In the show, the Mule will be an experimental Cleon clone.
So in the books, the Mule is just this random mutation that pops up in the outer rim seemingly out of nowhere. But the show sets up this whole arc about the Cleons and Imperial Cloning. This entire arc would be completely pointless if the Empire just fell and the Cleons simply disappeared. So here's a proposal of where they might go with this: At the end of the first season, it is revealed that the original Cleon's DNA has been messed with at least two generations of Cleons ago, maybe even three generations, and Cleon XIII then smashes the glass box he's kept in and tells his spymaster to check on the current Cleon XII's DNA as well. We also know that Cleon XIII has been at least somewhat unsettled by his inability to receive a religious vision. So with the material being corrupted anyway, this frees him up to experiment on it - and his goal will be to give his experiment exactly the kind of genetic makeup that allows for such experiences. As a result of this experiment, the next clone will be a strong ESP user, but the experiment will also result in him being physically deformed. Out of all the Cleons that didn't have a soul, Cleon XIV was the one who had one.
Now, it's implied that all the Cleon clones have no souls since they were exact copies of the original Cleon. However, since Cleon XIV was genetically altered to be different from his clone brothers, not only did it give him color blindness and left-handedness, but that somehow, he had a soul. Dusk isn't afraid of Dawn being different from them and threatening the Genetic Dynasty due to existing, he's afraid of Dawn because he has a soul while Dusk does not.- This doesn't work because the last episode of season 1 revealed that the original Cleon's DNA had been messed with far earlier than Cleon XIV.
- Still possible because out of all the other Cleons that came after the altering of the DNA, XIV was the one who wasn't an exact copy and may have had a soul as a result. Also, this ties into what Zephyr Halima said: all clones are exact copies of the original Cleon and have no souls as a result. Since XIV isn't an exact copy, that means he may have had a soul.
Brother Day was only being partially honest with Azura about her punishment.
They didn't kill all those people he says they will. They don't have to. But she'll think so, being stuck there.- That would make a lot of sense. Day considers Dawn like a son to him. And he would want Azura to hurt just as much as heartbroken as Dawn was. Even though Empire has the ability, it wouldn't be enough just to kill all of them. By making her think he did, by having her think the reason they're all dead is because of what she did to Dawn, that's more psychologically tormenting than her just spending the rest of her life alive and bagged. By telling her she's responsible for those deaths, then she'll live the rest of her life restrained, alive and with nothing but that thought on her mind.
Season 2's first episode will include Azura's death.
Possibly as viewed from whatever Mental World exists inside her after decades of sensory deprivation, possibly as collateral damage from some physical strike against the Empire, or possibly a light winking out on a control panel.- Jossed, Azura doesn't appear or even get mentioned in the Season 2 premiere.
Cleon XVII suffers from too much Clone Degeneration to be able to sire an heir, or is living on borrowed time because of it.
Considering that Cleon XVII is a Captain Ersatz of Cleon II from the books, who suffered from an undiagnosed and untreatable illness, it likely isn't too much of a stretch to assume Cleon XVII is going to be affected in a similar manner. It's clear that he's been tampering with the memories of Cleon XVI and XVIII in order to conceal something from them, so it's not too big of a stretch to assume that his genetic deviation is too big to for Dusk and Dawn to ignore, and a terminal incurable illness certainly would be something that the Brothers would take very seriously.Tellem is The Mule.
She's an extremely powerful Mentalic who has apparently been stealing the bodies of others for a long time, justifying it to herself by her belief that she's basically a god, and growing more and more powerful each time. More than likely, the Mule that Gaal saw in her vision is just the body she'll be using in a century, when her powers have grown great enough to potentially rule the galaxy. The reason she's so determined to stop Gaal and Salvor's efforts in the present is that she knows it's her own future rule they're trying to prevent.- Jossed, Tellem is killed by Hari Seldon in the penultimate episode of the second season, after specifically being forced to face her own mortality by Gaal using the future vision of The Mule to exploit her fear of death.
The First Foundation was never meant to survive
.Cleon XVII sees himself as the Spanner in the Works to Hari's Plan, but while Hari has acknowledged the existence of outliers to his Plan who indeed legitimately were such spanners, he plainly tells Cleon that he isn't one of them. This suggests that anything that Cleon did had already been accounted for according to the Plan, including destroying Terminus and taking the First Foundation along with it.- Jossed. While Terminus is destroyed, the Vault survives, along with the population of Terminus. While it was always part of Seldon's plan for Terminus to be destroyed, he never intended for the Foundation to go down with it, and intended the Vault to be used as a shelter for the population of Terminus because he anticipated that it would be durable enough to survive the destruction of the planet.
The Empire will experience a civil war at some point, perhaps even culminating in the desolation of Trantor
.While Demerzel was able to clone new versions of Dawn, Day, and Dusk, she still didn't manage to kill off Cleon XVIII and Sareth before they eloped from Trantor. It is highly probable that their descendant, being the true heir to the Empire's throne, will one day rise up to invoke Rightful King Returns on the Empire, since a true offspring to one of the clones is already implied to illegitimize the claims of any following Cleons in the Genetic Dynasty to the title of Emperor. Of course, Demerzel won't be willing to accept this turn of events due to her programming, so a future conflict might be inevitable, and it may be just that conflict that will end in Trantor being left in ruins, as Hari predicted. The Muleis going to be revealed as the son or a descendant of Queen Sareth and Cleon XVIII
.- Building on this base theory, there is a possibility that Clone Degeneration caused several unaccounted-for mutations in the Imperial genome. As such, it's a very real possibility that the heirs of Cleon XVIII may develop affinity for psychic powers, which would allow for the possibility of the Mule to be a descendant of Cleon XVIII. Now, I don't particularily believe this to be the case, and I don't think it would go home with the book readers either due to the nature of the Mule starting off as basically a nobody on the Galactic stage, but it's fun to at least discuss the potential conection.
This series takes place in the same universe as I, Robot.
Similarly to the source material, with Foundation taking place far enough into the future that Earth itself (or its location and status as humanity's ancestral homeworld at least) has been lost to the proverbial mists of time. There is actually no such thing as souls.
That's just Luminist prejudice against cloning. Clones in the show aren't shown to be inherently lesser than normal people — the Cleons end up as monstrous as they are because they're clones of Cleon I, who wasn't exactly the most benevolent person to begin with, and because of the regular memory editing and wiping by Demerzel. The real reason Cleon XIII saw no vision is because, as a non-Luminist, he didn't consider the trial sacred to begin with and only underwent it for political reason, and possibly because Demerzel tampering with his mind left him, like all the other clone emperors, much poorer in lived experience than a normal person.