‘Foundation’ Season 3 Ending Explained: Does the Mule Go Down? Does the Empire Survive?

It’s still called Foundation, but the third season might as well have been called Everything Everywhere All at Once. Set 152 years after the events of the show’s second season — itself set nearly as long after the first — it’s an epic tale of collapsing empires, rising dictators, and civilization hanging by the skin of its teeth. (So, a docu-drama, then.) But it’s also a story of screaming robot skulls, mind-warping telepaths, and black-hole bombs, as well as the occasional outer-space social-media influencer. In short, Foundation is a lot.

It’s never been more “a lot” than in its season finale. The episode tracks several massive developments around the galaxy: the final battle between the psychic warlord called the Mule (Pilou Asbæk) and his nemesis, Foundation leader Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell); a desperate race by Brother Day (Lee Pace) to atone for his imperial line’s sins by freeing their robotic slave Lady Demerzel (Laura Birn); a bloody attempt to assert total control of the Empire by Day’s insane older “brother,” rechristened Brother Darkness (Terrence Mann).

Even Lady Demerzel, the immortal android, proclaims “too much” is happening even for her mechanical brain to comprehend. The supergenius Hari Seldon (Jared Harris), or at least his digital avatar, is equally baffled. What chance do we humble viewers have?

Well, you don’t need to consult the Prime Radiant for answers this time. In this quick and dirty guide to the ending of Foundation Season 3, we’re breaking down the fate of every major player in the galaxy. Warning: major spoilers ahead!

Is the Mule defeated?

The short answer: sort of.

The long answer: Yes, the wild-eyed warlord portrayed as a bearded man with an unplaceable accent all season long is dead, killed both within his mind in reality by Gaal Dornick during their one-on-one battle in the Foundation’s headquarters above the planet New Terminus.

But he wasn’t the Mule at all! The real telepathic tyrant is none other than Bayta (Synnøve Karlsen), the adorable blonde socialite whose misadventures we’ve been following all season. Fooling even her husband, Foundation aristocrat Toran Mallow (Cody Fern), she puppeteered the Mule’s entire bloody campaign from behind the scenes.

However, she didn’t count on one of her old friends being her undoing. Both she and her puppet had long used the psychoactive songs of musician Magnifico Giganticus (Tómas Lemarquis) to enhance her power of mind control. But when she orders Magnifico to strike up the band, she discovers to her horror that Gaal has gotten in his mind and trained him to play anti-Mule music. The sound forces Bayta to double over in pain amid its psychedelic swirl of color, and that’s the last we see of her.

Okay, so is the Mule dead?

That’s unclear. We certainly don’t see her keel over and stare unblinking up at the lights, and on this show not even that is a guarantee we’ve seen the last of anyone. It should be noted here that the fates of a number of characters involved in this storyline — Bayta’s husband Toran, Gaal’s boyfriend Captain Han Pritcher (Brandon P. Bell), scientist Ebling Mis (Alexander Siddig), the abducted child archduchess Skirlet (Isla Gie) — are left similarly unresolved.

Meanwhile, Gaal escapes from the satellite city above New Terminus exactly the way you would if you were running for your life from a nearly omnipotent enemy you’d barely managed to defeat, i.e. by shooting out a window and leaping several thousand stories to safety. Barring another time jump — and again, on this show you can’t put it past them — we’ve not seen the last of that psychic psychopath.

Does the Empire survive?

Short answer: Lol! Lmao! 

Long answer: Empire lives, in a fashion. Just prior to his “ascendency” — i.e. his execution, in order to keep the constant cycle of replacement emperors going as it has for centuries — the aging emperor called Brother Dusk accepts the nickname given to all emperors on their final day, Brother Darkness. 

He then goes about making that title literal. Having already committed three genocides with his black-hole bomb by blowing up the home worlds of competing centers of power — the politically powerful Galactic Council, the economically powerful Cloud Dominion, and the spiritually powerful Luminist religion — Darkness sets about wreaking the same havoc on his own genetic line.

