The first half of Foundation season 2 comes to a head with episode 5, The Sighted and The Seen, which aired on Friday, August 11. The Apple TV Plus sci-fi epic's ten-episode run is now half over and we're deep in the woods.
So far, the show has been alternating between several storylines: the founding of the Second Foundation, the Second Seldon Crisis which threatens the original Foundation and the efforts of its inhabitants to stop it, and also the continued downfall of the Galactic Empire.
So it's a very busy TV show and even if you know how to watch Foundation season 2 and have been keeping up-to-date, you may still be struggling to work out just what happened in the latest episode.
That's particularly true as Foundation season 2's fifth episode largely stands separate from the fourth, focusing on characters and story lines we didn't see much of last week. There's none of Hober Mallow or Brother Constant and Poly Verisof's quests, the Terminus Vault isn't mentioned and Bel Rios doesn't show up to continue his investigation.
So if you need a little recap on just what happened in The Sighted and The Seen, here's our recap of Foundation season 2 episode 5.
Spycraft in the empire
Queen Sareth (Ella-Rae Smith) and Enjoiner Rue (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) question the spy they enrolled in the last episode, but he couldn't find any information out about the assassination of Sareth's family, or how Brother Day survived the attempt on his life.
Sareth goes to Brother Day's (Lee Pace) bedroom, ostensibly to consummate their future marriage but really to examine the scene of the assassination attempt. Unfortunately he notices, so she has to defend herself and say she's purely interested in knowing that she's safe if she marries him. In order to continue their engagement he's made to vow that he's hunting for the assassins, but then he orders her out.
Day speaks to Demerzel (Laura Birn), who ensures him that there's nothing tying him to the murder of Sareth's family, which hints that he actually was the person who ordered it (but he doesn't explicitly confirm it, leaving a tiny bit of wiggle room).
Sareth and Rue find out that all of the palace staff's memories are stored, including the Brothers', and send their spy to collect one. They watch Day's revival, from episode one, and discover through it that Demerzel is a robot. Uh-oh, there go some state secrets! Sareth also cottons on to the fact that Brother Day is sleeping with this robot.
Dawn and Dusk meet
Thirty years in the past, we see Brother Day 'pursue' a young Enjoiner Rue. This is the projection of a memory being watched in the present by Rue and Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann). The Day from 30 years ago is now Dusk, and so he's letting Rue watch their old memories, as her mind was wiped after they hooked up.
He asks her if she notices this lack of this memory, but she says she doesn't seem to mind, and wouldn't be able to notice if it wasn't for the payoff she received afterward.
After this conversation with Rue, Dusk begins to question whether his own memories could have been adjusted without his knowledge, and he comes to the realization that Day could be wiping or altering them. He and Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) summon a hologram of the original Emperor Cleon, who provides no useful information whatsoever, and basically just sasses them for there being discord amongst the three clones.
Instead, the duo speaks to the keeper of their memories (a tiny role played by Ed Birch, who fans of The Witcher will recognize as King Vizimir), in order to see if there's a discrepancy in the amount of memory their stored memories take up. It seems like they use the same amount of memory as all their previous clones, suggesting that no memory has been wiped or altered... until they notice that the amount of memory stored by the original Cleon is way, way higher. Perhaps it's not just those two, but all clones of Cleon that are having their memories removed?
Sighting the past and the future
Last time we saw the main version of Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) he had been mysteriously turned from a hologram into a human, and he's been having some trouble adjusting, no small thanks to visions he's been having of Raych (who, if you'll remember, died early on in season 1).
He's unable to provide a good answer to Gaal (Lou Llobell) and Salvor (Leah Harvey) as to why he's suddenly been re-alived, cue even more of the bickering that's defined the story of these three so far through season 2. The trio descends in their spaceship to Ignus, where they plan to set up the Second Foundation. A small setback occurs in their planet when Salvor crashes their ship straight into the planet.
Salvor rushes into the jungle to hunt for a figure she spotted during the descent, and finds none other than her season 1 boyfriend Hugo, who has a very romantic explanation for his still being alive over a century after their break-up: he intentionally went into cryosleep to find her.
However upon returning to the ship Hari is suspicious, and won't let them back in, so Salvor returns command of the ship to Hugo... which reveals that this is not, in fact, Hugo, but someone using mind powers to make the trio think it is. He takes Salvor captive but loads of ruffians break into the ship anyway and knock the trio unconscious.
Upon waking the trio meet Tellem Bond, the 'Incarnation of the Goddess', who knows all about them. This woman is the head of the mentalics (remember, the telepathic order mentioned earlier in the season), and she welcomes them to her planet.
However, when the trio leaves, she admits to her subordinate that she's looking for the Prime Radiant (which Hari told Gaal to hide earlier in the episode), in order to stop the Second Foundation from being established. Given that she's literally a psychic, it seems that our heroes hiding this information may be a little tricky.
