paying off the long-simmering tease of the villainous Mule (Pilou Asbæk) and rushing headlong into the final few months of the Cleonic Dynasty’s reign over the galaxy. Those who don’t pay attention to their psychohistory are doomed to fall victim to it, to paraphrase a certain scientist/doomsday prophet named Hari Seldon (Jared Harris), and we’re finally witnessing the chickens coming home to roost after centuries of Empire pretending that nothing was wrong. All of these seeds were planted as early as the very first episode of the Apple TV+ series back in 2021 … as was the individual secretly responsible for setting this grand plan into motion in the first place.
Say it with me, folks: It was Demerzel all along. The loyal robot played by Laura Birn throughout the show has always pledged her allegiance to Empire — or, at least, has done so ever since the end of her involvement in the Robot Wars and her subsequent reprogramming to serve the Cleons. This being a story based on prolific sci-fi genius Isaac Asimov’s writings, of course, the character is bound by the Three Laws of Robotics that prioritize the safety of human beings (known as the Zeroth Law in the world of “Foundation”). That’s what makes it all the more shocking early on in the fourth episode of this season, when Demerzel meets with Zephyr Vorellis (Rebecca Ineson) for her unburdening — essentially a therapy session for a character doomed to keep the worst secrets to herself for unimaginable lengths of time — and admits that she was responsible for the single deadliest act of terror we’ve seen in the entire show.
Remember that whole Sky Bridge bombing way back in the season 1 premiere? This mass-casualty attack was originally attributed to two bickering kingdoms of the Imperium, Anacreon and the neighboring planet Thespis, but the truth turns out to have been far more complicated than that. The big twist involves Demerzel taking responsibility for this heinous event and, in the process, rewriting everything we thought we knew about the narrative to this point.
