This article contains spoilers for the Foundation Season 3 finale, “The Darkness.”
73 years ago, writer Isaac Asimov casually dropped one of the greatest twists of all time. First published as a novella titled “The Mule,” and subsequently in Foundation and Empire, the second book in Asimov’s landmark series, readers met a clown and troubadour named Magnifico Giganticus. He’s a loveable buffoon escaping the service of the titular Mule, an all-powerful telepathic “mentallic” and conqueror bent on destroying the Foundation – an organization dedicated to preserving galactic knowledge – as well as the Empire they’re fighting against. Alongside two Foundation members, Toran and Bayta, Magnifico traversed the galaxy, always staying one step ahead of the Mule while seeking the Second Foundation, a secret organization that could save everyone.
Well, not really, because in an absolute jaw-dropper that has thrilled readers for generations and set the tone for nearly every fictional rug pull to come, Magnifico is the Mule. It’s a perfect twist, brilliantly executed by Asimov’s prose, as he describes the simple physical changes in Magnifico’s stance and demeanor that “transform” him into the Mule.
73 years later, Apple TV+’s Foundation has finally arrived at this iconic moment, thanks to the Season 3 finale. Back in the second episode of Season 2, Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobel) sent her consciousness 150 years in the future and discovered the Mule (Mikael Persbrandt in Season 2, Pilou Asbæk in Season 3) laying waste to the galaxy, desperate to discover the location of the Second Foundation. Gaal has spent nearly the entirety of the last two seasons trying to prevent this seeming inevitability, even going so far as to create the Second Foundation and put herself in cryosleep, only waking briefly every few years to make sure the plan to stop the Mule was in place.
Gaal does manage to kill the Mule in one-on-one combat in a weird montage that tries to twist the scene of their final battle (which we’ve seen multiple times) into something coherent, as they battle each other both physically and mentally. It’s all a little confusing, and points to how the Foundation TV series has never been afraid of tweaking how the plot of the books is executed on screen.
Still, it’s a thrill watching it happen, confusingly staged action and all, because you know the other shoe is going to drop. The series has also introduced Magnifico (Tómas Lemarquis) and spent most of the season tipping their hand towards a variation on the twist that book readers know is imminent. Heck, they even went inside Magnifico’s mind at one point and found the Mule with his arms wrapped around him. Gaal took the implication that, like many others, the Mule was controlling Magnifico. It was clear to this viewer at least that Magnifico was being embraced by the Mule; a frequent refrain from those controlled by the conqueror is “I’ve never felt such love.” And if you know, you know: The Mule is showing that love to Magnifico.
Then there’s the fact that in nearly every scene where the Mule has been using “his” mentallic powers, Magnifico has been seen, blurry or otherwise, in the background. We’re also told that Magnifico’s instrument, called a Visi-Sonor, can amplify the Mule’s abilities, and even the AI of the all-knowing Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) pointedly stated that something didn’t add up in the Mule’s backstory but didn’t know what it was. Magnifico is the key to everything, and as Asbæk’s character dies in a pool of his own blood, it’s clear that despite Gaal thinking her multiple-centuries mission is over, Magnifico is about to step out of the shadows and reveal himself as the mastermind behind everything.
Psyche! In a wildly insane twist on a twist that one could generously call “overthinking things,” Magnifico is not the Mule. Magnifico, it turns out, is Magnifico Giganticus, a dumb but sweet troubador who lurks menacingly in the background for no particular reason. Don’t worry, there is still a secret real Mule, and that is…Bayta Mallow (Synnøve Karlsen)! If there was any confusion about this particular plot point, while Gaal writhes on the floor in mental agony, confused how someone could be poking around in her head if the Mule is already dead, Bayta enters and literally says, “I am The Mule.”
It’s unfortunate that after 73 years (not to mention 19 episodes) of build-up, this lands with such a thud. Mind you, it doesn’t come out of nowhere; there has been some evidence for Bayta’s true identity running throughout the season. On a purely surface level, the TV version of Bayta is introduced as a social influencer, and what the Mule is doing is social influence on a galactic scale. There’s also the fact that Bayta has always seemed to be in the same locations the Mule attacks, though we only get to see this on a pleasure planet called Kalgan.
