Over the last couple of years I’ve loved watching through the first two seasons of Apple TV+’s massive sci-fi saga Foundation – but not I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I could give you a blow-by-blow of all the important events that have happened so far. I’ve even read the original Isaac Asimov books, and I still find it a little hard to keep track of exactly what’s happened so far.
This is key ahead of the start of a third season of the show on 11 July – being able to recall the major developments from last season is a bit of a must-do. So, it’s pretty ideal that Apple just uploaded what it’s titled an “Actually Helpful Recap: Fast Forward to Season 3” for the show.
In just two and a half minutes, it speeds through everything you need to remember from the last couple of seasons of TV, reminding us where the major characters were all situated when it ended. In some shows that would mean only a handful of figures, but in one as sprawling as Foundation there are multiple disparate threads to keep track of.
There’s Emperor Day in the heart of the Empire, attempting to keep himself alive despite ages in which he’s been a disposable asset like his older and younger clones. Then there’s the original foundation, which is still scrambling to keep itself alive in a frontier space, and the offshoot second foundation that’s struggling to become established as a counterweight to its older equivalent.
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Each of these holds characters with their own arcs and stories, and there’s also the overarching threat of The Mule, a big baddie who’s seemingly going to play a much larger part in the third season of the show. He has the capacity to rip apart all the carefully-laid plans of Hari Seldon, the psychohistory expert who came up with the scheme in the first place.
Even just summarising things like this, I’ve had to do some web searches to refresh my memory of things, so it’s great that Apple’s uploaded a video to help people out. If you’re planning to pick the show back up with season 3, I think it’s basically a mandatory watch, although you might even want to save it for closer to the show’s premiere.
