‘Foundation’ Episode 9 Recap: The Best-Laid Plans

Is it just me, or is Foundation getting better and better with each episode? Maybe it’s simply a case of familiarity breeding admiration rather than contempt, as more time spent with each of its storylines equals more chances to appreciate the unique things that each is doing. Maybe those storylines are legit improving week to week, particularly as the flatter elements, like the chosen-one heroes Gaal (absent this week) and Salvor), draw closer to their plotlines’ denouements and excitement builds as a result. Maybe it’s a matter of the overall Foundation aesthetic—the grand space vistas, the depiction of far-future civilizations, the cool-looking spaceships and costumes and tech whatnot—winning us over as we get used to it. Whatever the case, the penultimate episode of the show’s first season, portentously titled “The First Crisis,” is entertaining viewing from start to finish.

Foremost among its pleasures is the sad resolution of breakaway emperor Brother Dawn’s grand love affair with palace gardener Azura. The pair plan to run away together to the Scar, the massive open-air sector of Trantor left behind by the collapse of the starbridge decades earlier. These plans are accelerated when Brother Dusk not-so-subtly sends Dawn a message that he’s on to his younger clone’s differences via secretly painting the true story of their hunt together—in which Dawn killed six animals, but hid three so as not to break Dusk’s record—in a palette invisible to Dawn’s colorblind eyes. (It’s a very cool bit, paying off the show’s early attention to that sprawling mural in the first place.)

Dawn manages to knock out the imperial spy chief Obrecht, dodge palace security, and make his way down into the Scar and into Azura’s loving arms…only to discover that it was all a trap. For years, an insurgency has planned for this very event, up to and including decanting their own Cleon clone to replace Dawn. You can guess what will happen to the heartbroken original. Emphasis on heartbroken: This poor sap believed he’d found true romance. Imagine what it must take out of you to discover your first love is a total sham.

But the show piles twist upon twist by having imperial guards storm the insurgents’ hideout almost immediately, imprisoning Azura and killing her comrades. It turns out that Dusk has been wise to Dawn’s deviations for some time, and allowed him to “escape” the palace—making it seem like he was in mortal danger just to spur him to action—in order to track him back to the rebels’ lair. It’s a terrific moment, one designed to make you sympathize with the devil, so to speak. When all is said and done, Azura is kept alive for further questioning (or torment), the clone Dawn is killed, and the original Dawn is brought back to the palace to await the judgement of Brother Day, on his way back from his taxing mission to subdue the Luminist faith. He will not, as Dusk tells Dawn, be in a forgiving mood.

Meanwhile—I guess? I mean, the timeline is not exactly clear—Salvor Hardin and the planet-killing warship Invictus appear in space above Terminus. Salvor survived the jump while conscious thanks to her latent psychic abilities. Lewis Pirenne, the ineffectual Foundation leader, sacrificed his own life to guide the ship home; it’s a nice little grace note for a character who existed mainly to frustrate other, more important characters.

At any rate, Salvor reunites with Hugo, who was sucked back to Terminus in the Invictus‘s “quantum vortex” along with the Thespin attack ships he summoned for help. While the Thespins investigate the huge warship, Salvor journeys planetside, and discovers that everyone, including the Anacreon invaders, has been knocked unconscious by the expanding null field surrounding the mysterious Vault. Salvor retrieves the puzzle-box-like Prime Radiant from her mother’s hand, and voilà, the Vault opens and transforms into a similarly radiant object. (It’s all a lot like a glossier version of imagery from Hellbound: Hellraiser II, and given series co-creator David Goyer’s involvement in the upcoming Hellraiser remake, I don’t think that’s a coincidence.)

But as the Vault opens—or is that awakens?—everyone on the planet awakens as well. That includes the Anacreons, who wind up stuck in a standoff with the Thespins. Ancreon Huntress Phara nearly ends the standoff the hardway via a stolen Thespin warship, but just as she’s about to rain death down upon her enemies, Salvor, who’d tried in vain to break through Phara’s jump-induced psychosis and get her to listen to reason, fires an arrow into the Huntress’s throat. Live by the bow, die by the bow, I guess.

And with that, who should emerge from the radiant beam emanating from the Vault but Hari Seldon himself. Looking over the assembled people, hailing from Anacreon, Thespis, and Terminus, he deems the assortment a fortuitous one. “We might actually pull this off,” he says with cheshire-cat grin, though what “it” is has yet to be seen.

Given the episode’s admittedly thrilling action on both Trantor and Terminus, Gaal Dornick’s voiceover narration might seem incongruously dour. She intones ominously about the pliable nature of history—how it can be weaponized, how it can be used to change the present, how “under the penstrokes of the right scribe, a villain becomes a hero, a lie becomes a truth.” These are pressing issues in the here and now, much less in a future civilization several millennia hence, in which humanity can’t even remember its common birthplace on planet Earth anymore, as a flashback to Salvor and her dad reveals. 

So I wonder if either the triumph of Hari Seldon on Terminus and the triumph of Brother Dusk on Trantor will bring us any closer to a positive resolution of Foundation‘s shared storyline. Who’s the hero who becomes a villain, to use Gaal’s formulation? Which is the lie that becomes the truth? The fall of civilization is inevitable, according to everything we’ve witnessed. Does this entertaining episode actually bring us any closer to rising from the ashes, or is it all a sideshow for the big collapse?

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch Foundation Episode 9 on Apple TV+