There has been other evidence as well. In one scene, Bayta told the Mule to leave a room, which he did immediately. We’ve seen the otherwise maniacal Mule have some humanity to him, but this immediate acquiescence to Bayta definitely seemed odd, even if you could write it off as him leaving a convalescing Bayta and former (and potential future) emperor Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) rather than mental control on her part. She also calmed and won over Randu Mallow (Darren Pettie), a rebellious uncle of her husband Toran (Cody Fern) that she had never met before, pretty quickly. Magnifico bonded with Bayta pretty quickly as well, freely explaining that he loved her, though he never said the key “I’ve never felt such love” phrase.
Probably the biggest piece of evidence for Bayta being the Mule, however, are two relatively deep cut changes from the books. In the Foundation novel series, Bayta is from Terminus, the home of the Foundation. On the show, she’s from somewhere else – a backwater planet, which is what the Mule explained to Hari Seldon a few episodes back. And in the books, Bayta is a descendant of a Foundation family; on TV, that’s Toran, not Bayta.
Basically, the pieces have been in place since the beginning to allow Bayta, a key character from the books, to step up and reveal herself to be the Mule. We even get the final nail in the coffin to drive it home that there’s not a triple twist here, and Magnifico is controlling Bayta who was controlling the Mule, thanks to reshot scenes of the Mule’s backstory. That featured “his” parents trying to drown him on their home planet of Rossem after the Foundation told them to limit their resources. The reshot scenes show they were trying to drown a girl, not a boy – Bayta.
Let’s be clear: The reason this twist doesn’t work isn’t because you can’t change things. As mentioned earlier, the Foundation TV series has successfully tweaked and riffed on plot points from the books throughout, down to the entire concept of the “Genetic Dynasty,” which is key to the Empire side of the story in the series. The very idea that the Mule is two people instead of one is a smart way of getting around something you can do in a book, but not as effectively on TV: having one character secretly be another character, Usual Suspects style. It’s possible, but having Asbæk play a vicious pirate and physical threat as the Mule while hiding the more cerebral maneuvering of the real Mule is a smart way of executing this twist on screen.
The issue is that everything has been pointing to Magnifico as the brains of the operation, not Bayta – clues above aside. And while we’ll likely find out more about what she wants in Season 4 (the show was renewed with new showrunners Ian Goldberg and David Kob), having Lemarquis step up from the background of the shot where he’s lurking, between Gaal and The Mule, to reveal himself seems to be what the show is heading towards. Instead, it’s entirely unclear how to gel Karlsen’s performance as Bayta with the atrocities the pirate version of the Mule has committed. Lemarquis has played Magnifico as a disturbed weirdo with a strange, magical instrument; Karlsen has played Bayta as a pretty nice lady, and that continues when she reveals herself to be a universal conqueror. The joy of the Mule reveal is the contrast between who the Mule presents himself as initially (a buffoon) and who he reveals himself to be (a tyrant). We would have likely gotten that with Magnifico, but you can almost hear the writer’s room thinking themselves in circles here, knowing that book readers will be expecting it, and adding layers on layers to defy expectations, when the, er, expected expectation would likely have provided the most satisfying outcome.
Again, there are ways to make this work, and the show has written itself into weird corners before only to make it out stronger and weirder. But in comparison to the original source material and the Mule reveal there, Asimov still takes the cake.
There’s so much more that happens in the episode, though, so let’s break down some of the bigger, non-Mule points.
Empire’s End
Remember that whole “Genetic Dynasty” thing we mentioned earlier? Well, forget about it; it’s done. Unlike the Mule reveal, the end of the Genetic Dynasty has been properly set up throughout this season, thanks to Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann). Dusk is the oldest of three clones of Emperor Cleon; the other two are the aforementioned Dawn, the youngest, and Day, played by Lee Pace. As Day ages into Dusk, and Dawn into Day, Dusk is disintegrated to make way for a new, fresh Dawn clone. However, this particular iteration of Dusk doesn’t want to die.
