The Mule, as played by Pilou Asbæk, has brought both menace and mystery to Foundation‘s third season. He’s more than made good on the terrifying visions that prefaced his arrival—we know he’s destined for a vicious battle against Foundation heroine Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell)—with his cruel, crafty plan to take over the galaxy. He uses his amplified psychic powers to manipulate people to commit horrors, all while claiming he merely desires to be loved.
Such complexity has to come from somewhere, and “Foundation’s End,” the seventh episode of Foundation season three, gives us a peek into the Mule’s shocking backstory. Or… does it?
“Foundation’s End” begins on a planet we’ve never seen before. We’ve been hearing about how the Foundation controls important “breadbasket” worlds, and this is one of them: Rossem, “on the edges of the outer reach.” The time frame is “years before,” an imprecise figure on a show that usually likes to be very exact with its numbers.
Amid a field of crops, a woman holding a baby watches a large vehicle drive by. She remarks to her other son—who looks around 12 or so—that the neighbors, the Bartons, don’t like seeing her with the infant. At first, it’s not clear why. “They’re good folk,” she insists to the boy when he suggests the Bartons wish they could take the baby. Maybe, the viewer thinks, they’ve been trying to have children and have been unsuccessful.
That thought gets pushed aside when, as the kid and his mom are gently arguing about his sweet tooth, giant machines arrive. The mom calls them “pullers,” and they’re clearly there for harvesting, but they’ve arrived a week early. The machines aren’t what makes the family run home, though. We see a Foundation whisper-ship land in their yard, carrying “assessors” who’ve come to check up on them.
We get an idea of what’s happening as the mom pauses, mid-sprint, to yank baby clothes off the outside line. Inside the house, it’s frantic. Mom raids her older son’s secret candy stash and gives it to the baby as she’s hiding it in a secret cabinet. “That’s mine,” the kid whines, though it’s certain he knows what’s about to happen.
The Foundation’s pompous assessors stride in, talking about “allocations” of supplies. The family is clearly stretched thin, though the father nervously blames pirates for people not sharing as they once did. It’s tense, but the visitors are wrapping up their visit when everyone hears it: the baby cries.
Mom and Dad try to claim it’s “the Barton’s baby, from next door.” They were just watching it, you see, and tucked it away so the assessors wouldn’t think they were violating the Foundation’s strict one-child policy.
The assessor is no fool and reminds them the Foundation “trusts in the mass deleter solution.” They have two children. They’re only allowed to have one. So when he returns in 30 days, he says, “You’ll have one child.” He swans out with a leering grin as the devastated parents hold each other and sob, and the boy looks very worried. “See you next month!”
Though we’ve seen how the Foundation’s leadership has evolved—there’s barely any trace of Hari Seldon’s original group of brave, intellectually adventurous settlers left—we haven’t seen the toll its expansion has taken on ordinary people generations later. Now, we realize that the Foundation’s great success hasn’t come without a price.
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