Foundation season 2’s ending episodes put their heart behind their robot

There is always a woman behind every Cleon imperial. The Cleons are not complete without their majordomo-matriarch-handmaid Demerzel (Laura Birn), a humanlike robot thousands of years old. She has one role: to serve Empire and protect the succession of Cleon clones, the elderly Dusk (Terrence Mann), the adult Day (Lee Pace), and the young adult/child Dawn (Cassian Bilton), each decanted to ensure the perpetuating reign of Cleon I’s genetic dynasty.

The following are some of the ways to get in touch with us Foundation,In the Isaac Asimov adaptation, the story of Demerzel is still the most captivating. The relationship between Demerzel’s royal Cleon-clones and Demerzel has many moving parts. Foundation The book is written by David S. Goyer, Josh Friedman and Josh Friedman. Apple TV Plus. Seemingly with pleasure, Demerzel has guarded the loop of the Cleon I’s reign. This season, however, throws Demerzel into a crisis of royal proportions, which explores the tenuous nature of her relationship to control, Cleon, who puppeteers both her and her young Cleons, as well as her own puppeteering. And her turmoil tracks with the show’s depiction of the human hubris that allows intended futures to go awry.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Foundation. Interviews in this story were conducted before the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes against the AMPTP went into effect.]

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Toward the end of the season, Brother Dusk (the XVIII incarnation) and Dawn (XVI) dive deep into Demerzel’s history and realize she has another title: the “forever empress” of the late Cleon I. The current Cleons realize that they’re the puppets of Demerzel, not the other way around. This means she’ll eliminate the undesirable Cleons — and meddle in their affairs — on behalf of Cleon I.

As we learn in Season 2, Demerzel, despite her best efforts to be conscientious, cannot resist this internal programming. If she has to sacrifice a colorblind Dawn because he doesn’t fit the genetic perfection of the first Cleon, she’ll snap his neck. If a Cleon orders her to assassinate Zephyr Halima (T’Nia Miller), she’ll do it. As long as it fits her code’s interpretation of what serves Cleon I, she’ll do it — with tears streaming down her eyes.

But the “forever empress” reveal clashes against another crisis, when Day (Cleon XVII) engages in a royal coup of his own: betrothing himself to an outsider queen, Queen Sareth of Dominion (Ella-Rae Smith), so his bloodline can inherit the throne. It’s a genetic divergence from the mandated “genetic dynasty” (corrupted as it may be). But while the sidelined Dawn and Dusk grapple with the benefits and downsides of being disinherited from the throne, Demerzel has been operating behind the scenes to sabotage Day and Sareth’s upcoming union to eliminate the genetic divergence. Demerzel has to force herself to disobey one Cleon’s order to serve Empire.

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In an interview with Polygon, Birn said she sees Demerzel’s rebellion between the wishes of different Cleons as paradoxical, even for her: “It’s very shocking for her after all this time that she also realizes that she doesn’t have everything under control, that Empire is actually kind of also running away from her.” Demerzel has wept over executing Cleons’ will against her conscience, but she’s distraught that they’re changing the system she knows.

Demerzel’s a theme that connects players to their mortal mortality in an effort for control of space, consistency, or change. Foundation. Imagine the Mentalics leader Tellem, (Rachel House), transferring herself to other bodies in order to maintain control over her cult. Psychohistorian Hari Seldon’s (Jared Harris), on the other hand, guides his followers through holograms and clones to help him build his Foundation as part of his war against Empire. He plays god over many individual affairs. They seek control of the galactic path through co-opting or desecrating another person’s will.

What makes Demerzel’s position tragic compared to other players is that, while she’s an operator, she’s also a co-opted body, a near-immortal vessel for one dead emperor’s bidding. When Demerzel berates Cleon XVII, her leitmotif “The Dream of Cleon the First” (composed by Bear McCreary) plays. Demerzel’s singing gives it its melody, though her name is absent in its title.

Her religious convictions show her limits in her quest for control. She believes in Luminism – a religion which preaches fluidity and seeking. But when the Foundation cleric Poly Verisof (Kulvinder Ghir) preaches the changeability of the soul — “The point is changing the disciple’s soul” — on beat is a close-up of Demerzel’s expression, as if restraining her intrigue. It is easy to see how she has abandoned this hope. She’s a servant of Cleonic stasis, and has acted against her soul.

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Demerzel’s dehumanization under Empire can be charted by the Cleons co-opting her stories for their own devices. Day (the XIII), who is the first season, uses the tale of her Spiral Pilgrimage and birthroot Flower to deceive and win the favor of the Luminists. The second season goes even deeper. A memory holo of Cleon I tells the story of Demerzel’s captivity, how he “freed” her, and also how he installed her obedience programming. But as she puts it later — echoing the seduction mind games of Ex Machina — “Cleon [I] had rewritten our story in his wandering mind, chose to remember his coercion as communion.” On a gilded leash, she is molded into a custodian of his Cleon legacy.

And even as an exiled Dawn assures her that true happiness could be within reach, selfhood is not something Demerzel is afforded (at least, not until the day when she can overcome Cleon I’s programming just as she once overcame the Laws of Robotics). Demerzel, now that the entire Cleon Triad is gone, orchestrates the replacements of Dawn, Day and Dusk. Now with Hari Seldon’s Prime Radiant in her grip, Demerzel’s position implies that she will impose sterner surveillance over the new Cleons’ actions and desires to sustain galactic reign. Through this new batch, she can double down on her (and Cleon I’s) legacy in a dogmatic fashion that echoes how other Foundation players parent their reluctant protégés to adhere to their vision and follow a “correct” path to their legacy. But if there’s any ethos that FoundationMore a powerful entity imposes its will on their subject, the greater the resistance, biting back, and looking beyond. Demerzel’s devotion to stagnancy perhaps drives Empire closer to Seldon’s predicted fall.

What a perverse, eternal quest she is on. Demerzel can feel how Cleon I’s will is cross-wired with her genuine affection and her individuality. Demerzel lives in a world of paradoxes: Cleon I’s manipulation is at odds with her individuality, as are his orders, which merge with her own self-preservation and wants. The disintegrating loop of the Cleon dynasty – reaping “a blighted field,” in her words — that Demerzel occupies is a vicious one. The loop has been Demerzel’s cage. But if she doesn’t reinforce it, then her whole world falls into the void.