Foundation Season 2 Review: A Massive Sci-Fi Setup That Pays Off
It's become something of a cliché in the streaming age to say that a show starts out slow but later finds its groove, rewarding the patient viewer. In 2021, the Apple TV+ adaptation of Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" books somewhat circumvented this by front-loading its solid first season with a juicy hook, seemingly killing off its main character, Hari Seldon (Jared Harris), at the end of its two-part series premiere. His crime? Foreseeing the end of the Galactic Empire through psychohistory, a sci-fi concept that makes long-view predictions about human society through statistics, sociology, and an adaptive 4D model from a quantum supercomputer, similar to the one in "Devs."
There were other twists in "Foundation" season 1, but none so immediately impactful and involving as Hari's demise, which did what the writers of "Lost" originally wanted to do to their series protagonist back in the pilot. Since then, "The Mathematician's Ghost" (as one episode calls Hari's lingering digital specter), has continued to haunt "Foundation," to the point where it's now a quasi-religious figure, like the Holy Ghost, in season 2.
This season is almost the lop-sided mirror image of season 1 in that it takes time for the story to develop and build to a thrilling back half, which all but validates that cliché about a show finding its groove and rewarding patience. As the conflict between the Empire, led by Lee Pace's Brother Day, and Hari's titular Foundation on the planet Terminus heats up, the series slowly but deliberately introduces a number of new characters. This is to be expected given its centuries-spanning scope, and in the end, it mostly pays off, as season 2 draws together all the different personalities and plot threads into a satisfying conclusion that still leaves the door open for more "Foundation" in season 3.
Trapped in a tesseract
Presumably, "Foundation" season 2 will offer a recap of the previous season, but those aren't usually attached to screeners. (All 10 episodes were made available for review.) Going into the show cold after two years could otherwise be a disorienting experience as one gets reacquainted with the dense mythology. The season begins in black-and-white with Hari Seldon raving like a madman, himself disoriented, and even when it cuts to the reunited mother and daughter, Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) and Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey), we're not exactly on solid ground, since they're stuck on a raft on Gaal's watery homeworld, Synnax.
Thanks to cryo sleep and its breathable stasis fluid, Salvor is roughly the same age, maybe a little older than her mother, who learned her identity at the end of season 1, though that reveal is repeated here by way of a refresher as their scenes pick up right where they left off. With a hurricane bearing down on them, the two find themselves racing against time to retrieve Salvor's submerged ship. The season thus starts off with them already painted into a narrative corner, working their way out of it.
The same could be said of Hari's consciousness, which Gaal has trapped in the Prime Radiant, a thing that looks like a fancy paperweight on the outside, though it's so much more than that. Seeing Hari wander around inside a tesseract, "a four-dimensional object in three-dimensional space," recalls the dreaded space library in Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" (and not just because showrunner David S. Goyer collaborated with Nolan on his Batman movie trilogy). In that case, the tesseract was described as a "three-dimensional space inside [a] five-dimensional reality." Fortunately, "Foundation" is more concerned with escaping that black hole early on than letting itself drift there or on the waters of Synnax, where the skies still sing of production value in a way that elevates this show above its occasional Syfy-esque trappings.
Clones, copies, and characters galore
In "Foundation" season 2, there's division among the "brothers," Day, Dusk (Terrence Mann), and Dawn (Cassian Bilton), after an assassination attempt ushers in Day's storyline. His personal aura, the force field that always surrounds him as Emperor, is no longer so impenetrable or unique, and he becomes more distrustful of those in his orbit. That includes his spirited new bride-to-be, Queen Sareth (Ella-Rae Smith), with whom he plans to sire an heir, end the corrupted clone dynasty, and hopefully forestall the Empire's doom. At the same time, the season takes Day's relationship with his robot aide, Demerzel (Laura Birn) in an interesting, "Ex Machina"-like direction, as her character grows in importance to the story overall.
Season 2 juggles other new faces, like the High Cleric, Poly Verisof (Kulvinder Ghir), and his "Dune"-eyed buddy, Brother Constant (Isabella Laughland), who perform religion as theater in the Outer Rim. There's also Bell Riose, a general who's in a prison camp when we first meet him. Add to this the second copy of Hari Seldon in the Vault on Terminus (which has its own new faces), along with a would-be second Foundation elsewhere, and it gets a little byzantine at times. The season's first half crosscuts between various planets and plot lines, showing you things without explaining them until later.
At one point, someone in season 2 says, "Who the heck is Hober Mallow?" and he might as well be speaking for the uninitiated viewer as they try to get a handle on it all. The answer is: Hober Mallow (Dimitri Leonidas) is a roguish diamond thief with a beard like Cassian Andor and a doodad that allows him to swap places with people (keeping in mind that the "Foundation" books predate "Star Wars" and were an influence, even though it feels like the other way around with this TV adaptation).
As Hari says, "Introduce too much information into the system, and you disturb it." To its credit, though, "Foundation" season 2 brings in some good actors and makes the viewer care about these characters without even realizing it. In some ways, that tension between individual characters and the godlike needs of the overarching plot is also central to the show's tapestry.
Psychohistory is a psycho killer
I haven't read the "Foundation" books, so unlike Hari Seldon, I'm not armed with foreknowledge in that respect. Obviously, the name Isaac Asimov carries weight in science fiction, and for genre fans, his three laws of robotics (which play into the backstory of season 2) have long since become part of general awareness. However, in evaluating the storytelling decisions the "Foundation" TV series makes, I can only go by what's onscreen, without knowing whether those decisions originated from the writers' room or Asimov's original source material.
That said, "Foundation" has a way of undoing certain twists, even re-undoing what's already been undone once or twice over. But while it sometimes goes a little overboard with audience manipulation and lands like the Show That Cried Wolf, season 2 succeeds in cultivating an atmosphere of danger as it progresses. Characters, even those who can be resurrected via established cloning mechanisms, seem genuinely at risk. We get the sense that anything could happen since psychohistory is a psycho-killer that favors sweeping population patterns over any one person's life. As Hari observes, there are "infinite ways to arrive at the inevitable."
The show isn't as ruthless as "Game of Thrones," though David S. Goyer has compared one moment to the Red Wedding, and here again, we have the rhythms of another diffuse drama with a sprawling cast. In "Foundation," it's as if Westeros is the whole wide universe, which means that there are cliffhangers, court intrigue, and even an element of light horror (specifically, folk horror) as the series sets down among a colony of Mentalics, led by Tellem Bond (a bewitching Rachel House). They can read minds and "un-voice" their thoughts rather than speaking them, but since we humans are wired differently, let's be clear: once you get past the stage setting and fake-outs, "Foundation" season 2 improves on season 1 with a narrative that eventually comes into its own and feels like time well spent.
/Film Rating: 8 out of 10
New episodes of "Foundation" season 2 stream weekly, beginning July 14, 2023, on Apple TV+.