. Remember how he tried to con Demerzel and then Day into staying alive a little longer and built Dawn a planet-killing black hole weapon? Yeah, same guy. He’s just better at hiding it. Dawn spoke about where tyrants spend eternity a couple of episodes ago, and there is no pit deep enough to throw this Dusk into.

From one Emperor to another, Day’s still recovering from his really bad trip when Song tells Oceanglass that they can’t be the ones to decide this. They need Sunmaster-18, whom Ocenglass has already called, conveniently. He’s not impressed by Day’s offer of Demerzel’s tools, which he correctly notes that Cleon stole from them originally. He seems poised to pass judgment on Day, but we don’t see what happens. Suffice it to say, he’s not a fan, and his Big Holy Stick has what looks like a robot head on it, so he’s a true believer.

It’s tragedy and death all around in Foundation Season 3 Episode 7.

It’s been a scene without a death, so we’d better get back to that. After taking over Indbur’s office, the Mule forces him to drown himself in a basin, likely as punishment for Pritcher’s escape, then asks why Pritcher went planetside and didn’t run. The other Foundation folks figure he’s building a resistance. In the most ham-handed transition this episode, the Mule remarks that drowning is a bad way to go, and we’re transported back to Foundation Season 3 Episode 7’s opening flashback.

The family we met earlier decides to drown their older son to save the baby instead of just giving it away or rationing their foo,d which… is a choice that doesn’t really make much sense. Still, hey, it awakens their sons, who are in fact the Mule (called it), latent psychic powers. What is it with drowning and psychics in this universe? Nice little parallel with Gaal (Lou Llobell). He forces his parents to drown themselves and to enjoy it, then leaves the baby with the neighbors before running off through a field

We follow that not-really-great transition with an excellent one that shows the Mule outside The Vault. He says he escaped the planet by joining up with some pirates, and then calls Vault Hari (Jared Harris) out, saying he knows Hari can hear him. Hari does appear, saying the story is tragic, but he wonders how much of it is true. And the Mule tells him the truth has come to bang on his door. Roll credits.

This is the best hour of television that Foundation has put forward yet.

Whew. Man. What an episode. It’s not a happy one, for sure. We lost several characters, many of the survivors are either captured, scattered, or alone, and we have no idea where Magnifico Giganticus (Tómas Lemarquis) is. If the Mule gets his hands on him, that might be the ball game. But whether it’s at the Foundation or the Empire, things are in bad shape.

The Mule is ascendant, and now we might know what drives him, at least if you believe his story. I’m not sure I do, but it’s plausible, and that’s all that matters. The Mule has been built up as a major threat, and we’re finally seeing what that means on the big stage, not just Kalgan.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to our heroes, but I can say this is the most compelled I have been by an episode of Foundation in a while. And there was no narration from Gaal! It’s amazing how good an episode is and how much narration is in it is inversely proportional to each other. Either way, Foundation Season 3 Episode 7 paid off a lot of this season while giving us new things to think about and being this season’s best hour of TV so far. Now we just need to see how the rest of the dominoes fall. See you next week.

Foundation Season 3 Episode 6 is streaming now on Apple TV+ with new episodes every Friday.

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