Can Foundation Still Pull Off Its Oldest Twist Ending?
Season 3 might be changing a big part of the 1952 novel.
With Foundation Season 3 almost at an end, the ninth episode in this set might feel like table-setting for the grand finale. This is largely true, as the events of “The Paths that Choose Us” are, appropriately, about putting the various characters on specific paths that will result in an inevitable conclusion. Throughout “The Paths that Choose Us,” it’s clear that Foundation wants us focused on this being the last stand against the Mule. But is it really?
Because Foundation Season 3 loosely adapts aspects of the second half of the novel Foundation and Empire, there’s a very real chance the finale of the show will change one pre-held assumption that has existed for nine episodes in a row. And one line from the AI Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) seems to confirm that books fans might expect a similar inversion, one not totally different from what Isaac Asimov pulled in 1952.
Warning: Mild spoilers ahead for Foundation.
Seldon hints that the Mule’s story “doesn’t add up.”
Who is the Mule, really?
Although Episode 7 seemed to reveal the Mule’s tragic backstory, the AI hologram version of Hari Seldon isn’t buying it. At the end of Episode 9, as Gaal (Lou Llobell) and the various Second Foundation members — and allied Traders — gear-up to take the fight to the Mule directly, Seldon says: “Gaal, a word of caution about the Mule. Something’s not right... His story doesn’t add up.”
For book fans, this is a sign to be on high alert for a big revelation in Episode 10. Because in Foundation and Empire, the Mule is secretly another character in disguise, and has been using his powers of telepathic manipulation to disguise his true identity, which is hiding in plain sight.
The original Mule Foundation twist might not be possible
Asimov, creator of Foundation, in 1987.
In Foundation and Empire, Bayta realizes that Magnifico, is in fact, the Mule, which, Magnifico reveals fully right toward the end of the book. Suddenly, once this revelation is made clear, the characters perceive him differently. “He seemed no longer a grotesque,” Asimov writes, of the Mule revelation. “His pipestem limbs, his beak of a nose lost their humor-compelling qualities. His fear was gone; his bearing was firm.
Could this twist still work in the TV version of Foundation? Perhaps not. In Episode 9, Gaal takes a trip inside Magnifico’s (Tómas Lemarquis) mind and discovers that the Mule still has a firm grip on him, in a telepathic sense. In some ways, this is a parallel to the moment in the book in which the Magnifico is fully unmasked, except, the unmasking doesn’t result in Magnifico’s personality being dropped. If anything, Magnifico emerges from Episode 9 as a more concrete character than ever.
This poses one bigger question: Seldon is saying the Mule is lying about something. And the text from which the show comes features a big twist with the backstory of the Mule. So, will that still happen? Because if the Mule isn’t really disguised as Magnifico, who is he?
