‘Foundation’ Season 2 Episode 2 Recap: The Yellowjackets Problem and Other Observations

If I were to construct a Prime Radiant based on all my knowledge of all the shows I’ve ever reviewed, I’d gaze into its holographic projection of the future and tell you that if things continue along their current path, there are warning signs for what might happen. It happened to Billions, for example. It happened to The Leftovers. Closest to home of all, it happened to the earlier Lee Pace starring vehicle Halt and Catch Fire. What happened, you ask? (“What happened, O Prophet?” is also acceptable.) What happened was that shaky shows with glimmers of promise in their first seasons became dynamite in their second. If I’m not mistaken, if there’s no intervening Crisis, Foundation is on that golden path. 

But let me tell you a path Foundation does not seem to be on: The Yellowjackets Path. Simply put, Yellowjackets is half a good show. The survival-horror material centered on the characters as teenagers in the ‘90s is much stronger, scarier, and more emotionally involving than the comedic murder hijinks of their adult selves in the present day. This despite the fact that it’s the grownups rather than the teens who have all the star power: Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Melanie Lynskey, Elijah Wood, etc.

Though that star-power dynamic is reversed on Foundation, the underlying discrepancy is not. It was, up until this season anyway, basically half a good show, with Jared Harris and Lee Pace’s stuff outshining that of Lou Llobdell and Leah Harvey. To be clear, I’ve always blamed the writing rather than the acting — there’s only so much you can do with a season full of realizing-I’m-the-chosen-one clichés — but the fact of the matter is the show came alive when Cleon and Hari were on screen and then kind of went into cryosleep when they weren’t, no matter how many laser-gun fights Salvor had with space barbarians.

Though we’re only two episodes deep into the show’s second season, it seems as if veteran genre writers Jane Espenson and David S. Goyer (also the show’s creator and showrunner) sussed out that their machine was off balance and set about righting the ship. For starters, they’ve completely merged the Hari, Salvor, and Gaal plotlines via the discovery of that second sentient posthumous Hari AI. Good idea: If the show does indeed come alive when Hari’s on screen, use him to revive your dormant characters.

But more importantly, they’ve really let ‘er rip over there. I buy that Salvor and Gaal care about each other due to their unique older daughter/younger mother relationship, and that their constant near-death experiences (in this episode Gaal deliberately deprives herself of oxygen to induce a psychic vision of the future, in which she finds Salvor dead in combat) bring them closer and closer together. That livens them up with or without Hari.

And with him? Hoo boy! Jared Harris peels the paint off the walls as he rails against Gaal’s rash decision to imprison his mind and abandon his plan, sentencing him to decades of maddening isolated consciousness and causing a divergent timeline by failing to create the Second Foundation, a crucial component of his grand plan. Harris is a hoot here: “And why is the plan off course, Gaal?” he deadpans through his fury when she explains this to him; when Salvor and Gaal suggest warning the Foundation of a coming war with Empire, Hari chimes in with a withering “Yes, good idea!” before remind them that this is what the Second Foundation was supposed to be for. 

(Which is true, by the way: It was meant to be a branch of the project with intimate knowledge of Hari’s plan, unlike the First Foundation, so that they could manipulate Empire in ways favorable to the First Foundation’s continued survival and success.)

Goyer and Espenson also make Salvor and Gaal the vector through which one of the show’s most long-awaited moments takes place: the arrival of the telepathic warlord known as the Mule (Mikael Persbrandt), an anomalous figure in human history who threatens to plunge civilization into a dark age from which it will never escape, 30,000 years in the future or otherwise. (There goes my theory that the show would make either Gaal or Salvor themselves the Mule. Oh well!) If they’re the characters arrayed against the story’s big bad, so much the better for keeping our interest.

Then there’s the Cleon material, which remains pure gold. In this episode, the Cleons train (unsuccessfully) to move as one while eating dinner, something that once came naturally to them, in order to impress Queen Sareth. (That’s “Dominion” to you, peon, just like Brother Day is called “Empire.” Also, in the future, please refer to me as “Tiny Apartment.”) Dominion breaks the Brothers’ chops throughout the episode — inappropriately flirting with Dawn, talking openly about how her future children with Day would end the clone dynasty, teasing Day about how he wouldn’t even know he’d been replaced had the assassination attempt in the previous episode succeeded. She even raises the question of whether their children would be lab-grown or the fruit of “my as yet unexploited womb.” I hate to say it, but hubba hubba! 

Actor Ella-Rae Smith has as much of a ball in all these scenes as Lee Pace does. She carefully leverages her character’s tragic backstory — everyone in her family who’d been trained to rule was killed in a zeppelin crash, leaving a “dilettante” like her in charge — as a way to make power play after power play while leaving everyone too taken aback by her candor to react the way they would with a more experienced politician. It’s clever writing, and Smith is alluring and fascinating in how she works with it.

There’s an interesting third branch of the story to which we’re introduced as well. Turns out the Foundation has formed a religious sect, mostly as a way to recruit other planets in the outer rim to the cause in terms they understand, so as to use them as a source of funding, arms, and manpower when war arrives. At least, that’s how folks like Warden Yeager and the Director (Oliver Chris) see it. To actual members of the clergy, such as Novice Cleric Brother Constant (Isabella Laughland) and her good-hearted but drunken mentor the High Cleric (Kulvinder Ghir) — who, by the way, was that one feral kid who ran around the Foundation’s colony 150 years ago and is today the only living person in the Foundation who saw Hari Seldon’s apparition — it’s more a means of spreading enlightenment. This cuts no ice with the Director, who only keeps the High Cleric in the job because Constant is his daughter and she’d be pissed otherwise. Nepotism gets shit done, my friends.

Two dark notes linger after the episode draws to a close. First, judging from her strange recent actions and the covetous way she eyes a portrait of the Empire’s greatest empress on the palace mural walls, the robot Demerzel — whose robotic nature is kept a secret from Dominion by the Cleons — is gunning for the throne herself. Second, the Mule tells Gaal about some enemy of Empire known as Hober Mallow…which is exactly the name that appears in cursive on the sides of the opened Vault on Terminus, and which Warden Yeagher bellows before he gets burned to a crisp by the Vault’s power. (Goodbye, Holt McCallany, we hardly knew ye.)

Are there still problems with the show? Yeah, I think so. Espenson and Goyer’s dialogue can tend a little towards cutesy Whedonesque profane reactions to the sacred, as it were (i.e. a lot of people see incredible things happening and cuss or quip about it). And there’s a tendency to gin up instant physical stakes for not inherently dangerous tasks in order to add an element of tension or excitement, like Salvor having to ride the outside of her spaceship to open up a vent, or Gaal needing to have a near-death experience to receive her visions of the future (which are in fact memories from her future self; it’s complicated). 

But do all the preexisting strengths of the show still apply? They do. From the director’s chair, Goyer serves up one absolutely lovely shot after another, as has been this show’s tendency from way back when. It really is the one big-budget SFF adaptation other than House of the Dragon where you can see where the money went on screen, and the results, as you can see in the gifs scattered throughout this review, make this one of the nicest shows to look at on television. If it gets all its ducks in order, as it seems it might have done, this thing is gonna be an entertainment juggernaut.

(This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the show being covered here wouldn’t exist.)

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.