Foundation season 2 ending explained and episode 10 recap

All good TV shows end with a bang, but Foundation season 2 has ended with many, many bangs, as well as a good few crashes and wallops too. Episode 10 of the hit Apple TV Plus sci-fi show brings high-profile and surprising deaths, big plot twists and surprising twists too.

Foundation season 2 recaps

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7
Episode 8
Episode 9

Love the show? We interviewed its Visual Effects Supervisor to learn how the world of Foundation season 2 was made and you can check out the article to learn about the ships, planets and dream spaces of the show.

Airing on Friday, September 15, 'Creation Myths' wraps up Foundation's second batch of ten episodes, tying off all the plot threads introduced through the season and also giving us a tacit nod towards (an as-yet unconfirmed) third season.

To make sure you fully understand what happened in Foundation season 2 episode 10, this recap will run through all the important events that took place in this final 54-minute episode. Plus, we'll explain the ending, in case you missed something.

Obviously, spoilers for the entire season ensue, so if you haven't already caught up, check out our article on how to watch Foundation season 2. So let's dive into our Foundation season 2 episode 10 recap and ending explainer.

The end of Empire? The end of Foundation?

Brother Day (Lee Pace) watches as Terminus falls apart. The next step of his plan is to destroy every other planet that Foundation converted, starting with Thespis (important in season 1). However the commander Bel Rios (Ben Daniels) refuses. Instead, Day orders the navigator to make the jump to the planet.

Here, Hober Mallow (Dimitri Leonidas) has his plan revealed. He wasn't rejected by the Spacers earlier in the season, and in fact his being handed over by them to Empire let him act as a Trojan Horse. Using code he smuggled, the navigator sets the entire fleet to self-destruct by jumping into itself. Plus, all the escape bays are deactivated.

Brother Day isn't happy and starts to beat up Mallow, and then Rios when the latter jumps in to defend the former. After a brutal fistfight, Day throws Mallow out of the airlock — except Rios snuck the place-swapping bracelet onto the leader, and as he floats into the vacuum of space, he swaps their places. Day ends up drifting through space while Rios is okay.

Well, okay, except for the fact he's on a ship that's due to explode. There's only space for one escapee, and Mallow makes Brother Constant (Isabella Laughlan) take it. They have an emotional farewell before she's jettisoned into space. Mallow and Rios share the wine he's been saving all season, which turns out to be rubbish, before the ship explodes.

Later, floating through space in her vessel, Constant's ship is swallowed by The Vault, which used to stand on Terminus before it exploded. There, she meets Poly Verisof (Kulvinder Ghir), Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) and every other inhabitant of the Foundation including her father (and Rios' husband Glawen, who can tell that his partner is dead) — turns out Hari's plan all along was to have Terminus destroyed, as all of Foundation would be sheltered by The Vault.

The giant vessel floats through space, on to destinations unknown. It's not clear if the passengers it shelters are real, or just digital replicas like Seldon is, but at least this means Foundation has a second chance.

A new Empire

Trapped in the secret room, Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann) and Enjoiner Rue (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) are trying to escape when Demerzel (Laura Birn) approaches. She reminisces about Cleon 1, and is upset that her programming compels her to carry on her current course of actions to follow this long-dead leader's actions.

We find out that Demerzel hired the assassins from episode 1, but has pinned the attempt on Queen Sareth (Ella-Rae Smith), who's promptly arrested for treason. Demerzel also knows Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) and his various secrets with Sareth and Dusk. Dusk realizes that, as clones of Cleon 1, they were just as trapped as Demerzel was, and the robot agrees before killing the two against her will.

Brother Dawn questions Demerzel about Sareth's capture and notices a green smear on her neck. This is a mark Dusk made just before his death, as green is the color of betrayal in their culture, and it's all Dawn needs to understand what's going on. Later, he sneaks Sareth out of her imprisonment.

Demerzel gets news of the fleet's destruction and Brother Day's death, just as Dawn and Sareth announce Day's death and their betrothal to the crowds. However, Demerzel can tell that these are actually Sareth's servants, using facial scramblers.

The real Dawn and Sareth are on a ship away from Trantor. They call Demerzel, letting her know that Sareth is pregnant, and warn the robot against following them as it'd turn them into martyrs. They too understand that Demerzel is just following her programming.

