#but wait holy fuck— CLEON

[brotherdusk]

it's time again for my favourite genre of post: tumblr user bee brotherdusk theorises wildly during the Foundation midseason!

on the menu this time is Poly and Constant's Imperial Vacation From Hell, or "oh god, I just wanted to make sure one of my favourite guys was going to be okay, but somehow I ended up sending over two dozen increasingly frantic messages to the discord while everyone else was asleep, pepe silvia-style"

(today I learned that grandpa joe shows up when you type "pepe silvia" into the gif search. deserved)

I'm gonna stick this under a readmore as it gets pretty long and image heavy, and potentially contains big spoilers for upcoming episodes, and I know some people want to watch the show completely unspoiled. all theories are based on official promotional videos already released by apple. no leaks or insider book knowledge here!

so I sort of stumbled into this theory in three stages, and I'm going to stick to that template as I talk through my analysis here, starting with:

Part 1 - I'm Genre Aware Now And Everything Hurts

let's be real, nobody saw Hari's (apparent) death coming in the last episode. death is far less of a concern in this show than in others, as the narrative all but guarantees the long-term survival of its core characters. Hari (apparently) dying so quickly after having his body restored was a massive shock, and jolted us out of the complacency that the show had lulled us into.

when the title and description of next week's episode dropped, fan concern quickly turned to Poly, who @gaal-dornick and @aquitainequeen noted has started to exhibit the classic symptoms of Tragic Mentor Figure Disease:

also, there's, y'know, The Guillotine Situation as shown in Trailer 1:

Poly's death seemed so likely that I was beginning to dread the coming episodes, but something was nagging at me; I had a vague memory of seeing a trailer where he was on Terminus and in a situation that we haven't yet seen him in. maybe he does survive his brush with Brother Day, then? I started rewatching all of the trailers, teasers, and character spotlight videos that Apple released in the run-up to season two, and came across something way wilder than I'd expected:

Part 2 - Star Bridge 2: Council Boogaloo

I found another camera shot of Poly and Constant's apparent execution in the Brother Dawn character spotlight video - note the pillars in front of the crowd, the flags in the back, and Dawn, Sareth, Demerzel, Dusk, and Rue standing on the platform behind Day and the prisoners.

note also the onlookers in the maroon robes, who are also visible in the guillotine closeup I posted above...

...hey, it's the Galactic Council as seen in 2.06, with their GILF-y leader at the front in both scenes!

remember how terrified Cleon XII was of their judgement in the season one finale? we still don't know what their exact deal is, but they're clearly big cheeses politically if XII of all people is afraid of them:

here's yet another angle of the execution from Trailer 2 - same setup, same arrangement of Empire on the podium:

let's see what happens in that shot, will we? ..... oh

... did an explosion just go off in the heart of Trantor and potentially take out the entire galaxy's government in one go???? (I mean, Empire are probably fine with their auras and nanobots and backups, but I'm not feeling too good about the Council's chances right now...)

wait - the pulse and shape that appear on the horizon bear a striking resemblance to the new Foundation whisper ships - especially Poly and Constant's ship, Spirit Rising, which is currently in the hands of Hober Mallow...

why did he take their ship, again?

holy fucking shit Hari Seldon you insane rat bastard (admiring, horrified, impressed). what have you DONE. a blade in case the religious hand of friendship doesn't work out, you say??

(sidenote: this was literally the Anacreon plan for the Invictus in the first season - the scale of the destruction would have been magnitudes worse due to the Invictus' size, but same concept)

honestly, I kind of hope the entire Council perishes in the Mallowpocalypse, if only because it would make this exchange in 2.06 deliciously ironic:

the worst detectives in the world finally found their shared braincell and made a deduction! I'm proud of them!

also, Glawen literally saw this coming in 2.04 and Bel brushed him off. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ sad!

regarding casualties - I think this shot from Trailer 1 is the aftermath of the blast. Day was standing much closer to the explosion than the rest of Empire and Dominion, and so would have taken more damage, aura or not. I also see Sareth, Rue (?), and Dawn - jury's out on whether being dead is the latest item added to Dusk's rapidly expanding list of problems?

a direct attack on Trantor would also explain why Day goes on a personal tour of the Outer Reach and ends up on Terminus, screaming for an audience with Hari Seldon (Trailer 1 again):

and hey, Poly's right behind him! he's Empire's best chance of getting a personal audience with the Prophet, after all. Poly also pops up in Day's character spotlight video, in what I'm guessing is the execution scene again, judging from the collar and the guard restraining him. it might even be the aftermath of the blast, since the shot is pretty chaotic and dusty looking. what's got him so upset?

... and it was at this moment that I realised that while Poly is present in the later Terminus scenes with Day, Brother Constant is not, and I started to worry that I'd been focusing on the wrong person the whole time, leading to...

Part 3 - What About Constant?

oh no. the question of Constant's safety has been hanging over both Poly and the viewer since 2.02. oh no

I thought I might have caught a glimpse of her in the Teaser 1 video - being restrained in the background as Day does his infamously-giffed-to-hell Big Steppy on Hober's throat - but I still wanted more concrete proof of her wellbeing.

and finally I found her in the Pillars of Foundation video, alive and well, but -

HER NECK!! HER NECK!!!

if Constant's life is just barely saved by Hober showing up in the nick of time to prevent her decapitation by an insane tyrant I will literally never be normal again. romance. that's romance. (also incredibly shitty of Vault!Hari to take her blind faith and turn her into a pawn for the Empire to slaughter, but I guess that's expected behaviour from him by now.)

... I was literally about to hit post on this theory, but I just realised; that scene in Teaser 1 where Day is facing down a bishop's claw... we all assumed he was being attacked by a wild beast in the Outer Reach - but what if he's lying in the ruins of the podium on Trantor, and the bishop's claw is a freed Beki going on a rampage? god I hope this happens. imagine being Emperor of the Galaxy, about to perform some casual executions before dinner, and suddenly you're flat on your ass with a Hell Dinosaur about to bite your face off. incredible scenes

and that's all I've got! TLDR; Hari knew that the emperors and Galactic Council would become increasingly paranoid and aggressive as the Empire contracted, and would jump at the chance to publicly end an attempted religious takeover by the "barbarian" Outer Reach. That mass gathering at the execution would be the perfect time to strike with a whisper ship, a technology which the Empire has no idea even exists. This enrages Day into visiting Terminus to deal with the Foundation in person, and potentially destabilises the Empire further if the Council have been wiped out. Empire's structure and dignity are decimated without a single shot being fired - and if there is going to be an eventual, physical war, the Foundation is now in a much better position to fight it.

again, this is just me making a theory and connecting everything together with red string etc etc. I haven't attempted to explain everything, such as the Spacers' or Riose's involvement, and have doubtless got some details wrong - but I'm really excited by how things are connecting and can't wait for next week's episode :}

#foundation #foundation season 2 #foundation apple tv #foundation meta #hari seldon #poly verisof #brother constant #hober mallow #brother day #cleon xvii