Foundation Season 3's Most Shocking Moment Changes Everything For Seldon

Spoilers follow.

"Foundation" is a true sci-fi epic. The Apple TV+ show has the blockbuster spectacle of Denis Villeneuve's "Dune," with grand-scale battles (featuring a surprising amount of practical effects), planet-destroying death stars, and space dogfighting, but also the depth and complexity of Isaac Asimov's hugely influential source material. For three seasons, "Foundation" has told a dense, gripping story of the fall of a galactic empire and the galaxy-changing events that lead to the rise and fall of new powers. The show spans centuries, while also teasing an even larger story spanning thousands of years, as "Foundation" also brings into the fold elements of Asimov's robot stories.

This is important because one of the best parts of "Foundation" is how every action has a consequence that ripples throughout the galaxy for decades and maybe even centuries to come. We saw this when season 3 pays off the actions of Hober Mallow (Dimitri Leonidas) in convincing the spacers to help take out the imperial fleet by showing that a century later, the Empire's power and reach have decreased immensely — which leads to an easier time for The Mule (Pilou Asbæk) to rise to power.

This is to say that details are important in "Foundation," as they may have long-lasting repercussions. Season 3 is a very densely packed season, but viewers may not have paid that much attention to a brief moment involving Jared Harris' Hari Seldon that may change everything for him and for the Foundation. It's the moment in episode 6 when all the Foundation leaders gather inside The Vault and convene with the AI of Hari Seldon. Toran Mallow (Cody Fern) asks Seldon what they can do about The Mule — and Seldon has no idea who that is.

Throughout season 3, The Mule has been the show's biggest singular villain, a danger above any other that threatens the existence of both the Foundation and the Empire. He is a threat that the Second Foundation, led by Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), has been aware of for over a century and has been preparing for. Still, the rest of the galaxy only really became aware of him when he took over the pleasure planet Kalgan in one fell swoop. Much of the plot of season 3 has dealt with attempts at either stopping or at least assessing the threat of The Mule. Take newlyweds Toran Mallow (Cody Fern) and Bayta (Synnøve Karlsen), who seemingly were completely disinterested in the galactic conflict until they came head-to-head with the space pirate during a big party on Kalgan while they were on a honeymoon.

After witnessing the mind-controlling powers of The Mule first-hand, and being convinced that this guy is bad news by an undercover agent of the Second Foundation, Han Pritcher (Brandon P. Bell), the two become determined to warn the Foundation and the Tranders. They decide to convince them to unite in order to defeat The Mule. So, when in episode 6, Toran asks Seldon about The Mule and the psychohistorian fails to even recognize the name, it sort of breaks Toran.

"When Hari Seldon doesn't know who The Mule is, it's confirmed for Toran that everything is a sham, that everybody's lives have been based on a lie, whereas for Toran, he's already rejected these premises," Cody Fern told /Film in an exclusive interview about "Foundation" season 3. "So he's come back into the fold feeling that he really wants to bring people together, that he has some role to play in it. But the attack, I think, confirms for him that the chess games that the Traders and Foundation and Empire think they're playing, they're also just ants, they're cogs in a much larger wheel, and the way to go would be to go your own way."

Now, to be fair to Hari Seldon, The Mule is a mutant with abilities that could not be predicted using psychohistory. That's what makes the pirate so dangerous. Still, the moment when Seldon looks surprised by the existence of The Mule may have much larger consequences to come.

As mentioned before, "Foundation" is very good at planting seeds with galaxy-wide consequences every season. This small moment for Seldon may have big consequences because it proves to the First Foundation that there are beings that can break Seldon's math, and that psychohistory cannot predict. These outliers are the biggest danger to the Foundation, rather than the Empire, as they can do nothing to prepare for them. This may lead to either a war against Mentallics with similar abilities, or the Foundation seeking out people with these abilities and using them as an army.

That leads to what is most likely the big conflict of season 4 — Foundation vs Second Foundation. Though not a prominent plot, there have been several moments throughout the season where the existence of the Second Foundation (kept secret from absolutely everyone but their own members) has been teased to be a future conflict. Han Pritcher's encounter with The Mule made the space pirate learn of the existence of Gaal Dornick, and now he's relentlessly looking for her and her secret cohort of Mentallics. The Empire now knows of the existence of the second foundation, and it's unlikely Demerzel (Laura Birn) won't do anything about it given that Gaal and her group got Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) killed.

Sooner or later, the existence of the Second Foundation will be a widely known fact, and there is no way the First Foundation government is going to be happy about the knowledge that a secret organization has been manipulating things from the shadows. The question, then, is what happens to the image of Seldon himself? He technically came up with the Second Foundation, but the version of Seldon that appears to the First Foundation during each crisis has no idea of its existence. Will the Foundation turn against Seldon's image, the way Toran has in season 3? The plot is only getting more dense and complicated for the future of "Foundation."