I have not read Isaac Asimov's Foundation and I don't know if the creators of Foundation, the TV show, knew how the world would turn out by the time of the release of the third season, but there are crucial lessons one can learn from Foundation Season 3 that can be extended to our current situation. One of them deals with the importance of following the right leader. You see, there are many leaders in this third season. There are Emperor Cleon's clones: Brother Day (Lee Pace), Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton), and Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann). There is Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), who leads the secret second Foundation. The big baddie here is The Mule (Pilou Asbæk), who was introduced in the last season and is seen here commanding his followers and using his mind-control powers to make his enemies attack themselves. Later in the show, a cult leader with a long stick bearing a small skull makes an appearance. One of these authority figures deceives their followers, while another uses their team to destroy an army to capture a planet. One trains their group members to prepare them for the arrival of an evil, while another executes a large-scale attack through nuclear power. I won't reveal which character does what, but based on the mentioned actions, you can clearly figure out who seems fit to be a ruler and who should be treated like a criminal. Choose the wrong person, and you will just push everybody and everything towards annihilation.
What's the key element that binds a fan to a celebrity, a devotee to a god, a loyalist to a political leader? Foundation Season 3 says, "Love," and that's not a wrong answer. The Mule often tells his new supporters that they will end up loving him like his other, older followers. When Gaal attempts to change one of Mule's followers, she finds that the character is psychologically tethered to their master. In trying to sever this connection by force, she causes fatal harm to the follower. Love is beautiful only if it connects you to a beautiful person. When Gaal checks Toran Mallow (Cody Fern) to see if he's under Mule's influence, she discovers that he really, really loves his wife, Bayta (Synnøve Karlsen; her smile single-handedly infuses plenty of charm into the show), which is why he isn't corrupted by the mind-control monster. The love that links Mule to his adherents is toxic, and it generates ugliness (a little kid relishes the sights of torture). Foundation Season 3 also gives a warning regarding rulers who don't take advice from others, who make decisions based on their desires, even if it leads to the death of millions of people. These matters have universal appeal—they are evergreen and especially important at present. To enjoy this third season, you have to dig out the subtext because the text itself is tedious. It's packed with political and societal associations that provide much to ponder. However, as an audiovisual experience, this Foundation is sorely uninteresting, unimaginative, exhausting, and utterly ho-hum.
Foundation is one of those shows that is mostly praised for its breathtaking visuals. Well, nothing takes your breath away in the third season. When Tómas Lemarquis's character plays music at a club, waves of soft light emanate from his musical instrument, entrancing all the dancers and listeners. They go into a hypnotic state; they feel detached from their environment. Rather than stopping at the "light show," the creators should have gone further and explored how the dancers perceive their surroundings under hypnosis, because it's precisely that kind of extreme subjectivity that separates a hack from an artist. To be fair, the series displays Brother Day's hallucinations after he drinks a red liquid, but the result can feel a little ostentatious. The reason is pretty simple: Season 3 largely uses its well-rendered world as a backdrop against which copious exposition, either through dialogue or voiceover, is delivered. Most of the scenes here consist of characters uttering major information to move the plot forward. Sometimes, you get a scene like the one where Demerzel (Laura Birn) confesses that she fears outliving the Empire or the one where Day, Dusk, and Dawn cheer "Wisdom. Strength. Fortune" and drink from a bottle. These moments subtly work on your emotions and prove to be more magnificent than the visuals. At one point, the current Brother Day is punished for the actions of his previous clones, but the scene looks more interesting on a theoretical level. Another scene where Song (Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing) throws a bitter remark at Day should have landed like a sting to the heart, but curiously, there is no pang of heartbreak in the show.
The megalomaniac Mule is a very weak villain. A few flashbacks indicate what filled him with so much hatred; yet, the explanation offered is scant, and it doesn't override the fact that Mule looks pretty one-dimensional. He never truly seizes a moment with his menace; instead, he merely shows off his powers here and there, which fail to shock or surprise after Episode 1. The events in the third season lack dramatic excitement. Everything feels plain and sober. Watching Foundation Season 3 feels like sitting through a serious book discussion of Asimov's novel. The voices are uninflected, and facts, for the most part, replace drama and narrative momentum. It seems as if the creators are more faithful to the book's text than to the principles of cinematic adaptation, which is funny considering the significant differences between the source material and this show. By cutting out the various points of pleasure, the third season could present itself as a masterpiece to those who believe art is something to be endured rather than—God forbid—entertaining. It's inflated and carries an air of self-importance, but it's also as dry as dust.
Final Score- [4.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times
Note: Nine episodes of Season 3 are screened for this review.
Premiere Date: July 11, 2025, on Apple TV+ with the first episode, followed by one episode every Friday.