Why The Wild Foundation Clone Emperors Are So Different In Season 3
Lee Pace, Cassian Bilton and Terrence Mann reveal the surprising evolution of the Cleons.
One of the cleverest things about the Apple TV+ sci-fi epic Foundation is the way the series has figured out how to have familiar faces reoccur, even when the show jumps ahead a century. We’ve got an immortal robot named Demerzel (Lara Birn), an AI version of Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) and Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobel), and a human version of Hari putting themselves in cryosleep. But the best way for characters to keep popping up through the various centuries of Foundation is easily the clone emperors of the Cleonic Dynasty: Brother Dawn, Brother Day, and Brother Dusk.
Since Season 1, Cassian Bilton, Lee Pace, and Terrence Mann have played these clones respectively, and in Foundation Season 3’s first episode, “A Song for the End of Everything,” we find this trio in a state we’ve never quite seen them in before. In almost all ways, Foundation Season 3 has flipped the script on the nature of each clone emperor, especially the middle, ruling clone, Brother Day. In the previous centuries of Season 1 and Season 2, Brother Day has generally been a bloodthirsty dictator. But, in Season 3, this Brother Day clone is basically Lee Pace’s take on the Big Lebowski.
Spoilers ahead for Foundation Season 3.
“He thinks they're a bunch of a**holes,” Pace tells Inverse in reference to the detached, stoner nature of the new Brother Day in Foundation Season 3. “His brothers are thinking that they can make decisions and look into the Prime Radiant and ask the robot, ‘What should we do?’ But, he's just like, ‘Relax, guys. The galaxy is going to do what it’s going to do.’”
Thanks to Gaal’s narration, we also discover that Empire is no longer the biggest power in the galaxy, but rather a power in the galaxy. The fact that all the Spacers (people who can help navigate starships faster-than-light) ditched Empire and joined the Foundation in Season 2, means that by Season 3, Empire is using old-fashioned jump gates to travel between worlds. The humbled Empire is part of why Brother Day is hanging around inhaling space narcotics and not attending formal meetings. But it’s also why the younger clone, Brother Dawn, has assumed the duties of the “middle throne,” and has become a more mature version of the youngest Cleon, certainly more than in previous seasons.
The new Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) is more comfortable as a leader. Or is he?
“I feel like I've been on three different shows, if not more, by playing this part,” Cassian Bilton says of taking Brother Dawn in a new, oddly more responsible and level-headed, direction. For Bilton, there was a bit of a paradox in creating this new direction for Dawn, which he said involved doing some very deep thinking about the nature of how each Cleon becomes the three different incarnations.
“Is it the fact that they each mature such that they can take the middle throne? It’s the sort of chicken-and-egg thing,” Bilton reflects. “Is it the power that corrupts them and makes them terrible, or that they find that they have to corrupt themselves in order to take on the power?”
Technically speaking, because each of the Cleons are new clones, Season 3 is, as with previous seasons, giving us new characters. Any character development from the previous Cleon clones impacts these men externally, not internally. They can be angry with themselves for past decisions, as Brother Dusk is in this episode, but they’re also angry with a literal other person. It’s a philosophical and psychological balancing act that each actor has had to pull off in new ways now, for three seasons.
“We know who we are, that's consistent,” Terrence Mann says. “We know that basically we're the Cleon, and whether we're the younger brother, older brother, and then, the oldest brother, we're always consistent about who those characters are. But the scripts and the storytelling and the arcs and the events that occur determine and change us. And I’d say things change us drastically in Season 3.”
If Pace’s Brother Day is laid back and trying to escape responsibility, then Bilton and Mann think the older brother, Dusk, is much closer to a Shakespearean tragedy.
“I think a lot of Terry's work is reminiscent of King Lear this season, “Bilton says.
Terrence Mann as Brother Dusk, resolved to his fate, or, about to snap?
Mann agrees, noting that Dusk’s entire goal is to try and get the younger Dawn “onto the middle throne,” and “that’s his whole reason for living.” Mann notes that this goal is somewhat dangerous because Dusk is living with the idea that he has to perish in 14 days, and things will “delve into a terrifying mania.”
With Dusk and Dawn dealing with these serious questions of their existence and the fate of the Empire, will the lazy middle clone reveal another layer? Pace thinks that this version of Day might be the deepest yet.
“He knows the idea of control is a fantasy. That’s the truth,” Pace says. “I think that's an interesting character. We’ve finally got a version of Day who is really just trying to mind his own business. And that’s something we haven’t seen before at all.”
