‘Foundation’ Season 2 Episode 6 Recap: The One Where ‘Foundation’ Goes Apesh*t

You know, when it comes to this week’s episode of Foundation, I think Tim Robinson put it best: What the fuck?! What the fuuuuuuuuck?!?!

Like, here I was, thinking about how much fun the show has gotten to watch, and how I’d write a nice little review about all the neat things that happened. Queen Sareth making a public power play, much to her newly announced betrothed Emperor Cleon XVI’s dismay, and becoming the Margaery Tyrell of Trantor in the process. Constant and Poly taking in the sights of the capital on their diplomatic journey, until a thoroughly blitzed Poly decides it’s time to get clean and chokes himself (and me) up by describing how inferior he feels when confronted with Constant’s true faith in Seldon’s plan. Hober Mallow arriving at the mothership of the genetically engineered Spacers, who live in honeycombs in something called “the Home Swarm.” Tellem and Hari struggling over the future of Second Foundation, which he wants to create with the Mentallics and which she will only agree to create if he agrees to depart forever. Gaal getting even more chosen-one-ish, via newly revealed telekinesis and Tellem’s assertion that she’s greater even than Hari. More incredible shots of spaceships than you’ll find in like the last five years of big-budget sci-fi put together. 

Then I got to the concluding episode-within-the-episode, as Hari Seldon sees his life flash before his eyes — including his revenge killing of the woman who murdered his pregnant wife!!!!!!!!! — while staked out in the ocean by Tellem to drown. Which he does. 

Tim, take it away:

I just…I don’t even…I am at a loss, man, I am at a frigging loss. Which is not to say I’m unhappy. Oh no, far from it! It’s not every day, or every financial quarter for that matter, that you get a twist sequence as batshit and ballsy as what writer Jane Espenson (working from a story by co-creator David S. Goyer) and director Alex Graves serve up here. I’m grasping to think of what it reminded me of and coming up with stuff I consider to be pretty titanic achievements, like the flashback in the penultimate episode of Boardwalk Empire Season 2, or the end of the untouchable eighth episode of Twin Peaks Season 3. That’s how much this leaps out at you, and grabs ahold.

It’s a combination of things that do it, really. First of all, it feels dramtically different it feels from everything that’s come before in the episode — whether on Trantor, where we see the politically fraught presentation of Sareth to the people of Empire and the arrival and eventual arrest of Foundation reps Constant and Poly; on Ignis, where Hari, Salvor, Gaal, and Tellem talk and spar over the future of Second Foundation; in deep space, where Hober Mallow finds himself inside a Jack Kirby comic. The sequence yanks us out of the present timeline after all, tearing us from the situation and stakes involved in all the current storylines. You really do feel like you’ve been forcibly ejected from what you’ve been watching.

Then there’s the broadness of it, the pulpiness, the sort of throwback quality. It’s all childhood origin stories, meet-cutes, spies in fedoras and trenchcoats, a hairstyle that makes Jared Harris look like Rocky Horror, romantic moments on a moonlit beach, kidnappings at gunpoint, an honest-to-god revenge plot. This insertion of a kind of retro novela in the middle of the main story extends all the way to the very very mid-‘60s styling of Fiona O’Shaughnessy as Dr. Tadj, the imperial liaison at Hari’s university who winds up being the triggerwoman against his wife Yanna before he kills her by shoving her into the path of stampeding dragons.

And, of course, there’s killing a woman by shoving her into the path of stampeding dragons. 

Look, do I know how to feel about this revelation? Not particularly! There’s a pretty big part of me that thinks — well, less that this ruins the character of Hari and more that Goyer and company had known this was in his backstory, this would have been better reflected in how he’s been written this whole time. It’s very hard to square Hari-as-The-Bride-from-Kill-Bill with Hari the benevolent professor.

On the other hand! We now know as of this episode that Hari’s digital duplicate within the Vault on Terminus had his memory and knowledge base edited by the real Hari, in part to keep him from learning about Second Foundation, which Hari intends to be a sort of guardian angel for the First, prodding them in the right directions without revealing itself. Even so, the digital Hari did torch Warden Jaegger to get everyone’s attention and impress up on them the idea that he’s a wrathful god. It’s true that the Warden was on the verge of becoming something of a religious dictator, but that’s still pretty cold-blooded. Murder may well be a common thread between the two Haris, rather than a matter of Vault-Hari being a doctored copy.

But the best reason to learn to stop worrying and love Killer Hari is this: It’s fuckin’ mint. It is just so, so cool that the show grabbed the wheel by both hands and drove itself right off the road to do something like this. It gives Jared Harris a ton more to do, in an episode where he was already doing some of his best work as the Hari we know and sort of love. It reveals both he and Tellem to be pretty rough customers when it comes down to it; indeed, it reveals Tellem to be a Mentallik supremacist who doesn’t really even regard what she’s doing to Hari as murder, because he’s a lesser animal. It gives us that incredible dragon stampede, and the House Greyjoy–ass method of execution favored by Tellem. 

(Who, by the way, is controlling the minds of Salvor and Gaal without them even realizing it, leading them to believe Hari has fled the planet safely. She also psychically provoked Hari into leaving his protégés in the middle of an argument, something he and I both thought was out of character.)

I know people watch television for mental comfort food, and I can get down with that. In the past several months I’ve marathoned most of Cheers, all of The Golden Girls, and every single episode of the original Japanese Iron Chef available in English. Comfort is good, comfort is fun.

But as an active viewer, as a critic, as a believer in the power of this art form, the thing I most adore is being shown things I couldn’t imagine on my own, things I couldn’t see coming no matter how hard I sat and tried. I’m not just talking about the reveal itself here — I’m talking about the way the episode is structured, with this final section coming as a complete shock, a near-total deviation from anything the show has ever done before. Isn’t that thrilling? Doesn’t it get you hype? In our world and his, Hari Seldon died so Foundation could truly live. 

(This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.)

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.