Season 2 was a banger, but it didn’t stick the landing. I’ve lost faith. Doesn’t matter what they’re telegraphing, they’ve shown they’ll do whatever they want with the story, especially if it makes no sense at all. I’ve felt this show as in capable hands, until now. Episode 9 was brilliant working off the brilliance of episode 8 before it, but I felt the Finale jumped the shark, where they cheated in the story so much on every storyline nothing means anything, I’ll refer to this episode as the Deus Ex Machina Everywhere All The Time You Don’t Have To Watch Anything Nothing Matters episode from now on, I found my eyes rolling into the back of my head so much all episode and I think I actually said blech out loud to my empty room. Also this show made the switch into Science Fantasy from Science Fiction with the introduction of the Mentalics, which is also kind of a bummer, when you can use your mind to throw people across the room, it’s Force time in the Imperium Baby!
I definitely see what you are saying, however the Mentalics have existed in Asimovs universe since before the Empire or the Foundation. They are being represented with some new powers, but the mental influence is a very important ability that ties the whole story together in the end.
I think their only major misstep was revealing demerzel as both a robot (s1), and as the orchestrator (s2) too early. They haven’t however shown just how far their influence has gone in guiding history just yet, nor how that ties into the creation and application of psychohistory.
They are smooshing the timeline around and boiling all of the books down into one slightly weird slurry, but apart from the obvious changes to make the long timeline more TV friendly (genetic dynasty and characters like Gaal acting to connect different eras across time jumps with familiar faces) everything that is happening is taken from some part of the asimoverse but often exaggerated a little bit for spectacle.
I think S1 ended up as a 6/10 for me and S2 as a 7/10