Sometime later, Demerzel decants a new version of Dawn, Day and Dusk — after all, they're all clones. However, these ones have a chip embedded into their head, which seemingly makes them more robotic, subservient and synchronized. Demerzel shows them the Prime Radiant, which she evidently did take from Hari in episode 9, and we find out that she's started to unravel all of its secrets.

The Second Foundation is formed

On Ignis, we're catching up after the death of Tellem Bond. The survival of Hari Seldon is explained to us: Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) could sense he was drowning earlier in the season, and so used her psychic powers to rescue him (how? We'll explain it in depth in our ending explainer below).

The surviving Mentalics approach the ship they and Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey) are sheltering in, but not with ill intent: Bond was mind controlling them, but now she's gone, they've had free will returned. The psychics bow to their saviors.

Later, they're all celebrating their freedom from Tellem's rule. However, she's left them a reminder, with a slither of her consciousness implanted in the young boy that Hardin befriended earlier in the season. He picks up a gun and prepares to shoot Gaal — but Salvor throws a knife at him and also jumps in the way. She kills the boy but also takes the bullet intended for Gaal.

Salvor is glad, though, that her death proves that the future isn't fixed (remember, we saw her dead body in Gaal's flashforward to 150 years in the future). Then she dies, and the Mentalics hold a funeral for her.

Later, Gaal is upset, wondering if Salvor's death had any positive, but Hari reassures her that the plan is still on track. Hari says that she needs to go into cryosleep for another 150 years, to prepare for the next threat: The Mule. Hari plans to stay awake and teach the Mentalics about psychohistory to prepare them to be Gaal's army, but she begs him to go into cryosleep with her so that she's not alone. He agrees.

The Mentalics hold a ceremony in which the two are placed into cryosleep, ready for their annual reawakenings to check that the Second Foundation is on track. It's clear that Gaal is about to be viewed as a god by the people.

We end with a flashforward 152 years into the future. The Mule is in a dingy prison on a war-ravaged planet, and he decides he needs to find Gaal Dornick and destroy her before she destroys him.

Foundation season 2 ending questions answered

How did Hari Seldon survive on Ignis?

Hari Seldon's transformation from digital persona to real person, and then eventual drowning death, was a big shock through Foundation season 2. And at the end of episode 9, we find out he survived — episode 10 shows us how.

Gaal used her psychic powers to control Hari's guard to release the drowning prisoner. Then, she controlled Hari, in order to subdue this guard and escape.

The two people linked minds so that Hari could scale a cliff face and walk all the way from the cove to the spaceship — all the while, they constantly recounted prime numbers, in order to make sure all the psychics didn't get wind of their plan.

The plan nearly ended prematurely when Gaal was captured, but Salvor's rescue attempt put it back on track.

How did Salvor die if she's around in the future?

Early into Foundation season 2, Gaal uses her psychic powers to glimpse into the future, and one of the things she sees is Salvor's dead body. This is a major point of conflict between the mother and daughter through the season, as Gaal wants to protect Salvor, but the latter thinks that the future isn't set in stone.

Salvor turns out to be correct, though her proof involves her dying. By succumbing to her gunshot wound in the current year, she's totally dead, and can't be around 150 years into the future to be killed by The Mule.

By proving that this part of Gaal's vision is incorrect, it means that maybe other parts of the vision aren't set in stone. Like, for example, The Mule being a threat in the first place — if Gaal can take him down ahead of time.

Does the Second Foundation get set up?

The Second Foundation is an important part of psychohistory, as it provides checks and balances to make sure that the real Foundation is on course. Hari's quest in season 2 is to set this group up, and he's mostly successful.

Hari wants to train the Mentalics on Ignis to be this Second Foundation, however due to Gaal's pleas, he decides not to actually lead them himself. Instead, the duo will wake up once a year to check that the group is on course to be ready for The Mule in the future.

This doesn't fulfill all of the purposes of the Second Foundation, but it's good enough.

What is Demerzel's motivation?

In the last few episodes of Foundation season 2, it becomes clear that the Emperors' robotic handmaiden has been working behind the scenes to control Empire, based on programming given to her by the initial Cleon 1.

