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selenakThere were severa new onesl I enjoyed a lot, like Alien: Earth and Pluribus, with the later being hands down the best new series I saw in 2025. And Andor, some minor (for me) nitpicks aside, ended superbly, plus unfortunately more current day politically relevant than ever. But my favourite series in 2025 was Foundation, season 3. And here are some reasons why:
For the third time, this show managed to present a new ensemble of characters per season (plus the few recurring ones) and made me care about them. Now I remember several shows that were originally intended to be "anthology" shows - the one that immediately comes to mind is Heroes - i.e. where the idea was to present a new cast of characters every season - and which when the first season was a success changed their mind because the audience had fallen in love with these characters. Unfortunately, this also meant that the subsequent seasons showed there had been no plan, not even a vague character arc kind of plan, for those characters, and the show quality rapidly diminished, making me wish they'd stuck to the anthology concept. Now Foundation, to me, found a happy medium between the "anthology" concept which its intended huge time spam demands and the fact that most viewers do want some characters to remain attached to, or at least interested in, who are around for more than one season. And they manage it twofold: courtesy of in-universe plot devices, there are in fact some characters around through all three seasons so far - Gail Dornick, Demerzel and sort, kinda, Hari Seldon though you could argue that original Hari Seldon has been dead since episode 2 of season 1, and the two guys around since then are both digital copies downloaded into different devices. And there are three more actors araound through all three seasons playing different characters who are at the same time variations of the same character, i.e. the Cleonic Dynasty exponents, clones in different stages of aging. (It's not unimportant that they play clones because the stories and developments each Cleon takes in each season are richer and more interesting if you have other Cleons to compare them to.)
But, and this is an important but: the show also offers characters who are around only in one season/era the show takes place. (Or two at most, sob.) And manages to make them interesting and different from each other. Here I would argue the show grew from season 1 - where there were some interesting, memorable characters around, like the Luminarian priestess, but also some which for me didn't work in the way they were intended (the Huntress) - to season 2, where basically every single new character was interesting - Constant, Hober Mallow, Space!Belisarius etc.. In fact, I was so attached to the s2 newbies that I kept wondering whether the show would manage to do it again after the next time jump, and the first s3 episode or two left me a bit sceptical on that count - but then I changed my mind. Granted, I still am lukewarm about Pritcher, but Toran and Bayta were great (not just due to the spoilery thing at the end of the season, though it makes the rewatch of s3 I just finished even more rewarding), I loved Ambassador Quent, and the First Speaker as well.
Another reason: s3 offered the pay off to several long term mysteries and developments - from who was responsible for the destruction of the Star Bridge (and why) to why Vault!Hari gave Demerzel the Prime Radiant - , wrapped up one of THE major storylines of the show , to wit, the Fall of the Cleonic Dynasty, and did it in a way that was both unepected yet made perfect character sense, and set up enough new questions and storylines which make glad there is a season 4 already secured: . How many robots besides Kalle and the one she was with on the moon are left? Did Demerzel as I guess transfer into the Prime Radiant and will she get out of it in Laura Brin form or played by another actor? How will things end with Bayta post reveal, and what will become of Dawn?
And then there's the superb long term character development.bimo commented s1 Gaal would be horrified by s3 Gaal's actions, and yet they are perfecty ic due to the development in between and bring things full circle, in a way. Rewatching s3, I noticed that first conversation between Demerzel and the Priestess - and btw, great pay off for the s1 introduced fact Demerzel is an adherent of that faith - already point blank adresses the fact that Demerzel doesn't see a possibility of rebirth, i.e. a quintessential part of said faith, for herself because she can't die in a biological fashion, and has the priestess suggest that au contraire, not only is death and rebirth possible for Demerzel but it has already happened, repeatedly (in the transition from three laws robot to zeroth law robot, and then in the transition from zeroth law robot to reprogrammed Cleonic Dynasty Robot). And the Cleons! That Lee Pace is excellent is almost a given, and s3's Day's development went from seeming comic relief to absolutely shattering, but s3's Dusk and Dawn both got more to do than in previous seasons, and both Terence Mann and Cassian Bilton ran with it. In fact, when I find the time I'll do a poll asking about everyone's favourites Day, Dawn and Dusk, if such a thing exists, taking all three seasons into account. Speaking of things paying off even more upon rewatch, Dusk's first scene in s3 is watching the recording of other Dusks becoming Brother Darkness and "ascending", which, yeah. S3 does a lot not just with the confrontation with mortality, but also the search for meaning especially for the long term characters. . In s2, Vault!Hari seemed the more smug and inhuman of the two, while Hari-with-Gaal-and-Salvor, even before he acquired a new body, was far more emotional and capable of learning. S3 turns that around in that Vault!Hari when meeting Gaal for the first time drops the facade and reveals how imprisoned he actually feels in that vault, and how much he longs for a purpose that isn't just fulfilling the designs of a dead man.
