Apple TV+ has dropped a sneak peek trailer for its well regarded Foundation season 2

Apple TV+ brought season 1 of Foundation back in September 2021. The show was quickly given a second season, but since then little official news. This all changed with the release of the following sneak peek trailer:

While it spends a lot of its two minutes reminding us of season 1, it also has the following strapline:

The Second Crisis begins Summer 2023

To understand what that means, we need to explore the Isaac Asimov stories the show is adapted from (inspired by?).

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series

Foundation chronicles a band of exiles on their monumental journey to save humanity and rebuild civilisation amid the fall of the Galactic Empire. The novels were published as a series of short stories between 1942–50, and are amongst the most ‘classic’ of classic science fiction. They were re-collected as three novels: Foundation (1951); Foundation and Empire (1952) and Second Foundation (1953).

The stories begin with psychohistorian Hari Seldon using mathematics to predict future history and the fall of Empire. He creates (with some opposition) two Foundations at opposite ends of the galaxy and the majority of the series centres on the First Foundation where a new encyclopaedia of all knowledge is created. Here humanity can seed a future Renaissance once the fall of galactic civilisation settles down.

To add drama, the stories have so-called Seldon Crises — key points in history where a wrong decision has a catastrophic outcome for the survival of Foundation itself.

So what do we expect in season 2?

Clearly (and predictably) there will be another Seldon Crisis but we also expect other story threads from season 1 to be continued. We’d also like to see something of the Second Foundation revealed. The novels only focus there in volume three, so we imagine the show will do the same, but basing predictions on 80-year-old stories carries some risks! The showrunners have made plenty of changes to bring the show to screen, mostly to their credit.

Foundation stars Jared Harris as Dr. Hari Seldon; Lee Pace as Brother Day; Lou Llobell as Gaal Dornick; Leah Harvey as Salvor Hardin; Laura Birn as Demerzel; Terrence Mann as Brother Dusk; Cassian Bilton as Brother Dawn; and Alfred Enoch as Raych.

Expect more news as the year progresses. We’ll keep you posted!