While this doesn't make her a villain per se — in fact, she's shown to be upset by what her programming makes her do — it does mean she's opposed to basically every character we've been following so far, including Foundation and also Brothers Dawn and Dusk who have started to rebel against their roles in Empire.

Demerzel's programming dictates that she preserve the Genetic Dynasty for as long as possible. That included sabotaging Brother Day's engagement with Queen Sareth, killing Enjoiner Rue and Brother Dusk when they revealed her secret, and deleting lots of the Emperors' memories that could threaten her.

This programming does let others control her though — Dawn points out when escaping that the best way for her to achieve her goal is let him live, not kill him, an argument which works out.

Now that Dusk is dead and Dawn has escaped, no one left on Trantor can threaten Demerzel — although the slow changing of the Emperors' genetic codes could prove a problem in further seasons. After all, if two versions of the clone would go against what they're told, more could too.

What does Demerzel's Prime Radiant mean?

At the end of the Empire's story line, Demerzel has a version of the Prime Radiant (remember, which contains all of psychohistory) and she's starting to understand it, when she shows it off to the newly-cloned Emperors.

Demerzel's knowledge of psychohistory could be a threat to the Foundation. The mathematic principle tells of the fall of Empire, but if Demerzel has the spoiler-filled history of the galaxy, she can easily find ways to avoid it.

The Second Foundation will find this an issue too. Gaal and Hari have previously been the only people with a Prime Radiant, so they can see the effects of their actions on the course of the future. Now that another party has access, she can tamper with it just as much too.

Does Foundation survive the destruction of Terminus?

Yes — all your beloved characters on Foundation through season 2 (well, the few we actually met) seemed to die at the end of episode 9, but they actually survive.

This is because The Vault somehow managed to suck them all in before Terminus exploded, and now it acts as an ark to take them somewhere else. It's shown that countless survivors live inside this mystical structure.

It's not quite clear if The Vault actually managed to absorb all these people as physical entities, or just digital ones. The latter makes a lot more sense, and it has precedent — both versions of Hari Seldon are actually digital reconstructions of the original, and the replica that set up the Second Foundation is actually transformed back into a human through as-yet-unexplained means.

So maybe all of Foundation will be returned to humanhood when they set up shop again.

Who dies in Foundation season 2?

Here's a full list of the major characters that are gone by the end of Foundation season 2, including ones introduced in the season and ones who are carried over from the initial season.

Characters who survived, even in digital or cryogenic ways, aren't included.

• Salvor Hardin — dies protecting Gaal from an assassination on Ignis

• Tellem Bond — killed by Hari Seldon in a brutal mauling

• Hober Mallow — dies when the ship he's in explodes

• Bel Rios — dies when his ship explodes

• She-Bends-Light — presumably dies when Rios' ship explodes

• Brother Day (season 2 version) — body-swapped into space

• Brother Dusk (season 2 version) — killed by Demerzel for discovering hers cret

• Enjoiner Rue — killed by Demerzel for discovering her s ecret

Who survives in Foundation season 2?

And here are the major characters who should show up in Foundation season 3, if it's renewed, and the state they're in.

• Gaal Dornick — cryogenically frozen on Ignis, to wake annually until 150 years have passed 

• Hari Seldon (both versions) — the human version is cryogenically frozen on Ignis, to wake annually until 150 years have passed. The Foundation copy pilots The Vault as it floats through the universe.

• Most of the Mentalics — remain living on Ignis, to be trained up as soldiers and prophets of psychohistory to create the Second Foundation. This will monitor the original Foundation and prepare for the war against The Mule.

• Demerzel — remains on Trantor, and creates a new batch of Emperors she can rule through.

• Brother Dawn (season 2 version) — flees Trantor with Queen Sareth, presumably to her home of the Cloud Dominion.

• Queen Sareth — is pregnant and flees Trantor with Brother Dawn, presumably to her home of the Cloud Dominion.

• Poly Verisof — The Vault protects him from the fall of Terminus

• Brother Constant — The Vault protects her from the fall of Terminus

• Glawen Curr — The Vault protects him from the fall of Terminus

• The entirety of Foundation — The Vault protects them from the fall of Terminus

• The Mule — is preparing for Gaal Dornick's war against him