And there's the way the show asks questions the books couldn't, lacking the concept of the Cleonic Dynasty. . The incredibly messed up relationships between Demerzel and all the Cleons through the centuries is revealed to us in a non-linear fashion bit by bit by bit. Excepting the first, original Cleon, who reprogrammed her, she is both their goaler and their prisoner, she is their mother, advisor, assassin and at least in one case other than Cleon I. their lover, and neither she nor they can know whether any of her emotions would be there without the reprogramming. But the narration doesn't leave it at that. It also uses the Clone concept in a different way. At the start of s1, you have little Dawn (still a child at this point, later in the season Brother Day) ask Demerzel after the executions current Day ordered whether it will always be like this, and Demerzel, after some initially distracting words, admits: "You always choose this." (S3 of course reveals she was counting on this.) But through the seasons, by getting to meet exponent after exponent, we also get the question: does he? Will he? S2's Day only imagines he is breaking the pattern and an outlier and is told otherwise by both Vault!Hari and Demerzel; s2's Dawn by running away does do something different for himself, but it leaves the Dynasty and Demerzel in the same state as before. In s3, all three Cleons - Dawn, Day and Dusk - do manage to do and choose something different at least, though in very different ways. Dawn as Gaal observes is at that stage of his life where he's rebellious and looking for "an escape hatch", but the difference to the Dawns in s1 and s2 is that what he does isn't just for himself; his alliance with Gaal is meant to truly help the galaxy. Day - ironically the first Day who gets introduced in a stage where he seemingly has given up on everything, including power, and only lives for nihilistic hedonism - turns out to be the first Cleon to well and truly break the pattern Cleon I. set for the Cleons and Demerzel. Cleon I. certainly claimed to love her, but the only way he could express that love was by keeping her imprisoned and making certain she would not be able to ever prioritize anything and anyone but him again. That Cleon XXIV by contrast is capable of non-selfish love is apparant even before the realisation of Demerzel's true state of (imprisoned) being hits him, because when he finds out that Song, the courtesan whom he believed loved him as he loved her, has a different life partner, he doesn't react vengeful, as every other Day we've seen in this show would have, but accepts it. And when he finds out there is in fact at least one other robot (sort of, at least the skull of one) out there whom Demerzel could communicate with, and who could set her free, he risks everything to bring it to her. If true love is prioritizing the other person's well being above your own need for them, then Cleon XXiV is the first Cleon who truly loves Demerzel.
Alas for them, s3's Dusk is also breaking the pattern. In the darkest way possible, pun unintended. We've seen brutal Cleons before, and petty Cleons; but Cleon XXIII tops them all by taking their capacity for selfishness and pettiness to the nth degree by deciding that if he doesn't get to live, then none of them do ever again, and ditto for the rest of the galaxy. Now s3 doesn't let him start out in this fashion. He does come across as sincere in trying to cope with his impending death by making Dawn his legacy, and it's not until he hears from Demerzel that Dawn is dead (as far as she knows, but neither of them is aware of that) that he decides to go for broke. But that nihililstic scorched earth (err, scorched galaxy) capacity was in the Cleons as much as the ability to be better than that, and we see both pushed to the max in this season. And thus it's fitting, too, that the story of Demerzel and the Cleons ends not just with one of them finally loving her enough to set her free but with another being so utterly horribly selfish as to destroy her along with any other Cleon in existence. Now I am 99% sure Demerzel survived (via transfer), but: her story with the Cleons is over. (Though I also think the show will keep at least Lee Pace, possibly also Cassian Bilton, since s3 ends with Dawn in a bad state but alive, and a time jump for more than a few years isn't possible between seasons due to the Mule situation.)
Lastly: I loved s3 for the way it gave us new combinations of long term characters. Both the Gaal and Dawn and the Gaal and Demerzel scenes were fantastic, ditto for the Demerzel and Kalle one. And bringing back Alexander Siddig to play a new character who is the descendant of the s1 character just so he can have scenes with Jared Leto again was great. *g* And for being such an acting showcase for both recurring actors - Terence Mann certainly owned those last three episodes when he was on screen - and new to the show ones: Synnøve Karlsen as Bayta first and foremost, with again rewatching letting me additionally admire what she does there. (Though this time around I knew she was the same actress who had played Clarice Orsini in I Medici and young Cassandra Austen in Miss Austen, I forgot all about it again when watching her on screen. "We're good at making people love us, you and I", as she says to Magnifico. Indeed.
