Do Mentalics Use Jedi Mind Tricks? Foundation Season 3's Version Of The Force Explained

Be warned! Galaxy-sized spoilers ahead. If you haven't seen "Foundation" season 3, episode 4, proceed with caution.

There has been a lot of hinting about and building around the Asimovian concept of mentalics in season 3 of Apple TV+'s "Foundation" series. The slow reveal of the Second Foundation and its First Speaker, Preem Palver (Troy Kotsur) have shown an entirely new, meta side to Asimov's extended universe. The mentalic community on Ignus has now fully entered the story, and we know the important characters involved. But their abilities? Those are just starting to come to light, and one event in episode 4 pushes the mind-bending power of the telepaths to new levels.

When Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) and Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) are racing out of the tunnels of the imperial capital planet of Trantor, they are pursued. To avoid capture, they duck into a side alley and dodge getting seen — even though they're right in plain sight. Gaal proceeds to telepathically tell Brother Dawn that their enemies can't see them and that they'll forget that they were ever even there. When he asks how she did it, Gaal says, "The Mule isn't the only one with abilities. We can do a great many things."

Wait, what the heck just happened? Is this a Jedi mind trick, like when Qui-Gon Jinn dupes Watto, or an elderly Obi-Wan Kenobi tells a stormtrooper that he's looking for different droids? The short answer is: No. We're not talking about a "Star Wars"-esque "Force" in "Foundation." Instead, we're looking at a power that comes purely from within — a cognitive intellect unlocked by nothing less than Hari Seldon's psychohistory.

The background for mentalic mind control in Asimov's universe is at the same time incredibly convoluted and as simple as it gets. Let's tackle the former first. The complexities of mentalic abilities are described throughout Asimov's later "Foundation" books, especially in "The Second Foundation." In that book, telepathy is linked to the development of psychohistory, the mathematical understanding of social behavior at scale. This is a necessary predecessor to unlocking the mind and, as Asimov puts it, makes it "possible to truly develop psychology."

As the Second Foundation develops psychohistory, its members begin to understand and open up their minds, too. This starts with the ability to communicate without talking. In the book, Asimov explains:

"Speech, originally, was the device whereby Man learned, imperfectly, to transmit the thoughts and emotions of his mind [...] he developed a method of communication—but one which in its clumsiness and thick-thumbed inadequacy degenerated all the delicacy of the mind into gross and guttural signaling."

While Asimov spends copious time (a lot more than what is quoted above) trying to describe this liberation from gutteral speech, he wraps it up and puts a nice bow on things by saying:

"Since, however, it is inherently impossible in a society based on speech to indicate truly the method of communication of Second Foundationers among themselves, the whole matter will be hereafter ignored."

There is your "simple as it gets" explanation. Mentalics use mathematics to unlock the mind through psychology — all of which is so complicated, we don't need to understand it. What we do know is that this opens up a completely new aspect and dimension to the "Foundation" story — one that includes controlling others to achieve specific outcomes.

Along with telepathic communication, mentalics are able to actively manipulate the thoughts and feelings of others. The most obvious example of this is the Mule, although Asimov points out that his abilities are those of a mutant and, thus, hard to compare to the naturally developed mental capabilities of the Second Foundationers.

Speaking strictly to the abilities of Gaal Dornick and company, the members of the Second Foundation are able to reach right into the minds of others around them (and even from a distance) and tweak and adjust things to their liking. Because their shadow group operates under the strict ethical and moral standards of the Seldon Plan, they have boundaries, most of which revolve around doing as little to alter a mind as is necessary to produce an outcome. At one point, an important Second Foundationer is literally attacked in the streets and does everything he can to avoid overrunning or controlling his attacker's mind, even to his own detriment, because that would break Second Foundation protocol.

In the show, these limitations are clearly looser — probably because it's way more fun to make the Second Foundationers on Trantor look like Jedi running around Coruscant. But the connection really is different. One involves the Force. The other is simply a group of mentally liberated individuals doing their best to keep things on course as they guide humanity toward its best shot at a flourishing future. Expect to see a lot more mind control in the episodes and seasons to come.

"Foundation" is streaming on Apple TV+.