Foundation Fans Totally Missed This Detail About How The Mule Will Lose

The following post contains heavy spoilers for the entire third season of "Foundation."

"Foundation" season 3 changed things when it introduced The Mule, a conqueror with psychic abilities that can control the minds of the masses. This was different than the previous two seasons, where the villain was just the abstract enormity of the Galactic Empire. By bringing in The Mule, "Foundation" became more focused, with every storyline touching on the threat of this conqueror, even if only tangentially. We had a singular entity, a human who could be killed, as the antagonist, rather than a set of cloned emperors that can be replaced at the press of a button.

Because of this, the audience knows The Mule will eventually be defeated, if not by Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) and the Foundation, then at least by the passage of time — a very big part of the show, given we've already jumped forward about 300 years since the start of the first season. Still, the problem is just how much damage The Mule can do, especially now that season 3 ended with the fall of the Fmpire and Foundation being essentially conquered by The Mule — who happened to be a very different person than we initially thought.

And yet, this is still "Foundation," a show full of bleak moments that nevertheless reveals some hope at the end of the suffering. In the season finale, amidst the death of some fan-favorite characters, the robot Demerzel gave us a subtle hint as to how The Mule will be defeated, and it's likely you missed its significance.

It has to do with Gaal's vision and Demerzel's interpretation of it. Earlier in the season, Demerzel was told about a vision of the future in which she would have offered a safe haven for the Second Foundation inside the imperial library at Trantor, but that also resulted in them being eventually discovered by The Mule and a fight breaking out. This created a paradox in Demerzel where she doesn't know if she will directly betray the Foundation and give them up or indirectly cause it by giving them that safe haven in the same place.

In the season finale, Demerzel makes a choice, and it is possibly the most significant thing we've seen her do all season, and the key to stopping The Mule.

In episode 9, Demerzel consults another robot about the vision and her dilemma, and is told that if the outcome is that the Second Foundation will be found, then Demerzel has a choice of when she wants to give the Foundation up to The Mule. Neither she nor the audience is certain that Demerzel will directly give the Second Foundation up, but her logic presumes that, given the outcome, the very fact that she leads them to the place they will be attacked means she is in some way responsible.

In the finale, however, Demerzel is tragically killed before she can make that choice. She doesn't have a single interaction with The Mule, nor does she do or say anything that can give a hint as to the Second Foundation's whereabouts. She does, however, make the choice of leading the Second Foundation to the imperial library in Tranor (their home in the books) before she dies, and shows the Foundation Ambassador on the planet, Quent (Cherry Jones), how to reach them.

This is significant because, by Demerzel dying when she did, she didn't get to actually choose between betraying the Second Foundation. Instead, she just got to do something good because she thought it was right (but mostly because it fulfilled her programming of thinking about the long-term survival of the Empire). That's why she tells Quent to head to the library because "it is the future Seldon would want." It ends up being Demerzel, someone technically completely outside of psychohistory yet also its co-author, who manages to solve The Mule problem by saving the one group of people who can defeat her. After all, The Mule is a mentallic, a person with powerful psychic abilities, and the Second Foundation is completely made out of mentallics, meaning they have the best chance at defeating The Mule.

Now that "Foundation" has been renewed for a season 4, we can speculate what the next season will tackle. Obviously, the threat of The Mule remains a big priority as the Galactic Empire collapsed following the death of all but one Cleon clone (technically two, but one of them is with The Mule). Since we don't get any closure to this storyline, season 4 will most definitely focus on Bayta/The Mule's move to conquer the Empire.

As The Mule closes in on Trantor, this is where Demerzel's last act before dying will pay off, as the Second Foundation, being right there, hidden in the imperial capital, will give them an advantage in fighting The Mule. This coincides with show creator David S. Goyer's original plan for "Foundation" to finish adapting Isaac Asimov's original "Foundation" books in four seasons. That means next season will be mostly about The Mule and Trantor, while also exploring the seed planted by the final scene of the season.

Regarding the Second Foundation, there is likely to be a conflict between the First and Second Foundation in season 4 or even 5, as the show dropped hints all throughout season 3 that the First Foundation would not be happy to find out they've been manipulated by a second group all along. There's also the fact that David S. Goyer posted some script pages of deleted scenes in a now-deleted blog post, which included a scene of Bayta talking to the AI of Hari Seldon and proposing an alliance to find and destroy the Second Foundation together, which is nothing but bad news for everyone.