The complex SF series returns to Apple TV+ tomorrow for a new chapter that turns everything upside down. Decryption with the creator and director.
While Canal + ends the broadcast of season 1 tonight, season 2 of Foundation will be launched tomorrow on Apple TV+ (and also for MyCanal subscribers). Isaac Asimov’s adaptation takes on a new chapter, with a big leap in time. Complex but still as exciting and accessible, the leitmotif of the creator, screenwriter and director david goyerwhich deciphers for Première the return of the sumptuous SF series.
Beware of spoilers!
Where are we in Foundation season 2, when does the story resume?
david goyer : 138 years after season 1. We are on the eve of the second crisis that Harry Seldon had predicted with his Psychohistory. This second crisis will be a war between the Foundation and the Empire. And, obviously, the Foundation doesn’t have the power to match the Empire…
But the Foundation has still greatly expanded since the end of season 1…
They were 25,000 – or maybe even less – to populate an arid and austere world, namely the planet Terminus. Today, at the start of Season 2, the Foundation spans 7 worlds. Slowly, she progresses, recovers new planets that the Empire is struggling to hold, guided by the precepts of the Church of the Galactic Spirit (or scientism), which idolizes Seldon.
Precisely, what will be the place of Harry Seldon at the beginning of this season 2?
Harry has become something of a prophet. He planned to use technological advances in science to wow the crowds and thus form a new religion. His followers, spread across these new, still primitive Foundation worlds, promise the inhabitants to save them from evil and darkness if they join them in this cult. This idea was already present in Asimov’s work, this desire to use religion as a gateway to scientific rationalism. Everyone now sees Harry as almost a God, and that was his plan from the start. But it’s a double-edged sword. Because as soon as you are elevated to a deity rank, you cut yourself off from your mortality, from your humanity and you can become a threat to people who idolize you. We will explore that this season as well.
At the other end of the Galaxy, Empire is no longer the same. Which Brother on the Big Day (Brother Day) do we discover in season 2?
The genetic dynasty has been corrupted. This is what we learn at the end of season 1. There can no longer be perfect clones. When we find Frère au Grand Jour (Brother Day), it is the 17th version of Empire, 5 generations later. It’s not the same character as in season 1. It’s a man steeped in insecurities, who tries to compensate otherwise. He trains six hours a day in the gym. He is super muscular. He knows he can’t be Cleon 1st, so he’s determined to be Cleon, the last of the line!
Is it complicated to write characters that literally change from one season to the next?
No, because with the other authors, we said to ourselves that we were going to approach them as new characters. Without asking questions. With their strengths, their weaknesses. What happened before can have consequences on who they became, but they are fundamentally different beings, with different characters.
And then in the middle, between the Empire and the Foundation, we will find Gaal…
She was supposed to be there on Terminus in Season 1. To be the Psychohistorian who would be there for Harry when the monolith opened. But it didn’t happen that way. It was his daughter who was there in his place! In season 2, they both reunite and it’s important that the dynamic works, even without the sci-fi elements around it. We wrote their story thinking that it had to go the distance, outside of SF. Gaal is the story of a young woman who abandoned her daughter and didn’t even know she was still alive. Suddenly, she appears on her doorstep hoping to form a relationship with her mother… But things don’t go as she imagined. It’s a human story, which can speak to everyone, even without science fiction.
Foundation, season 2 in 10 episodes, to see on Apple TV+ and also in France for Canal+ subscribers.