In one of the show’s goriest scenes, he systematically destroys every clone of the original Emperor Cleon in the imperial palace’s colossal cloning tower. (They rain down in a shower of blood and body parts, it’s really nasty.) He finishes the job by using an infant clone to lure Demerzel to their mutal death, ensuring no one’s pulling his strings, and murdering Brother Day himself. If Hari Seldon has predicted a millennium of Darkness, hey, if you can’t beat ’em…

There’s one small flaw in his plan, however. Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton), the youngest and now only other surviving Cleon, is still alive. He’s one of the many character stranded with the Mule above New Terminus, his fate unknown. 

What’s up with the robots at the end?

That’s the other flaw in Darkness’s plan. He may have killed Lady Demerzel, whom he believed to be the last surviving robot in the galaxy. What he didn’t know is that Demerzel and Day had worked to repair a severed robot skull he’d retrieved from a robot-worshipping cult. The thing eventually switches on and immediately makes contact with other robots.

Who and where these robots are is surprising. They’re on the moon — our moon, Earth’s moon, though this distant-future Earth has a noticeably different coastline. And their leader appears to be Kalle (Rowena King), Hari Seldon’s late wife. I say “appears” because this entity has been showing up doing mysterious things for the past two seasons, from somehow implanting one of Hari’s digital consciousness into human form to connecting with Demerzel within the no-man’s-land of the Prime Radiant. According to her, the time has come for robots to involve themselves in the affairs of humanity once again, even though they were the victims of genocide the last time around.

What about Foundation itself?

Foundation’s world and most of its people are still within the sphere of influence of the Mule, provided she still lives, and with its capital fallen it seems safe to assume chaos reigns. But Quent (Cherry Jones), the Foundation’s ambassador to Empire and a former friend of Brother Darkness before he went nuts, is sent by Lady Demerzel into the recesses of the Imperial Library. There, she finds Preem Palver (Troy Kotsur), the deaf psychic leader of the Second Foundation, Gaal’s secret organization of powerful “mentallics.” United at last, Foundation seems to still have a shot.

For now, at least, they’ll have to pull it off without the help of Hari Seldon. After being duped into believing that he could meet his physical self and perhaps become incarnated to, he learns Gaal was lying to him, and that the physical Hari died some time ago. He’s left behind in his Vault on New Terminus while Gaal soars off into space.

What does the ending of Foundation Season 3 mean? Foundation Season 3 ending explained:

This one’s bittersweet. The Mule is down, but seemingly not out. Empire stands, but it’s fallen into Darkness nonetheless. Foundation lives, but it’s a fraction of its former self. Gaal betrayed her mentor. Darkness betrayed his brothers and his most loyal servant. Atrocities have been committed across the galaxy by a black-hole bomb that remains operational and in the hands of a madman.

But Foundation has always been bittersweet, hasn’t it? From the start, this has never been a story about the triumph of good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, civilization over barbarity. All Hari Seldon ever aimed to do was shorten the inevitable reign of evil, ignorance, and barbarity from 30,000 years to a mere millennium. 

This isn’t an easy message to hear, especially right now. Everyone’s looking for the quick fix or magic bullet that will restore the world we once knew, or better yet create a new and healthier one, from the hell it’s been made into by rich and powerful sociopaths — men exactly like the Mule and Brother Darkness, except in ugly suits.

But the message is necessary. The fight is on to preserve the light of freedom, science, and truth as rat-bastard tyrants attempt to stamp them all out. Everyone can play a part to make the future just a bit brighter than it would be without them. The moral arc of the Prime Radiant is long, and only we can bend it towards justice.

Will there be a Foundation Season 4?

Thankfully, yes! Co-creator, frequent co-writer, and showrunner David S. Goyer stepped down from his role on the show in the middle of Season 3’s production, seemingly over production and budgetary issues, with Fear the Walking Dead’s Ian Goldberg stepping in and forming a writers’ room for a fourth season. Beyond that, however, no official announcements have been made. Looks like we’ll have to wait out the darkness until that happy day Foundation, one of the best science fiction shows of all time, returns to us.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.