While being one of the most thoughtful and complex space epics currently on television, Apple TV+’s Foundation can hardly be called a strictly faithful adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s immortal novels. As showrunner David S. Goyer has pointed out more than once, the series is a “remix” of all the Foundation books, not just the trilogy, which is the most famous among the prose installments. And now, with a new trailer for the fast-approaching Foundation Season 3, one of the biggest and boldest changes from the books looks to be utterly justified.
As with the previous trailer for Foundation Season 3, this trailer makes it clear that the focus of the story this season is all about the Foundation clashing with the chaotic forces of the Mule (Pilou Asbæk). Roughly, this means that Foundation Season 3 will be drawing on elements from the latter half of the second book, Foundation and Empire, and much of the third book, Second Foundation. In those books, the Mule is a kind of rogue mutant telepath, whose mental powers of manipulation could not have been predicted by the prescient math of psychohistory. In a sense, in the books, the Mule is like the opposite of someone like Paul Atreides in Dune: a usurper who actually doesn’t align with any predestined prophecy or destiny.
