It’s rare for me to question a creative decision made by Foundation. In fact, it’s going to be rare for me to question a creative decision made by Foundation in this specific episode. But for that very reason, I want to lead with the number one question on my mind after watching yet another extraordinary hour of sci-fi television, other than “How the hell do they keep doing it?”: Why doesn’t Hari Seldon kill the Mule while he has the chance?

We have Hari’s own explanation to go on, though it’s probably worth taking with a grain of salt given who it’s being delivered to. After Hari traps the Mule in the mind-warping null field that guards his Vault, levitating the psychic pirate 20 feet into the air seemingly by the brainwaves before dropping him to the ground, the Mule straight-up asks why the genius (or rather his digital avatar) would spare him. Hari’s explanation is simple: “You have a secret, and once I learn what it is, you may be of use to me.”

Now, I’m no psychohistorian. But every time we’ve seen the Prime Radiant this season, history itself cuts off in just a matter of months. The Mule is the only variable that can account for the catastrophe. We know via Gaal Dornick’s visions that she’s destined for a one-on-one showdown with the guy to determine the fate of the galaxy. And Hari Seldon, master of mathematics, lets the Mule go because he might learn his secret, whatever that may be, at which point the Mule might be of use to him? That’s quite a gamble!

It’s also a problem for the narrative. Either it’s of paramount importance to stop the Mule, or it isn’t. Either Gaal Dornick’s quest — which ends this episode with her and a strike team landing on New Terminus so she can have her battle with the Mule, who’s expecting her — has a purpose, or it doesn’t. When Hari spares the Mule when he has the tyrant dead to rights, it muddies the waters. Is this guy the interstellar Antichrist or not?

But perhaps there’s a method to the madness. Even though Digital Hari proves ignorant of Gaal Dornick’s Second Foundation, he’s still fundamentally Hari Seldon, and thus has a mind unfathomable even by a telepathic parasite like the Mule. If Hari says “I have my reasons,” perhaps it’s best to take him at his word. Doesn’t he always?

Or perhaps it’s meant to send a larger point. In one of this season’s most disturbing developments, Gaal Dornick suckered the well-meaning Brother Dawn into luring the Imperial fleet into a death trap, the better to advance her plan for fighting the Mule with the galactic capital of Trantor as a battle ground. Is sparing the Mule really any gnarlier an act of realpolitik than serving up Empire’s whole-ass navy to him on a platter?

Man, I don’t know. I don’t know! Isn’t that fascinating? Foundation traffics in moral dilemmas that actually force you to think through means and ends alike. 

One such dilemma faces the husk of Empire, such as it stands. With Dawn and Day both MIA (more on them in a moment), Dusk is the presiding Cleon on hand when a phalanx of galactic bigwgs — including the Luminist priestess who’s been ministering to Lady Demerzel under mindwipe conditions, Zephyr Vorellis — demands that Trantor be handed over to the Mule in exchange for keeping his hands off the rest of the realm. It’s the logic of every Big Law partner and Ivy League administrator who’s opted to hand over their freedom to a fascist in exchange for a temporary reprieve: If I give him an inch, surely he’ll be too satisfied to take a mile! We’ve seen how that works out.

But is the increasingly desperate, weirdly bloody-minded Dusk’s counter-approach any better? Rather than surrender the capital, he tries to persuade Lady Demerzel that his black-hole gun, the marvelously named Novacula, can be used as a deterrent to stop the Mule in his tracks. The aging monarch somehow managed to keep this massive project a secret from his robot minder for decades, despite its massive resource outlay. It’s funny: The Empire of the Star Wars Universe has to scrimp and save and race against deadlines to build the Death Star, as seen in Andor; the Empire of Foundation can do so on the sly and offer it as a birthday gift that may or may not ever even get used.

Even though Dusk is slated for the ash heap in just over 48 hours, he’s still the Cleon in charge, because his baby brothers are both missing and presumed dead. Not so fast! Dawn, whose demise I thought was a sure thing, surfaces in the Mule’s sickbay next to Bayta, last seen comatose due to the null field. They’re both alive and more or less well, though Dawn’s spacesuit barbecued the fleshy parts of his leg for sustenance during his long stint floating in space before the Mule picked him up.

(This, I suppose, does raise a second creative question: Why would a spacesuit be designed to do that? I’m not sure “eating part of yourself to stay alive” is a safety feature buyers would clamor for! That’s a Stephen King short story is what that is!)

And Brother Day spends his time in one of the show’s most over-the-top space-opera storylines yet, which is really saying something. His trial, by Skeletor wannabe Sunmaster-18, is an absolute smorgasbord of campy Masters of the Universe imagery and ideas. A towering colosseum of face-painted faithful. An interpretive dance revealing the history of the faith. Unison screaming by people with their whole jaws painted blood red. A preening bible-thumping villain who doesn’t believe a word of his own bullshit, wearing a golden breastplate and frilled crown and shouting things like “NOW THE DEVIL HAS RETURNED TO FACE JUDGEMENT FOR HIS PECCANCY!”

Best of all? A singing skull! In a development straight out of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Day uses his knowledge of a lullaby sung to him as a boy by Demerzel to communicate with the Brazen Head, the robotic noggin with the glowing eyes that has, for however many centuries, signified power here among the Inheritors of robot worship. It immediately unlocks and begins searching for a compatible signal, like your bluetooth earbuds. 

Will Demerzel hear it? Perhaps, but “in time” doesn’t seem to be an option. Despite knowing that Day is telling the truth, Sunmaster sentences him to death anyway, the better to keep a grip on his own power. Cleon XXIV is to suffer the ignominious end of being dropped into a vast subterranean lake of biophagic sludge that will reduce him to anonymous nothingness, a process called — er, shouted — REMEDIATION!

You know, laying it all out like that, two things stand out immediately. First, Foundation is a marvelously rich experience, in which a Crayola 64-pack of SFF character types, visuals, and storylines coexist not only easily but symbiotically. The heady stuff enhances the earthy stuff. The kaleidoscopic spectacles provide contrast for the ghastly gore. Scenery chewing baddies like the Mule and Shakesperean tragedies like Lady Demerzel inhabit the same story.

Second: It’s really a miracle the Empire lasted as long as it has. Phony religious zealots, cowardly centrist politicians, bloodthirsty warmongers, deep-cover enemy operatives, and plain-and-simple lunatics are all simultaneously pulling at every thread in the imperial tapestry they can. A collapse of some kind feels wholly inevitable. Hari Seldon was right to take it as a given.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.