Personally I kinda liked the first season. It’s better if you forget the original Asimov story and just watch it as its own thing because it diverges from it quite a bit.
Season 2 Full Trailer - Youtube
Looking forward to see where they go after that ballsy season 1 ending. Lee Pace will continue to kill it no doubt.
Did robots come into play in Foundation? You did just remind me of the whole Robot series with Elijah Baley which was cool af. I guess that was in the same universe. Not sure I’d expect to see that in this TV series, though.
it’s robots, foundation and empire all joined up, which Asimov did later when he revived and combined the series after a near 25 year break.
Eto Demerzel was revealed to be Daneel Olivaw (who was partner to Baley for some time), and effectively had become the main character of the entire combined franchise. so showing Demerzel as being an android in episode 2 was a hell of a jump, but of course with the whole of the foundation/empire and robots series to pull from and compress into one series it was a sensible reveal to make, considering her position as effectively a mother figure to the clones it is a good way to explain her longevity, and hint that she may be something of a mastermind ruling the empire vicariously to push it in a certain direction. the whole idea of the clones and genetic dynasty is new however, demerzel was originally only adviser to Cleon the first, manipulating the empire in support of Seldon.
spoiler
Kind of a spoiler if you haven’t read all of it, but Daneel originally developed psychohistory to influence humanity over time, the zeroth law of robotics came of this and effectively allowed robots to break the other laws (such as killing people) if it was for the greater good of humanity as a whole.
Thats where the true intrigue of the whole series comes from in my opinion and it looks like they have skipped that, or are changing it, we need to see or hear about Chetter Hummin in order to know if they are doing that story or not.