Apple TV’s “Foundation” lacked a strong, single antagonist for the first two seasons. There were a handful of enemies, but no one who really represented an enduring enemy of the show’s protagonists. It wasn’t until Season 3 that we got the mysterious mentalic (author Isaac Asimov’s version of a telepath who can control other people’s minds) known as the Mule (recast for Season 3 and played by Pilou Asbæk). He was teased at the end of Season 2, but the premiere of the following season is when he truly enters the story, controlling minds, wreaking havoc, and introducing chaos everywhere he goes. The thing is, the show’s version of the Mule is actually very different from Isaac Asimov’s books for two major reasons.
The first major change is that the intimidating character played by Asbæk is not supposed to be the Mule in the first place. In the books, there is a brawny front man, but it is actually the lanky, eccentric, lovable court jester Magnifico Giganticus who ends up being the Mule in disguise. Magnifico is in the show (played by Tómas Lemarquis), but he is his own individual character — a servant of the Mule, but not the Mule in disguise. Showrunner David S. Goyer opted to change the original sci-fi novel’s biggest villain by splitting the two personas.
Why would Goyer split the Mule into two characters?
David S. Goyer brought Pilou Asbæk’s intimidating character directly into Season 3 to establish how serious the threat was from the opening scene (where he takes over a planet single-handedly and without having to lift a finger). He also introduced Tómas Lemarquis’ Magnifico later on as an independent and genuinely empathetic separate character.
This sacrificed the twist in the books, which ends the Mule’s story with a giant reveal that it was Magnifico all along. This is one of the biggest and most exciting moments of the entire series, and it can catch a reader by surprise. But the signs are there all along, and Isaac Asimov doesn’t go to great pains to hide them.
By the time Magnifico is revealed as the actual big baddie pulling strings behind the scenes, he’s already been closely involved in the story for a while and has even made a scene by playing his magical visi-sonor (an important instrument that he uses to conjure visceral, audible, and visual experiences for his audiences). Towards the story’s conclusion, going the extra step of showing he was actually a villainous mentalic wasn’t a stretch.
While that element of surprise is lost in the show, splitting the Mule and Magnifico into two distinctly different characters served an important purpose. It established a more recognizable and predictable threat that audiences could hold onto throughout a busy and, at times, confusing season.
The Mule still had a bait-and-switch moment
The book reveal of the Mule as Magnifico wasn’t completely removed — it was just altered in a big way. In the end, the seemingly innocent interplanetary social media influencer Bayta Darell (Synnøve Karlsen) was the Mule in disguise. This Season 3 twist is a complete reversal of Isaac Asimov’s book, where Bayta is actually the character who discovers that the Mule is Magnifico. But again, showrunner David S. Goyer made the change for a good reason.
There aren’t a lot of female characters in Asimov’s original writing, and Goyer thought when the author finally introduced Bayta, she was a strong, clever character — and the perfect replacement for a bait-and-switch that would even pull the wool over book readers’ eyes. He explained to /Film, “I still think audiences tend to underestimate female characters, and when we think of who the big bad guy is, we think … it can’t be this sort of unassuming, seemingly shallow social media influencer.”
Apple TV greenlit Asimov’s “Foundation” series thanks to a one-sentence pitch from Goyer. The man had a clear vision from day one for a show that many people had considered unadaptable — and to achieve that vision, he’s had to change a lot of things. That’s always the case when it comes to going from the page to the screen. Shifts like the changes to the Mule show that Goyer brought a sense of confidence to the storytelling that has allowed the show to make major alterations while maintaining the North Star of the larger plot. With Goyer out of the picture now and “Foundation” Season 4 officially coming, here’s hoping “Foundation” stays on track as it juggles so many changes and tries to maintain a compelling story moving forward.