On the cusp of his “retirement,” this Dusk instead heads to the clone banks and proceeds to blow them all up, leading to an absolutely disgusting rain of body parts from the tower of backup clones. He saves one, a baby, and heads to the disintegration chamber. Meanwhile, Day has returned to Demerzel (Laura Birn), who is the majordomo of the Genetic Dynasty and also a nearly immortal robot, to reveal to her that she’s not the last of her kind. Through circumstances we won’t get into here, Day has recovered another robot’s head, and if they can turn it on, Demerzel can not just sync with the other robot and rejoin her hivemind but gain independence from the slavery the Genetic Dynasty put her into centuries prior.
As Day struggles to turn the robot head back on, Demerzel becomes aware of what Dawn is doing in the clone banks and is compelled to leave to protect them. In a very meta-moment, Demerzel, who is aware not just of the clone banks incident and Day activating a second robot head, but also likely what’s transpiring with Gaal and the Mule, is asked what is happening. She replies: “Too many things at once.”
And just to keep piling on the insanity, Dusk threatens to disintegrate the baby Cleon if Demerzel doesn’t protect him. She’s compelled to – if she had waited to activate the other robot, remember, she would have been able to prevent what happens next – and ends up getting melted mostly to slag, while the baby is disintegrated anyway.
Oh, and then Dusk kills Day and takes sole control of the Empire. So all the clones are gone, Demerzel is gone, and there’s only Dusk, reigning supreme. He also has the Radiant, the mathematical construct created by Hari Seldon which (sort of) allows you to predict the future.
There is one hitch though, in case you were concerned about Lee Pace being done with Foundation. Dawn was with Bayta before her Mule reveal. We don’t know if he’s been turned to her side yet, but Dawn ages into Day. Depending on when Foundation Season 4 picks up – the show has liberally jumped into the future every season so far – it’s likely that Dawn will have become Day, meaning Pace would be back. It’s also likely he’ll want some vengeance on Dusk for killing all their brothers.
But wait, there’s more!
Welcome To Earth
Remember that robot head? Well, before Day was beaten to death by Dusk on the throne room floor, he was, in fact, able to activate it. It turns on and initiates a handshake signal, then a “clasp” with another galaxy. Those in the know may be able to identify which milky galaxy this is, but in case you weren’t sure, we head over to check in with Kalle (Rowena King), a mysterious being who took the form of the woman with whom Hari Seldon built the Radiant, and later resurrected him. Kalle realizes the clasp isn’t from Demerzel, but “perhaps someone is seeking to embroil us in the struggle.”
“Someone must have succeeded,” says a figure that is clearly a robot.
“Then all the pieces are in place,” says Kalle.
And then the camera zooms out to show they are on a moon base, and not just any moon base: It’s our Moon. Earth’s Moon. To quote the equally highly regarded science fiction property Independence Day: Welcome to Earth!
Before you throw up your hands with the “it was Earth the whole time” reveal, just know that the existence of Earth, robots on the Moon – all of it does indeed come from Asimov’s books. We’re getting into potential future spoilers here, but after the conflict with the Mule is settled and the main conflict shifts to the Foundation versus the Second Foundation, a search for Earth begins. There, we discover that a robot named R. Daneel Olivaw has been manipulating things the whole time, including giving Hari Seldon the idea for psychohistory, which is represented by the Radiant on the show.
Is it possible the mysterious robot behind Kalle is Olivaw? Maybe. Complicating things a bit is that Demerzel revealed earlier in the season that she has been called Daneel among other names. But there are ways around that, including the fact that robots are a hivemind, so they’re all sort of each other…or something. Whatever.
This also opens up a world of possibilities for Foundation when it continues on Apple TV+, as Asimov’s Foundation series is just one part of the story. Nearly every novel and short story Asimov wrote fits into a cohesive tapestry of history, including the Foundation books. The Foundation series is more explicitly linked to two other series: the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. While it’s unknown whether the show’s producers have the rights to those books as well, if they’re so inclined to jump away from the main conflict of Foundation, there are literally millennia of events that can be tackled, from the rise of robots and the Galactic Empire to that search for Earth we mentioned earlier.
Point being, while the Genetic Dynasty seems to be done, Demerzel also seems to be done, and The Mule is ascendant, ready to destroy what remains of the Empire – and perhaps the Foundations – there’s so much more Foundation, the TV series, can do when it picks up in Season 4. We’ve never felt such love.
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