Right from the opening moments of Foundation Season 3, the Mule (Pilou Asbæk) has been the Big Bad. In fact, if we said that his initial (re)introduction this season was brutal, it would be a major understatement. (To say the least.) But, even if the cruelty and creativity of his actions have both been shocking, his presence and his role as the villain came as no surprise. After all, Gaal Dornick knew the Mule was coming — he’s the one she tried to save Salvor from but, ultimately, couldn’t. After being well aware he was a “threat towards the Empire and Foundation” all this time, we finally had a chance to learn what made him this way.
Foundation Season 3 Episode 7 showed us that the Mule’s backstory is as heartbreaking as it is horrifying. Given a 30-day deadline by Foundation’s assessors to get themselves back in compliance with the one-child policy, his parents chose to keep their baby. As in, they didn’t love him enough to choose him. But when his father tried to drown him, the young boy who grew up to become the Mule killed for the first time in order to save himself. Or, rather, he forced other people (his parents) to kill themselves for the first time.
During our pre-season interview with Pilou Asbæk, he pointed out the importance of developing the Mule’s villain origin story. “If you establish a character in the first scene as being extremely evil,” he told us, “you have to explain why is this character so evil in the next couple of episodes.” Once we get that explanation, and we hear the child’s anguished cry of “but you love me!” as he fights for his life, the Mule’s motivation becomes extremely clear. All of these awful actions don’t fall under cruelty for cruelty’s sake, and they’re not even about revenge — not solely, at least.
As Asbæk explained, “what I love about the Mule is that, at the end of the day, he just wants to be loved. And no one is a villain in their own story. We’re always heroes, you know. And that’s the same case with the Mule — that he wants to be loved, and he wants to love someone. Not out of his mentalist powers, but genuinely love. And that’s the only thing he can’t get.” In hindsight, this sheds a twisted sort of light on some of the character’s modern-day actions.
Take, for example, his grand show of little Skirlet loving him “more than anything,” even after he’d killed her father and countless others in his takeover of Kalgan. There’s also the way he makes his retaliation against Toran Mallow personal in Foundation Season 3 Episode 3, after Toran unwittingly pours salt in his wounds by calling him “poor, unloved Mule” (plus a lot of other colorful things). But when asked if we should go back and watch earlier parts of the season for hints of his character’s tragic past or his need for love, Asbæk replied in the negative. Because “the thing is, if the audience isn’t aware of that plot, you can’t act it. You can be aware of it, but you can’t act it.”
MORE: Check out our interviews with Lee Pace and Laura Birn, Jared Harris, Lou Llobell, and Cassian Bilton and Terrence Mann.
Pilou Asbæk on what the Mule wants in Foundation Season 3
“I just want to tell you that he feels misunderstood,” Asbæk said of the Mule, “he feels misloved. He feels not…able to trust anyone. And therefore, he needs the world to love him. But for the world to love him, he needs to control the world.” So, although “there’s been a lot of iconic villains” who “just want power…just want wealth…[and/or] just want to be on top,” that’s not the Mule’s ultimate goal.
“For the Mule, the best thing that would happen to him [would be] to meet a person who would love him for who he is. And that’s the only thing he can’t find. So, that’s the reason why he becomes more and more desperate. And that’s also the reason why he wants to meet one of the other characters of this show so desperately — because he needs to see if that person…is like him. Because then there are two. And if there’s two, we can create a new kingdom. We can create a new world where we will rule.”
Foundation viewers will have to wait a bit longer to see how that meeting will go. But, although nobody’s exactly going to stop seeing the Mule as the Big Bad anytime soon, having a character with layers like this makes the whole journey that much more interesting. And so does this final description from the actor who brings him to life: “He’s a mutant. You know what I mean? He’s a mutant in a world where there’s no mutants.”
Don’t miss Pilou Asbæk in Foundation Season 3. New episodes release Fridays on Apple TV+.
