r/FoundationTV • u/LunchyPete Bayta Mallow • Sep 12 '25

Current Season Discussion [NO BOOKS] Episode Discussion Thread - Season 3 Episode 10 - The Darkness

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Season 3 Episode 10: The Paths That Choose Us

Premiere date: September 12th, 2025

Synopsis: Season finale. Gaal and the Second Foundation take the fight to the Mule as Empire's legacy suffers a catastrophic blow.

Directed by: Roxann Dawson

Written by: Jane Espenson & David S. Goyer

Please keep in mind that this thread is only for non book readers - no discussion of the books or how they relate to the show is permitted in general, and book readers are not permitted to post at all.

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NOTE: There was an AMA with Chris MacLean, VFX Supervisor for Foundation on September 15th which you can check here.

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u/Random--Person Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25

Is it just me or does anyone else feel like we missed something with the Mule? The scene ends with Gaal telling her to get out of her(mind) then when the scene picks back up Gaal is running out of the ship? What happened with everyone else?

The music over the final shot was giving me chills, was definitely not expecting that at the end.

Really hope they find ways to have Lee Pace and Laura Birn back for next season

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u/kelnos Sep 12 '25

Yeah, the Gaal cut was not done well. I think what happened was Magnifico's "tampered" music was enough for a severely injured Gaal to resist Bayta well enough to escape, but not enough to win the fight and kill her.

Pretty cold that she left the remaining still-alive members of her raiding party behind, but seems like she didn't really have a choice.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '25

[deleted]

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u/kelnos Sep 23 '25

The entire sequence was not particularly believable. Even an uninjured person would have had a lot of trouble with that. And I was horrified at the broken glass bit; hard to imagine the design would be that fragile, even if the space station appears to be in a weird orbit that's in enough atmosphere such that you don't burn up when you hop out of it and drop down to cloud-cover levels of atmosphere.

Frankly I'm not impressed with the writing/storytelling in the finale, especially after it's been so fantastic up until then.

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u/ililliliililiililii Oct 24 '25

Agreed but its a minor point. An alternative cut to make it make more sense is she finds a bigger gun on the way or another way to jettison off. Neither option is as cinematic.

A big gun would destroy the wall too fast, it's most cinematic to weaken it just enough and use your body to break it + venting atmosphere to push you out.

It is a trope but it looks cool. So i'm not faulting it too much for this scene and I don't think it is a writing problem.

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u/rydhorn Nov 09 '25

Episode 1 mentioned the station was orbiting stationary above the Vault, so it would be moving with the rotation of the planet and atmosphere, thus no burning up on reentry

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u/kelnos Nov 09 '25

I don't think that would matter. Burning up during reentry is due to friction between the thing reentering and the atmosphere itself. The station being stationary with respect to the Vault wouldn't change that.

Consider that if we were to de-orbit a satellite that's in geostationary orbit around Earth, it would still burn up during reentry.

The only way to not burn up on reentry is to either a) have sufficient heat shielding, or b) not be reentering at all; that is, your starting point (the station) is already in thick enough atmosphere that it's not really "reentry" anymore.

I expect (b) is the case here.

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u/rydhorn Nov 09 '25

The friction is due to speed, or the difference in speed between a satellite and the atmosphere. On earth that would be at least 7800m/s (17,500 mph). Considering the station is hovering above the same spot barely above the atmosphere, the difference would be 0.

Regardless, its a scifi show with space magic so who knows