RECAP: ‘Foundation’ Season 3 Episode 9 — “The Paths That Choose Us”

Foundation Season 3 Episode 8 ended with an invasion. Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) and her Mentalics landed on New Terminus for the final showdown with the Mule (Pilou Asbæk). Foundation Season 3 Episode 9 starts with its consequences. If there’s one thing we know about Foundation, it’s that every action, no matter how small, has consequences, tells us something. In this episode, titled “The Paths That Choose Us,” we see these consequences almost immediately.

Warden Greer (Krista Kosonen) seems like she’s caught Gaal after her team has landed. That, of course, is what Gaal wants her to think. Tricky, Gaal. Turns out, Gaal’s caught her. After an interrogation where Greer unsurprisingly gives up nothing about the Mule or how many people he’s turned – and where Gaal brings back Salvor Hardin’s (Leah Harvey) coin – Gaal takes the more direct path and goes into her mind. It goes… badly, and ends with a dying Greer claiming she’s never known such love before whatever trap the Mule has placed in her mind springs shut.

Before we even have time to really sit with how messed up that is, Han Pritcher (Brandon P Bell) appears. Gaal, more gently this time, goes into his mind and determines that he’s all right. They head off to find the Mule.

Everything is falling into place in Foundation Season 3 Episode 9.

Speaking of, he’s off torturing Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton). After teasing Dawn into believing that the Galactic Council has contacted him, perhaps to bargain for Dawn’s life, he reveals that it is going to give him Trantor, and he thought Dawn might like to see it. This man is cruel.

On Trantor, things are not going as planned. Presider of the Galactic Council, the head of the Cloud Dominion, and Zephyr Vorellis (Rebecca Ineson) are in the throne room waiting for Durk (Terrence Mann) so they can give the Mule Trantor. Demerzel (Laura Birn) shows up and tells them all that there will be no gift. Ambassador Quent (Cherry Jones) warns them that this isn’t the right way to handle Empire. Nobody listens.

When Dusk does show up, via hologram, he’s pretty angry about the whole thing. The Mule agrees to the offer, but Dusk tells him it’s not happening. When the Presider, Zephyr, and the leader of the Cloud Dominion push back, Dusk has had enough and targets their planets with the Novacula. Remember the black hole bomb? Yeah. And one by one, they’re gone, to the absolute horror of everyone there.

He offers them refuge on Trantor before telling the Mule to take the warning and leave the Empire alone. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised by the guy who murdered a sweet little ferret for no real reason (RIP Capillus), but even the Empire from Star Wars realized that you only need to fire the planet-destroying super weapon once to make a point.

On New Terminus, a stunned Dawn watches all this, and the Mule works out that if Dusk could have fired the Novacula here, he would have. It doesn’t make it less scary, but it does mean they’re not in danger – for now.

Which is good, because Gaal and co. are on their way to kill the Mule, and if they all got blown up, that would be pretty anti-climactic. Gaal tells Pritcher that she didn’t kill Fallon. Instead, it was like her brain didn’t wanna go back to how it was before the Mule set up shop there. That whole “never felt such love” thing is powerful, huh?

Pritcher takes everyone to a safe house packed with refugees, including Toran Mallow (Cody Fern), Professor Ebling (Alexander Sibbig), and Magnifico “Maggie” Giganticus (Tómas Lemarquis). After catching everyone up on the Second Foundation, who she is, and so on, Gaal checks them all out, psychically.

Brother Dusk is at his cruelest in “The Paths That Choose Us.” 

They all pass, except Maggie, who is a Mule convert. But they know, and they’re not about killing him. Gaal decides she’s going to speak to Vault Hari (Jared Harris). Ebling doesn’t think he’ll help them, but Gaal is Gaal. If anyone can make it work, she can.

It’s been a hot second since we checked in with Brother Day (Lee Pace), so Foundation Season 3 Episode 9 moves us over to Mycogen. He’s in the Remediation pool, and it’s gross, and times are bad. But then, suddenly, the drain opens and he’s dumped out by, who else? Song (Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing), with a special guest appearance by Oceanglass-49 (Laura Berlin) – seriously, she’s in the episode for like two seconds. Song decides she believes Day and tells him to get out of there. But Day isn’t leaving without the robot head on a stick, Mycogen’s latest delicacy.

So off he does, ready to (finally) do a great thing for Demerzel. It’s a nice bit of character evolution for Day, who finally sees her as a person, not a thing. Sunmaster-18 (Blake Ritson) is giving a speech, and Day fights his way past his guards, follows him up some stairs, and impales him on his own stick before taking the head and throwing Sunmaster down into the pit. Man, the Cleons are getting a lot of action today, huh? Well, except for Dawn. Poor guy.

But Foundation Season 3 Episode 9 can’t be all action all the time. Dusk’s taking a walk through the Hall of Cleons Past, and has decided The Conciliator doesn’t really work as his title anymore. He runs into Demerzel and asks her to change it to The Consequential.

He wonders if they’re supposed to take pride in the sameness of what each Cleon is, or their difference, and if that’s why Demerzel doesn’t say much. She has all the time in the world. He also takes the blame for the bomb, and promises to ascend the following day, though if you believe anything this Cleon says, I have a bridge to sell you. His real title should probably be The Snake.

