After that splendid Season 3 finale, I can’t hold back my excitement to find out what happens next. The good news is the streaming platform has already renewed the show for a fourth season, but because it’s a high-budget space opera, I don’t think Season 4 will hit our small screens until 2027. I know 2 years is a long wait, and the showrunners aren’t exactly following the narrative of the books. So, we can’t just pick up the novels to find out more, right? However, based on the ending of Season 3 and the clues presented so far, I have a few theories on how the show’s storyline could move forward. If you are game for a bunch of potential spoilers, then keep reading.
Spoiler Alert
The Fall Of Trantor
After the siege of New Terminus, Bayta, aka the Mule, will target Trantor, the very center of the galaxy, next. She’s going to use the Foundation’s whisper-ships to attack the Empire, which will eventually complete her conquest of the galaxy. When Harry Seldon first developed psychohistory, the thing that he was most concerned about was the age of barbarism. He believed that after the fall of the Imperium, all the planets under the Empire’s dominion would start attacking each other, thereby pushing the galaxy into an era of darkness. However, the Mule can unify the galaxy using her psychic powers and shorten the span of the Dark Ages. This is the plan the Mule’s warlord had sold Digital Hari Seldon on New Terminus. Bayta believes that her plan to save the galaxy is better than Seldon’s, but does it really hold any water? I don’t think so. She’s no different than the Empire. One of the crucial things here is the Mule was a completely unaccounted for factor in psychohistory. If I describe her in the simplest of terms, she’s an anomaly, a variable for which the First Foundation was never prepared. And this is where the Second Foundation steps in.
Gaal’s Vision
The Mule’s attack on Trantor won’t be as easy and swift as she may expect. This is mostly because Brother Darkness is already preparing the Imperial fleet to resist the attack, and on the other end, we have the secret agents of the Second Foundation, who have found a new base on Trantor. If you remember, Gaal has been having this vision where she is attacked by the Mule somewhere near the Imperial Library, the very place where her mentalics have been hiding. As per Gaal’s vision, this final clash will take place in four months, which means Bayta and her pirates will have either already captured Trantor or will launch an attack somewhere near the end of these four months, thereby giving the Empire and the Second Foundation enough time to prepare their counterattack. Whatever the case may be, what we are certain of is that Trantor is going to fall, and the Imperium with it. But what we don’t know is how Gaal and her agents are going to stop Bayta from wreaking more damage to the galaxy than she already has.
The Search for the Second Foundation
The Mule isn’t all that concerned about the Empire, it’s the members of the Second Foundation she fears. Just like Gaal, even the Mule has been terrorized by the visions of the final battle. These constant nightmares have made her believe that Gaal and her mentalics will put an end to her dream of galaxy dominion. I believe this was the reason the Mule hid her real identity; through the disguise, she wanted to figure out the exact whereabouts of the Second Foundation. In the Season 3 finale, she finally converted Han Pritcher so she could dig out the location of her worst adversaries from his mind. However, Gaal and the first speaker, Preem Palver, already knew there was a possibility of this happening, which was why Gaal asked Preem to shift the base. I believe in Season 4, Han, with Bayta’s trusted generals, will embark on a journey to Ignis to terminate the threat, but much to their surprise, they won’t find a single mentalic on the planet.
Meanwhile, the members of the Second Foundation will continue their spycraft on Trantor, digging for information on Brother Darkness and the Mule to prepare themselves for the battle to come. They are going to take the Mule by surprise, attacking her when she’s most vulnerable. That has been Gaal’s plan all along.
The End of Imperium
Even though Brother Darkness has destroyed all the clones of Cleon, the genome of Cleon 1 is still intact. However, before his death, Cleon the First had handed over the responsibility of raising the clones to his most trusted general, Lady Demerzel. But now that Demerzel is out of the picture, I don’t think anyone else is interested in reviving the clones. Also, there’s a Brother Dawn in Bayta’s captivity, but Dawns have always been rebellious and impulsive. And I won’t put my money on someone who’s already a prisoner of the greatest mentalic in the galaxy. Who knows if Bayta hasn’t converted him already? But even with that said, I would love to be surprised.
The fall of the Galactic Empire has been predicted from Season 1. I think the Mule’s attack will be the last nail in the coffin. The Empire, or the regular old homo sapiens, will be replaced by a new emerging race, the mentalics. But I am not sure for how long the Mule will be able to maintain her grasp on Trantor or the rest of the galaxy. We know that she’s no less a tyrant than the Empire. She was the one who blew up an entire planet to send a message to the Empire and the Galactic Council that she was not someone to be messed with. My point being, there’s not much difference between Brother Darkness and the Mule, who can slaughter people for their own ambitions, and therefore they need to be stopped. The Seldon plan lays the foundation for a safe and stable rule over the galaxy.
