Foundation season 2 storylines aren’t all the same kind of sci-fi

polygon.com:

Foundation season 2 picks up right where season 1 left off: some 130 years after the main climax of the season finale.

This is the ambitious scope of Foundation, the Apple TV Plus show adapted from the Isaac Asimov series of the same name covering centuries of in-universe history, spanning years and planets, complete with lives ruined and bloodshed. In season 2, Hari Seldon’s (Jared Harris) followers are still popping up around the universe (and with better numbers than ever, much to Empire’s consternation), but the show has jumped far ahead of where it once was. After all, psychohistory looks at the long arc of the universe, and Foundation must heed the call. The result is a space opera on a logarithmic scale, and Asimov by way of a sci-fi blockbuster on TV — at least for some chapters.

As Foundation builds the show’s world, it weaves together plotlines across the galaxy, jumping from the disciples of the Foundation settlements at the end of known space to the ever-shifting murals in Empire’s halls. All of the stories within the show take on their own flavors, hit their own pitfalls, and (sometimes) exist in their own bubbles. It can make it hard to take on the show as a whole; even as these threads inform each other, there’s a distinct difference in how they feel, and how well they work.

To that end, it’s worth breaking out the strengths and nuances of each of season 2’s plotlines. With Gaal (Lou Llobell) and Salvor (Leah Harvey) now together on Synnax, the modern (or “modern”) Foundation pulls in new Terminus players, now in its religious phase. Looming ahead of them is the second crisis — war with Empire — and a colony of Mentalics with psionic abilities that could threaten the course of psychohistory. There’s a