Foundation is currently rolling out a third season stuffed full of dramatic resonance. We’ve always been fans of Demerzel, the ancient android played by the excellent Laura Birn, but season three has really elevated the character—even beyond that big season-two reveal that she’s been moving the chess pieces on behalf of the galaxy-ruling Empire for generations.
That was a monumental bit of information. But this week’s episode, “The Stress of Her Regard,” dropped a bombshell that’s even more startling in the moment, and just gets more jaw-dropping as it sinks in.
It’s a callback to Foundation season one. But it also dovetails perfectly with Demerzel’s season three arc, which has explored her increasing unease about the very near future. After Hari Seldon gave her the Prime Radiant in season two, Demerzel has been able to tap into his predictive “psychohistory.” Over the past 150 years, she’s consulted it so frequently she keeps it tucked inside her chest for easy accessibility.
The Second Foundation and Empire both have use of a Prime Radiant, which means the two groups—who are ostensibly at odds—have the same means to glimpse the road ahead. As season three began, both realized there’d been a sudden, potentially cataclysmic shift in the timeline. Though they’ve long been preparing for an extended dark age that will kick off with the fall of Empire, Seldon’s math now suggests the possible end of humankind itself. Soon! If the math holds, it’ll happen in just a few months.
Humans who are privy to this information deal with the impending doom in varying ways. But it’s different for Demerzel. As we’ve seen in earlier episodes, she’s facing a dilemma so grave she’s sought out a confidante—a religious leader named Zephyr Vorellis—who agrees to have her memory wiped after each meeting, then restored when it’s time to talk again. Demerzel’s secrets are so intense she actually, for once, needs a sounding board to help her muddle through them.
The big one is, of course, that she’s a robot. She was a fierce general in the long-ago Robot Wars, then captured and held in stasis for centuries as the last of her kind. Then, she was reprogrammed by Cleon I to serve only Empire’s interests and has been doing so alongside the genetic clones (all named Cleon) decanted in succession.
That directive has manifested in different ways across Foundation‘s run so far; we’ve seen that Demerzel’s programming removes her from having to obey the Three Laws of Robotics, as written by Foundation source-material author Isaac Asimov. In other words, she can and will kill humans. That includes any Cleons who step too far out of line. But the knowledge that Empire will fall and, even more recently, that humanity may end has sparked an existential crisis: who is Demerzel without Cleons to serve? And on an even larger scale, what is her objective if humanity ends and she’s left to float through her eternal existence?
As “The Stress of Her Regard” begins, we get a whole new window into just how determined Demerzel has been to preserve Empire’s rule—and just how important her hand has been in shaping not just the trajectory of the Cleons, but of the Foundation too.
In Foundation season one, terrorists blow up the Star Bridge—a giant elevator designed to carry space travelers from their ships down to Trantor, Empire’s home planet. It’s a horrific act that kills millions. Hundreds of millions. In response, Empire showers devastating bombs upon the two worlds it deems responsible, causing nearly as much trauma in return.
But as we learn in season three, while the responsible parties were indeed from the planets that were punished, they were acting on behalf of Demerzel. It’s a secret she’s been keeping for three centuries, and Vorellis, who’s suitably shocked to hear the truth, wants to know why she did it.
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