The second season of Foundation was more about loss and sacrifice. To fight the bigger enemy, the heroes of the story had to part ways with their loved ones. In the end, Gaal Dornick asks Hari Seldon if any of their lives mattered. Or was it just a futile death that will be erased by the chariot of time? It won’t be wrong to say that we are remembered by our loved ones. Yanna is alive in Hari’s memory, and Prime Radiant will always be remembered as a relic created by their combined efforts. And when it comes to our Warden, Salvor Hardin, in the lanes of history, she has become the person who saved the legendary hero and her mother, who will save the galaxy from eternal darkness. Gaal will lay the foundation of a new dawn, but it was Salvor’s ultimate sacrifice that made it possible. Not once, but twice, she saved her brother and gave him hope that all was not lost in the universe. It can still be saved for the ones who are alive.
With Foundation Season 2 ending on yet another cliffhanger, we can speculate on the return of Apple’s Inter-Galactic series. Though there is no official announcement from the streaming platform regarding the renewal of their beloved series, we will still like to discuss all the possible storylines that might be explored in the upcoming season.
Spoilers Ahead
The Revenge of the Mule
Starting with the obvious, Foundation Season 2 ends with a brief scene that happens 150 years into the future, where we see The Mule yearning for revenge from his worst enemy, Gaal Dornick. Now, throughout Season 2, we are not made aware of the reason why The Mule is seeking revenge on Gaal or may want to hurt her army of mentalics. The psychics will together become part of the Second Foundation. But still, we don’t know the reason why The Mule is hell-bent on destroying the Second Foundation. He does share his motives with his Season 2 adversary, Tellem Bond, but in her case, too, we were not made aware of any explicit reason why she wanted to get rid of the second Foundation.
Tellem Bond yearned for eternal life and may have harbored ambitions to rule the universe after the fall of the Empire. But in the end, she failed to take control of Gaal’s body, which compels her to seek revenge on Gaal and even try to kill her through Josiah. If we entertain the possibility that her consciousness escaped at the end of season 2 and she somehow hid herself in yet another body, then it won’t be wrong to say that she is the one seeking revenge from Gaal after 150 years. However, the only question is: why wait for one and a half centuries when she could have easily killed her in the cryopods? Perhaps Foundation Season 3 will shed more light on the origins of The Mule and the reasons why he is obsessively hunting for Gaal and the second Foundation.
Eto Demerzel & The Prime Radiant
At the end of Foundation Season 2, Hari Seldon quite mysteriously handed over a copy of the Prime Radiant to Demerzel. He knew that the robot would be able to access the relic and would even be able to read the future of the Empire. So why did Hari relinquish his ultimate weapon to a potential nemesis? We believe Demerzel is not the antagonist her portrayal in the series suggests. In reality, she is yet another prisoner of Cleon 1 who has been held captive against her wishes. Demerzel wants freedom, but her programming won’t let her achieve it until someone removes the device from her body that Cleon 1 had attached. But until then, Demerzel has no will of her own. She just serves the will of the Empire, and even against her wishes, she will do everything in her power to execute the commands. Her only purpose is to serve the Empire at all costs, and perhaps with the help of the Prime Radiant, she will try to save the Empire, but the question here is: will she be able to stop the inevitable? The Prime Radiant has secrets of its own, and maybe they were strategically given to Demerzel so that she unknowingly accelerates the fall of the Empire. With another set of clones at her disposal, the future of the Empire remains uncertain, and the third season will most likely explore it further. If it is up to us, we just want Demerzel to break free from the clutches of the Empire and be able to rest somewhere peacefully for as long as she wants.
The Human Child of Dawn and Sareth
Foundation Season 2’s ending reveals to us that Queen Sareth has become pregnant with Dawn’s child, which seems unusual but might be true. The reason it sounds strange is because Cleon 1 never wanted a biological heir in the series. We believed either he was impotent or had never found someone worth having kids with. Or maybe, like the series suggested, he was madly in love with the robot, and clones were the only possible way to have kids with Demerzel. Whatever the reason might be, the first biological child of the Empire is indeed going to stir up the events of the third season if the creators decide to explore the storyline further.
After the fall of the Empire, the universe may find itself in need of a great leader to maintain law and order. We are sure that Gaal doesn’t want to become a ruler, and The Mule isn’t best suited for the job. The only option we will be left with is either someone from the First Foundation colony or Sareth’s child. If the latter comes true, then it will be the most poetic turn of events in the universe of the Foundation, as Brother Day had killed Sareth’s entire family, but from the womb of the vengeful queen will rise a leader who will build a new dawn on the ashes of the fallen Empire. We would really love to see that unfold.
Brother Constant and the First Foundation
So Hari Seldon miraculously saved the colony of the first Foundation after the destruction of Terminus. Conveniently, he told Brother Constant, who arrived at the Vault in an escape pod, that the Vault serves many purposes. We believe Hari will be taking the entire colony to his home planet, Helicon, where he wants to send his adopted son, Raych Foss. The future of the first Foundation is a blur so far, but we believe that under the leadership of Brother Constant and her father, the colony will continue its work of spreading Hari Seldon’s doctrines and prepare the universe for an ultimate battle against the Empire. At the end of Season 2, the Empire loses all its imperial fleets and is, therefore, in its weakest state at this moment. Maybe the first Foundation will quickly assemble their allies to coordinate an attack on Trantor to get rid of the Imperium as soon as possible.
Hari Seldon vs. The Vault
At the end of Season 2, Gaal underlines the fact that she may need Hari’s help to avoid any conflict with his digital consciousness in the Vault. It indeed foreshadows that two or more versions of Hari Seldon will come face-to-face in the upcoming seasons, and it is bound to mess things up. Hari is a knowledgeable man, but sometimes his own ego clouds his judgment, and the same can be said for his digital consciousness, which may like to believe in its superiority against other versions of itself. It can also be seen as a tug-of-war among the generative AI, which will leave no stone unturned to win an argument against another. Will Hari and Gaal be able to handle this crisis for the future of the universe? We will surely find out in the upcoming seasons.
So, here we are, done with all the possible plot points that we believe will be explored in Foundation Season 3, but if you have any others to add to the list, feel free to share them with us.