The Fate of Toran Mallow
The season 3 finale has left us all in a lot of confusion. We are not sure how Bayta’s husband, Toran, is going to react to her secret identity. Throughout Season 3, Toran never missed a chance to show his hatred towards tyrannical and oppressive pirates like the Mule, so now that he knows that the Mule has been his wife all along, will he be able to live with her? I don’t think so. Toran is one of the few people that the Mule will never convert, because these are the ones who loved her without any reasons. This brings me to the conclusion that if Bayta fails to convince Toran to stay by her side, she will eventually let him go, and this is where the lovers will part ways. If Toran’s fate is going to be the same as in the book, then I believe we will never hear from him again, while Bayta will eventually die a natural death, depressed and alone, on a distant planet.
An Unexpected Betrayal
In the Season 3 finale, Digital Hari on New Terminus told Gaal that he wanted skin in the game, a body, just like the other Hari Seldon, who was trapped inside the Prime Radiant. Unfortunately, even Gaal didn’t know how Hari got his human body, but she really wanted Digital Hari’s help to defeat the Mule, and therefore she lied to him. However, when, in the end, Digital Hari demanded that Gaal fulfill her end of the bargain, Gaal told him the truth. The thing is, Digital Hari no longer wants to be a ghost. His immortality has become a curse for him, and he wants one single chance to escape the vault, just like the other Hari left the Prime Radiant. Digital Hari wanted to meet the other one so he could find some answers, but Gaal told him that he died years ago. Well, that’s not true. It was Kalle who took the human Hari. We don’t exactly know what happened to him. He still might be alive, somewhere. But nevertheless, Digital Hari felt betrayed by this revelation, and it can be theorized that he is going to do something very outlandish in Season 4 to vent his anger on Gaal and the Foundation. I won’t deny the possibility that he’ll start working with Bayta to help her fulfill her destiny, mostly because she’s an adversary to Gaal Dornick, the girl who broke his trust. And it won’t be the first time Digital Hari will go out of his way to ruin things for the Foundation. He was the one who gave the Prime Radiant to Demerzel. However, on second thought, maybe the original Hari Seldon already predicted these events. It’s possible that Hari wanted Digital Hari to betray the Foundation, all to kick off some incalculable chain reaction. You see, Demerzel’s possession of the Prime Radiant didn’t do any damage to Seldon’s plan. It only accelerated the fall of the Empire. So maybe it has always been a part of the plan.
The Role Of The Robots
The final shot of Season 3 made it abundantly clear that the robots in the Foundation universe are going to play an active role from Season 4 onwards. So far, Demerzel has been the only robot properly introduced in the show, but we know we’ll have 4 to deal with soon: the Brazen Head, Kalle, the tin-like robot, and Demerzel (again). But what’s their role going to be? First of all, I don’t think Demerzel is gone. She’s still alive, either through her decentralized memories or transferred consciousness, and therefore she can return to the show in a different form. Maybe she will take back her former name, Daneel Olivaw. The Brazen Head and Daneel will find themselves embroiled in the conflict between Gaal, Bayta, and the Empire. They obviously will help Gaal and her mentalics defeat her enemies without too many casualties.
Meanwhile, Kalle and her other robot friend are going to influence the battle from afar. I think these two will help the Second Foundation to shorten the time of darkness, which Hari predicted. We all know that these new-aged robots follow the Zeroth Law of Robotics, even Daneel. In short, they are going to prioritize the interests of all humanity over any single person, or a tyrant in our case. But both these tyrants, Bayta and the Empire, have really powerful weapons at their disposal, and how these robots will help Gaal gain an upper hand in the battle to come will be something I will be looking for. Secondly, if Demerzel is still alive, then it means she is no longer a prisoner of Cleon 1, and therefore she can listen to her conscience and choose a side. If Demerzel returns, she is going to be the hero we have all been waiting for.
The Eternal Darkness
This is the last topic I want to touch upon. Remember how, when Demerzel accessed Gaal’s memories, she found herself inside a black hole? I believe this vision has something to do with the Novacula. But the important question is: who is going to bring such darkness upon the galaxy? I think you already know. In the Season 3 finale, Dusk suggested that he was the Darkness Seldon predicted, which brings me to the possibility that Brother Darkness will trigger his ultimate weapon to stop the Mule’s attack, but in his madness, he’s going to push the galaxy into darkness. I guess his machine will become unstable, opening a black hole that will engulf everything in its way. But this is what Gaal and Demerzel believe will happen, and as they have mentioned numerous times in the show, the future can be changed. Yes, Salvor Hardin said that when she sacrificed her life to save her biological mother.
I believe either the robots or Demerzel herself is going to help Gaal take down the Novacula and, in a way, stop imminent darkness. But like I said earlier, this is all guesswork, and how they are actually going to save the galaxy is something I am really looking forward to finding out in Season 4. So, these are all theories that come to my mind right now. I am quite sure I missed a lot of potential ones, but hey, I would love to hear what you’ve cooked up. So don’t hold back your thoughts, and share all theories that you have in mind. I’d love to hear them.