The other days
For the third time, this show managed to present a new ensemble of characters per season (plus the few recurring ones) and made me care about them. Now I remember several shows that were originally intended to be "anthology" shows - the one that immediately comes to mind is Heroes - i.e. where the idea was to present a new cast of characters every season - and which when the first season was a success changed their mind because the audience had fallen in love with these characters. Unfortunately, this also meant that the subsequent seasons showed there had been no plan, not even a vague character arc kind of plan, for those characters, and the show quality rapidly diminished, making me wish they'd stuck to the anthology concept. Now Foundation, to me, found a happy medium between the "anthology" concept which its intended huge time spam demands and the fact that most viewers do want some characters to remain attached to, or at least interested in, who are around for more than one season. And they manage it twofold: courtesy of in-universe plot devices, there are in fact some characters around through all three seasons so far - Gail Dornick, Demerzel and sort, kinda, Hari Seldon though you could argue that original Hari Seldon has been dead since episode 2 of season 1, and the two guys around since then are both digital copies downloaded into different devices. And there are three more actors araound through all three seasons playing different characters who are at the same time variations of the same character, i.e. the Cleonic Dynasty exponents, clones in different stages of aging. (It's not unimportant that they play clones because the stories and developments each Cleon takes in each season are richer and more interesting if you have other Cleons to compare them to.)
But, and this is an important but: the show also offers characters who are around only in one season/era the show takes place. (Or two at most, sob.) And manages to make them interesting and different from each other. Here I would argue the show grew from season 1 - where there were some interesting, memorable characters around, like the Luminarian priestess, but also some which for me didn't work in the way they were intended (the Huntress) - to season 2, where basically every single new character was interesting - Constant, Hober Mallow, Space!Belisarius etc.. In fact, I was so attached to the s2 newbies that I kept wondering whether the show would manage to do it again after the next time jump, and the first s3 episode or two left me a bit sceptical on that count - but then I changed my mind. Granted, I still am lukewarm about Pritcher, but Toran and Bayta were great (not just due to the spoilery thing at the end of the season, though it makes the rewatch of s3 I just finished even more rewarding), I loved Ambassador Quent, and the First Speaker as well.
Another reason: s3 offered the pay off to several long term mysteries and developments - from who was responsible for the destruction of the Star Bridge (and why) to why Vault!Hari gave Demerzel the Prime Radiant - , wrapped up one of THE major storylines of the show , to wit, the Fall of the Cleonic Dynasty, and did it in a way that was both unepected yet made perfect character sense, and set up enough new questions and storylines which make glad there is a season 4 already secured: . How many robots besides Kalle and the one she was with on the moon are left? Did Demerzel as I guess transfer into the Prime Radiant and will she get out of it in Laura Brin form or played by another actor? How will things end with Bayta post reveal, and what will become of Dawn?
And then there's the superb long term character development.
bimo commented s1 Gaal would be horrified by s3 Gaal's actions, and yet they are perfecty ic due to the development in between and bring things full circle, in a way. Rewatching s3, I noticed that first conversation between Demerzel and the Priestess - and btw, great pay off for the s1 introduced fact Demerzel is an adherent of that faith - already point blank adresses the fact that Demerzel doesn't see a possibility of rebirth, i.e. a quintessential part of said faith, for herself because she can't die in a biological fashion, and has the priestess suggest that au contraire, not only is death and rebirth possible for Demerzel but it has already happened, repeatedly (in the transition from three laws robot to zeroth law robot, and then in the transition from zeroth law robot to reprogrammed Cleonic Dynasty Robot). And the Cleons! That Lee Pace is excellent is almost a given, and s3's Day's development went from seeming comic relief to absolutely shattering, but s3's Dusk and Dawn both got more to do than in previous seasons, and both Terence Mann and Cassian Bilton ran with it. In fact, when I find the time I'll do a poll asking about everyone's favourites Day, Dawn and Dusk, if such a thing exists, taking all three seasons into account. Speaking of things paying off even more upon rewatch, Dusk's first scene in s3 is watching the recording of other Dusks becoming Brother Darkness and "ascending", which, yeah. S3 does a lot not just with the confrontation with mortality, but also the search for meaning especially for the long term characters. . In s2, Vault!Hari seemed the more smug and inhuman of the two, while Hari-with-Gaal-and-Salvor, even before he acquired a new body, was far more emotional and capable of learning. S3 turns that around in that Vault!Hari when meeting Gaal for the first