New Allies, Old Foes: Inside Foundation Season 3 Characters

Apple TV+ has shared the official trailer for season 3 of the Emmy-nominated series Foundation, the high-budget, high-concept adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s landmark science fiction series. The trailer offers a look at an embattled galaxy, an all-new crisis on an almost unimaginable scale, and the emergence of one of Asimov’s most formidable foes: The Mule. The series will premiere on July 11, 2025, and new episodes will release weekly through September 12.

Aimed more at fans of the series than the novels, Foundation has played fast and loose with Asimov’s source material. A loose serial in itself, the series has broken into huge temporal chunks with each season. The first jumped 138 years forward, and the second season culminated in the Second Crisis, a turning point where the Empire’s galactic rule and the Foundation are on the brink of all-out war. The Foundation has also taken a decidedly darker turn, weaponizing its religious dogma to spread its influence, while a secret colony of psionically gifted people known as “Mentalics” was also introduced.

Season 3, which will be set 152 years after the second season, places events in the middle of the “Third Crisis” of Asimov’s world. According to the official synopsis from Apple TV+, the Foundation is “now centuries old, having grown much more rooted and established than originally intended,” while the once-powerful Cleonic Dynasty is showing its first signs of weakness.” These two competing powers “must now come together to fight an enemy that threatens to unravel everything they have built”: the Mule, a charismatic warlord who is “equipped with an unstoppable army” and the power to control the minds of others.

Season 3 trailer artwork

In the trailer, we hear Hari Seldon, played by Jared Harris, set the scene: “Centuries ago, when we predicted the fall of the galaxy, the Foundation was created to save humanity. But the coming darkness was always the turning point.” He’s followed by Gaal Dornick, played by Lou Llobell, who warns: “We’re out of time.” This time, the villain with that kind of hubris is The Mule (played by Pilou Asbæk), who has a dangerous power: the ability to manipulate the emotions of others. “I can turn enemies into allies. Hate into love,” he says. “It only takes a little nudge.”

The Mule’s world-swallowing henchmen take on cities and battlescapes spectacularly, we see in this hour-long series based on Isaac Asimov’s classic sci-fi epic. Explosions, fistfights, and collapsing towers are just a few of the ways his star power is quite literally reducing people to ash.

Lee Pace, Cassian Bilton, and Terrence Mann return as the three cloned Brothers: Day, Dawn, and Dusk. Harris returns to play Hari Seldon, while Lou Llobell and Laura Birn reprise their roles as Gaal Dornick and Eto Demerzel, respectively.

This season, the Foundation also expands its scope to a host of new characters. Alexander Siddig, Troy Kotsur, and Cherry Jones are among the cast in key roles. Siddig is Dr. Ebling Mis, a man of some learning and a follower of Hari Seldon’s psychohistory who became a self-taught and very passionate psychohistorian; Kotsur plays Preem Palver, the leader of a planet of psychics; and Jones plays a Foundation ambassador named Quent. Also joining the cast are Brandon P. Bell as Han Pritcher, Synnøve Karlsen as Bayta Mallow, Cody Fern as Toran Mallow, Tómas Lemarquis as Magnifico Giganticus, Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing as Song, and Leo Bill as Mayor Indbur.

The New Bad Guy

The whole idea of Foundation was built on the theory of “psychohistory,” a quasi-science that models future trends using a combination of mathematics and sociology to predict the large-scale flow of historical events. But in the third season, that theory faces an unprecedented threat: the logic-defying power of the Mule, who can turn people’s “psyche” against itself.

Can Asimov’s psychohistory continue to predict the large-scale future when individuals can defy those predictions? We’ll just have to wait and see. For now, we get a dense (but effective) trailer full of teases and callbacks, and the bones of a large-scale conflict.

On its terms, the season will continue its tradition of space vistas and dense worldbuilding, all backed by an ambitious VFX budget and on-point visual design. We also have a character showdown that, in terms of stakes, may rival the final season of Game of Thrones. Could the Empire and Foundation be forced to work together? Can psychohistory work when human emotions can be bent and swayed? Is there a future for the galaxy?

Visually, Season 3 looks to deliver in more ways than one. Space vistas, rich fictional cultures, and big-budget set pieces are the bread and butter of the trailer. But the real kicker is the emotional fallout of that final confrontation. Can the galaxy rally to meet this new threat? Will Seldon’s plan work? Or has Foundation finally reached a moment of singularity where the future is unpredictable?

Season 3 is being billed as an all-new “crisis” in the Foundation world. If the earlier seasons were about putting the pieces of Seldon’s puzzle in place, this one might be the first that tests whether those pieces are enough to solve the puzzle. If that’s true, the Mule isn’t just going to tear the galaxy apart—he may even unravel Seldon’s plan by raising the idea that the future is impossible to predict.

Apple TV+ recently announced that the show’s last two seasons will debut on a weekly basis beginning on July 11. A complete list of showrunners can be found below.

As for other big projects on Apple TV+, the fourth season of the crime drama Cuts is out now. Servant will be back for a fifth season, with Noah Wyle expected to reprise his role as Dr. Julian Pearce. A second season of the historical docuseries Landslide is in the works, and fans of creative storytelling will also be able to check out the new fiction podcast Season One.