‘We Act, or We Lose’ | ‘Foundation’ Season 3 Arrives July 11th
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It’s been nearly two years since Apple wrapped the second season of Foundation, its epic, galaxy-spanning sci-fi hit. Now, it’s about to launch the next chapter in the thousand-year-saga.
Apple just released an official two-minute teaser to announce that Foundation Season 3 will premiere on July 11 on Apple TV+. We don’t know much beyond what’s in the teaser, as Apple has yet to issue a press release. The series also differs significantly from the Isaac Asimov series that inspired it, making it difficult to predict anything more than the broadest strokes.
The teaser shows the return of all the key characters from season 2, along with an expanded role for the Warlord of Kalgan, otherwise known as The Mule, who made only the briefest of appearances in season 2. Nevertheless, the hate-filled monster made his ominous presence felt in a near-perfect setup to take the lead as the major villain in season 3.
As with the transition between the first two seasons, the third installment will take another significant time leap, occurring 152 years after the events of Season 2. This aligns with a flash-forward we saw at the end of the last season.
‘Kiss the Void, Gentlemen’
As chronicled in Asimov’s books, the first Galactic Empire has effectively fallen, and the Mule rises from its ashes, a powerful mentalic mutant who tries to subject the universe to his whims through physical, military, and psychic force.
Based on how Foundation has played out so far, it’s hard to know what direction this will take. Executive Producer David S. Goyer has taken quite a few liberties in interpreting Asimov’s novels, using the Foundation universe, characters, and overarching plots to tell a fundamentally different narrative from the books.
This creative license has been necessary, and it’s likely Foundation would have flopped had Goyer tried to stay too faithful to the original material. Others have tried and failed, including HBO, which attempted an adaptation years ago that never made it beyond the initial concept stages despite having Interstellar co-writer and Westworld executive producer Jonathan Nolan at the helm.
‘No Future Lasts Forever’
In addition to the fact that Asimov was better at writing about concepts and ideas than people, it’s hard to translate a series to a visual medium when it covers a galaxy-sprawling empire of 500 quadrillion people across millions of inhabited worlds and takes place over a thousand years.
While Asimov saw the individual characters who lived and died throughout the Galactic Empire’s history as merely small pieces of a broader narrative, it’s hard to build continuity in a show where the entire cast of characters changes as you skip a century or two ahead each season.
To solve this, Goyer found several clever ways to preserve the main characters, from the “genetic dynasty” of Emperors that succeeded the first Emperor Cleon (who only appeared in Asimov’s prequel books) to other ways to bring Hari Seldon, Gaal Dornick, Salvor Hardin, Demerzel, and others into each new era.
While Goyer has reportedly stepped down from the role of showrunner after a budget clash likely related to Apple’s tightening of the purse strings last year, he’s still writing for the series and will officially retain that title, even though he’s handed off some of his responsibilities to executive producer Bill Bost.
Foundation had a slower start in season 1 and took a while to catch on. Some of that was just the usual world-building narrative, but by the time season 2 hit, it scored a remarkable 100% on Rotten Tomatoes — a significant jump from the 72% for season 1. The teaser suggests that season 3 will ramp things up even more. It’s set to premiere on July 11, with a ten-episode weekly run through September 12.