time drops the facade and reveals how imprisoned he actually feels in that vault, and how much he longs for a purpose that isn't just fulfilling the designs of a dead man.And there's the way the show asks questions the books couldn't, lacking the concept of the Cleonic Dynasty. . The incredibly messed up relationships between Demerzel and all the Cleons through the centuries is revealed to us in a non-linear fashion bit by bit by bit. Excepting the first, original Cleon, who reprogrammed her, she is both their goaler and their prisoner, she is their mother, advisor, assassin and at least in one case other than Cleon I. their lover, and neither she nor they can know whether any of her emotions would be there without the reprogramming. But the narration doesn't leave it at that. It also uses the Clone concept in a different way. At the start of s1, you have little Dawn (still a child at this point, later in the season Brother Day) ask Demerzel after the executions current Day ordered whether it will always be like this, and Demerzel, after some initially distracting words, admits: "You always choose this." (S3 of course reveals she was counting on this.) But through the seasons, by getting to meet exponent after exponent, we also get the question: does he? Will he? S2's Day only imagines he is breaking the pattern and an outlier and is told otherwise by both Vault!Hari and Demerzel; s2's Dawn by running away does do something different for himself, but it leaves the Dynasty and Demerzel in the same state as before. In s3, all three Cleons - Dawn, Day and Dusk - do manage to do and choose something different at least, though in very different ways. Dawn as Gaal observes is at that stage of his life where he's rebellious and looking for "an escape hatch", but the difference to the Dawns in s1 and s2 is that what he does isn't just for himself; his alliance with Gaal is meant to truly help the galaxy. Day - ironically the first Day who gets introduced in a stage where he seemingly has given up on everything, including power, and only lives for nihilistic hedonism - turns out to be the first Cleon to well and truly break the pattern Cleon I. set for the Cleons and Demerzel. Cleon I. certainly claimed to love her, but the only way he could express that love was by keeping her imprisoned and making certain she would not be able to ever prioritize anything and anyone but him again. That Cleon XXIV by contrast is capable of non-selfish love is apparant even before the realisation of Demerzel's true state of (imprisoned) being hits him, because when he finds out that Song, the courtesan whom he believed loved him as he loved her, has a different life partner, he doesn't react vengeful, as every other Day we've seen in this show would have, but accepts it. And when he finds out there is in fact at least one other robot (sort of, at least the skull of one) out there whom Demerzel could communicate with, and who could set her free, he risks everything to bring it to her. If true love is prioritizing the other person's well being above your own need for them, then Cleon XXiV is the first Cleon who truly loves Demerzel.
Alas for them, s3's Dusk is also breaking the pattern. In the darkest way possible, pun unintended. We've seen brutal Cleons before, and petty Cleons; but Cleon XXIII tops them all by taking their capacity for selfishness and pettiness to the nth degree by deciding that if he doesn't get to live, then none of them do ever again, and ditto for the rest of the galaxy. Now s3 doesn't let him start out in this fashion. He does come across as sincere in trying to cope with his impending death by making Dawn his legacy, and it's not until he hears from Demerzel that Dawn is dead (as far as she knows, but neither of them is aware of that) that he decides to go for broke. But that nihililstic scorched earth (err, scorched galaxy) capacity was in the Cleons as much as the ability to be better than that, and we see both pushed to the max in this season. And thus it's fitting, too, that the story of Demerzel and the Cleons ends not just with one of them finally loving her enough to set her free but with another being so utterly horribly selfish as to destroy her along with any other Cleon in existence. Now I am 99% sure Demerzel survived (via transfer), but: her story with the Cleons is over. (Though I also think the show will keep at least Lee Pace, possibly also Cassian Bilton, since s3 ends with Dawn in a bad state but alive, and a time jump for more than a few years isn't possible between seasons due to the Mule situation.)
Lastly: I loved s3 for the way it gave us new combinations of long term characters. Both the Gaal and Dawn and the Gaal and Demerzel scenes were fantastic, ditto for the Demerzel and Kalle one. And bringing back Alexander Siddig to play a new character who is the descendant of the s1 character just so he can have scenes with Jared Leto again was great. *g* And for being such an acting showcase for both recurring actors - Terence Mann certainly owned those last three episodes when he was on screen - and new to the show ones: Synnøve Karlsen as Bayta first and foremost, with again rewatching letting me additionally admire what she does there. (Though this time around I knew she was the same actress who had played Clarice Orsini in I Medici and young Cassandra Austen in Miss Austen, I forgot all about it again when watching her on screen. "We're good at making people love us, you and I", as she says to Magnifico. Indeed.
The other days
