‘Foundation’ Star Jared Harris Explains Why Hari Seldon Doesn’t Know About The Mule: “An Existential Crisis”

Last week’s Foundation on Apple TV+ ended with something of a shocker for fans who have long assumed they can place some semblance of trust in the intellect of Hari Seldon (Jared Harris). When the “Vault” version of Hari receives visitors like Toran (Cody Fern) and Bayta Mallow (Synnøve Karlsen), Ebling Mis (Alexander Siddig), and the leaders of New Terminus, he very confidently walks them through how to deal with the latest crisis. Hari believes the civil war brewing within the original Foundation is an easy puzzle to fix. That’s only because he doesn’t realize that the true threat to the galaxy is The Mule (Pilou Asbæk).

Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) has been spending centuries with the Second Foundation on Ignis to face The Mule. He’s an existential threat to all existence, thanks to his powers of mental persuasion and complete contempt for the Foundation. He’s also been position as Foundation Season 3’s big bad. So to learn that Hari — the genius who created psychohistory, the man who can foresee everything — is completely ignorant of The Mule is nothing more than shocking.

All the more terrifying? Hari’s response to this news is to close down the Vault, abandon New Terminus, and leave his followers to their hunter’s mercy.

It’s a strange, darkly hilarious, turn of events. And one that Foundation star Jared Harris told DECIDER had been seeded in the second season.

“That’s sort of been already set up in [Season 2] because we understand that he’s had his consciousness edited,” Harris explained. “So we know that there’s information that he is not privy to. So in some sense, a deliberate limit has been put on his abilities.”

“Which comes as a surprise to him, obviously, and it’s created a kind of existential crisis.”

Harris also teased that we might need to look to another character in Foundation Season 3 when it comes to leading the charge in psychohistory — and it’s not Second Foundation leader Gaal Dornick! It’s Ebling Mis, played by Alexander Siddig, who also, coincidentally played Ebling’s ancestor, Advocate Xylas, all the way back in the very first episode of Apple TV+’s Foundation.

“Yeah, it’s delicious. It’s a delicious little sort of Easter egg, if you like, that the writers have put in there,” Harris said of the casting. “A lovely irony that this character who prosecuted him in Season 1, suddenly has now become a devotee of psychohistory and of Hari Seldon, and, in some level, has got to understand psychohistory in a way that Seldon doesn’t understand yet, you know? And is sort of taking it a step on.”

“So, yeah, it’s a lovely, lovely little twist in the storytelling,” he said. “And he’s delightful. I had a great time working with him. He’s a fantastic person.“

If Hari Seldon has now abandoned New Terminus to The Mule, does that mean our heroes ought to abandon all hope? Is Gaal Dornick really civilization’s last chance to beat back the darkness? Or is there some little clue in the idea that Ebling Mis now has a greater understanding of Hari’s own discipline than the “man” himself?

Foundation Season 3 Episode 7, ominously titled “Foundation’s End,” is now streaming on Apple TV+.