The finale of the third season of Foundation, aptly titled “The Darkness,” sure had plenty to deliver on, considering the threads the show has spun throughout its previous nine episodes—like the showdown between Gaal and the Mule, for starters, or the resolution of the whole “Demerzel might be the robot Messiah” thing. And it did deliver for the most part.
It was an intriguing episode that left me gasping at certain twists and turns and definitely pulled me in emotionally, even though there were some things that left me wandering. Overall, though, it was a beautiful finale that definitely leaves you wanting more.
What happens in the Foundation season 3 finale
So, let’s start by unraveling one of the two main plot lines of the episode, namely what happens on Trantor—which is also what gives it its title. Brother Dusk is being turned into Brother Darkness, the day of his death seemingly inevitable.
But we have seen him struggle with accepting his predetermined end for the entire season, we have seen him getting drunk on the power of his world-ending weapon last episode, and so it should not come as a surprise that he firmly decides to refuse his fate. Especially considering how he’s the only Cleon left, at least as far as he knows.
And like all good absolute rulers who refuse to let go of their power and would rather see the world burn with them rather that continue on without them—just like Brother Dusk himself says later in the episode—he decides that if he can’t keep on living then neither can the rest of the dynasty, and proceeds to happily explode every single clone kept in the palace.
It’s gory, it’s crazy, and it’s such a beautiful thematic ending for something like the Cleonic Dynasty, destroying itself from the inside out because it’s incapable of accepting its own end, that I simply had to clap.
While Dusk is rampaging through the palace, Day returns with all internets to free Demerzel. He presents to her the Brazen Head he stole from Sunmaster and Demerzel—or better yet, the truly magnificent Laura Birn—produces a series of truly heartbreaking expressions as we see her go through the whole emotional journey of realizing she’s not the last of her species and that still, she can’t connect with the Head like she so clearly wants to because it goes against her core programming.
Day tries to help her, finding loopholes around her programming, but of course, that’s when Demerzel realizes what Dusk is doing. And that’s when one of the first emotional cores of the episode happens.
Dusk places one of the baby Cleons under the same beam that would have been used to kill him. Once the beam is activated, Demerzel simply has to protect the baby, who is Empire, because that’s what she’s bound to do by Cleon I’s will. And so she dies under the eyes of both Dusk and Day, melting away as I’m personally screaming my head off on this side of the screen.
In a way, it’s another perfectly thematically coherent, albeit tragic, ending. Demerzel has struggled with the idea of breaking free for years, chained to her programming—and it’s that same programming that ultimately sets her free by means of her death.
Dusk is delighted in a slightly crazed, psychotic way. Day is devastated, knowing how close he has come to truly realizing Demerzel as the savior. And then Dusk kills him, sitting himself down on the middle throne, the only Empire left, a sci-fi Nero fiddling as Rome burns, deluding himself that he can still rule what is clearly disappearing through sheer might, terror, and world-ending weapons.
Also, I simply have to comment on Dusk singing his way through the murder of his brothers and of Day. I loved it and I can’t help but approve it—if you have Terrence Mann in your cast, then you simply have to have him flex those pipes at least once in a while. It would be criminal to do otherwise.
The last bit of plot that takes place on Trantor sees Ambassador Quent returning Kalle’s Ninth Proof of Folding to the Imperial Library, just as Demerzel had asked her to. And this act is what introduces her to the Second Foundation, with Preem Palver waiting in the shadows of the library’s walls, Prime Radiant in hand.
Then there’s the other main storyline of the episode, which, of course, deals with the inevitable showdown between Gaal and the Mule. A surprisingly fast confrontation, considering how much of the season had been drawing towards it, something that should immediately raise all kinds of suspicions—because of course, the Mule is not the Mule. Bayta is the Mule.
The plot twist
We see through flashbacks that she was the girl who was almost murdered by her parents, and we can assume that it was her from the very beginning, ensnaring everyone, including the man we thought was the Mule.
It’s a really jaw-dropping twist, which could maybe have been predicted in the way Bayta was clearly more than she appeared. I just wish it had been given a bit more time, maybe a bit more explanation, because while it’s not a bad thing for a plot twist to be abrupt—it has to be a twist, after all—sometimes it might feel a bit too sudden.
And that’s the case for this twist right here. We see the confrontation with the decoy Mule, we find out Bayta is the real one, and the Gaal escapes, jumping back to the safety of hyperspace, all in the span of a handful of minutes.
I hope they’ll expand on it a bit in the next season, give it some time to breathe, especially considering the fight is far from over—Bayta is very much alive, and so is her desire to destroy the Second Foundation as well as the first one.
Like all good season finales, though, this one too has to end on a massive cliffhanger that leaves viewers on the edge of their seats, wondering when the next season comes out. The very last scene of “The Darkness” returns to Trantor and the Brazen Head, which begins a clasping after Day had tinkered with it. And its message arrives all the way to Kalle herself, and what very much seems like a robot companion.
And here’s the cryptic little phrase she told Hari Seldon earlier in the season explained—she’s part of a larger faction that was clearly only waiting for all the pieces to fall into place to make its move. Waiting, it seems, in what looks like Earth’s moon, since the blue planet shown at the very end of the episode sure does look familiar.
Episode Grade: A-
Foundation has been renewed for season 4.
More Foundation reviews:
- Episode 1: “A Song for the End of Everything”
- Episode 2: “Shadows in the Math”
- Episode 3: “When a Book Finds You”
- Episode 4: “The Stress of Her Regard”
- Episode 5: “Where Tyrants Spend Eternity”
- Episode 6: “The Shape of Time”
- Episode 7: “Foundation’s End”
- Episode 8: “Skin the Game”
- Episode 9: “The Paths That Choose Us”