Regardless, he offers to listen to Demerzel if she needs someone to talk to. She says she has realized she has more choices than she did previously, and what responsibility she has to discover every choice she has. It’s clearly wearing on her.

Empire is about crushing, and Foundation Season 3 Episode 9 knows that.

Dusk, who doesn’t really care, tells her he hopes she feels better and asks her to wake someone up and change the name so he can see it before he ascends. It seems that conversation did help Demerzel, though, as she heads to the library and asks to see the Ninth Proof of Folding. Once she has it, she enters the Prime Radiant to find Kalle (Rowena King).

From one inventor of the Radiant to the other, we return to Gaal as she seeks out Vault Hari before immediately going back to Trantor. Quent confronts Dusk about what he’s done, and Dusk tries to invite her to dinner. He’s had Day’s pet lamb slaughtered and cooked.

When Quent reminds him that he’s killed billions of innocent people, Dusk delivers one of the best lines of the episode: “Galactic powers are gears designed for crushing the innocent that fall in between them. It’s how it works.”

Quent, though, rightly clocks that it was petty. And it was. But that’s who this Dusk is. He’s a small, petty man. Jones and Mann act the hell out of this scene: one is playing a tyrant obsessed with legacy and power; the other is playing a woman who has realized the man she loves might not have ever existed, just after she finally got to be with him after decades of waiting. Instead, she fell in love with a genocidal tyrant. Great performances here.

Quent emphasizes that there is a way forward to save humanity, but not how Dusk wants to do it. She is a woman looking for hope. Dusk claims they can fight the Mule now, and that Seldon wasn’t the man for it because he wasn’t consequential.

It’s a very pointed word choice because we know that’s how he thinks of himself. Quent, however, quickly puts him in his place with what might be this episode’s best line. Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce it here (this review is a family show, even if Foundation isn’t), but trust me: it’s a banger. Then she walks off, leaving Dusk calling after her, claiming he’s at peace. It rules.

Demerzel is on her own mission, “The Paths That Choose Us,” but maybe she always has been.

Inside the Prime Radiant, Kalle (who isn’t really Kalle, though we don’t know what she is yet) tries to help Demerzel. Turns out, Demerzel did believe Gaal’s visions because she recognized where it was: the library where the last robots hid before they were found and destroyed. No one but Demerzel remembers it existed as it’s been built on top of – there’s a really interesting point about cities of gold being literally built atop atrocities here, but that’s for a different piece, I reckon – in the years since.

Demerzel thinks the only way the Second Foundation would know to go there would be if she told them. She wants to help them, but she’s also afraid that doing so would conflict with her programming. If she tells them, is it to help them, or to offer them up to the Mule? She doesn’t know, and it’s eating away at her.

There’s a shot here where Demerzel is looking through a mirror and seeing multiple versions of herself that really sells the whole thing visually. Kalle tells her she doesn’t need to decide why she did it before she does it, and that it’s better not to have to think alone. Given the way robots work, that opens up some interesting possibilities for who this Kalle is.

Kalle’s Ninth Proof of Folding is also being discussed in the Vault. Gaal realizes that Vault Hari could use the Vault to get them onto the Mule’s station on New Terminus, but Vault Hari wants something in return: the knowledge of the real Hari Seldon, and a body, just like the original got. Gaal tells him she doesn’t know how that happened, so Vault Hari tells her to ask him, not realizing the real Hari is dead or at least gone.

But Gaal needs a way in, so she agrees. Before the crew gets in the Vault, Hari offers Gaal one last piece of advice. The Mule’s story doesn’t add up to something he mentioned a while ago. She needs to be careful. There’s intrigue on two levels here: a betrayal by Gaal, and the truth behind the Mule. None of this seems like it will end well.

The episode concludes with some narration from Gaal (Boo! Hiss!) as we establish the players’ current location. Dusk is trying to enjoy his last meal alone before throwing his napkin down and standing up. Day is carrying the robot head back to Demerzel.

Demerzel ponders the Empire’s mural and her future; Bayta (Synnøve Karlsen), who has barely been in this episode, and Dawn are waiting for whatever comes next. And Gaal and Pritcher step into the Vault together. Unlike the Mule, Gaal isn’t alone. Roll credits.

Everything is set for the season finale, even with some stumbles.

Foundation Season 3 Episode 9 was an episode about consequences. There’s a straight line between Gaal’s betrayal of Dawn and Dusk’s use of the Novacula, just like there’s a straight line between Vault Hari being consigned to the Vault for several hundred years and his demand for a body, and Day’s earlier treatment of Demerzel and his newfound desire to do right by her.

All of this is connected. All of it matters. And now we’re finally seeing the dominoes fall. It makes for a good episode of television, and one that sets up a lot of interesting opportunities for the season finale. There are still weird creative choices here – major characters barely speaking or even being on screen, the insistence on having Gaal narrate the stuff you’re showing, and the weird, vignette-style pacing of certain scenes.

Still, Foundation Season 3 Episode 9 was a very good episode of TV, and one that continues to pay off everything the weaker, earlier episodes set up. The season finale should be quite the show, and it’s hard to imagine things being the same after everything’s said and done: consequences and all. See you next week.

Foundation Season 3 Episode 9, is now streaming on Apple TV+ with new episodes released every Friday.

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