Forget Pluribus, Apple TV’s Best Sci-Fi Show Officially Returns Sooner Rather Than Later

Although the darkly comic Pluribus might be the latest Apple TV sci-fi hit, the streaming service’s greatest contribution to the genre will return sooner than Vince Gilligan’s satirical dystopia. After HBO’s Game of Thrones proved a colossal mainstream success, the race was on to see which cable network or streaming service would become the biggest producer of fantasy shows.

While Prime Video’s Critical Role show The Legend of Vox Machina is arguably the streaming service’s finest contribution to the genre, it was their eye watering-ly expensive Lord of the Rings prequel The Rings of Power that outdid both Game of Thrones and its spinoff, House of the Dragon, in budgetary terms. Netflix’s The Witcher and Arcane had similarly massive budgets, but HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter reboot is now set to match all these earlier hits in terms of scale and ambition.

However, while the rest of the streaming services and cable networks have been busy at work crafting big-budget fantasy hits, Apple TV has been focused on another genre. Over the past six years, the streaming service has released the Monsterverse spinoff Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Silo, Invasion, Severance, the satirical hit Murderbot, and a string of other high-profile sci-fi series. Although Pluribus is the most recent of these acclaimed titles, Foundation season 4 will prove that the Asimov adaptation remains Apple TV’s greatest sci-fi show so far.

Foundation Season 4 Is Expected To Come Out Mid-2027

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Anchored by an incredible performance from Rhea Seehorn, Pluribus is a dark, surreal sci-fi odyssey that centers on the lonely romantasy author Carol Sturk. For some reason she can’t comprehend, Carol is one of a small handful of humans who hasn’t been assimilated by an alien hive mind that has otherwise taken control of the entire population of the planet. While “The Others” are seemingly content in their blissed-out existence since “The Joining,” Carol is one of few holdouts.

The Breaking Bad creator infused Pluribus season 1 with the same unpredictable edge and dark wit he brought to the original run of The X-Files, but as great as the critically acclaimed show is, one epic saga from Apple TV has Pluribus beat. Debuting in 2021, Foundation is based on a book series by the legendary sci-fi scribe Isaac Asimov.

However, while Asimov’s Foundation novel series is a largely impersonal, dry fictional future history, Foundation is a pacy, twisty sci-fi thriller that turns this story into an unpredictable power struggle of epic proportions. Foundation follows Lou Llobell’s gifted math prodigy Gaal Dornick and Jared Harris’s eccentric professor Hari Seldon as the pair work on a theory of psychohistory, a hermeneutic designed to predict the behavior of human populations over eons.

Foundation Is Apple TV’s Greatest Sci-Fi TV Achievement Yet

In Foundation‘s future, the universe is ruled by Empire, the name given to the collective trio of Emperor Cleon’s clone Brother Day, his planned successor, Brother Dawn, and their shared advisor Brother Dusk. Influenced by the powerful robot Demerzel, the triumvirate are shaken by the revelations inherent in Dornick and Seldon’s theories, and soon realize they must reconsider their leadership to maintain power.

As morally complex as Harris’s earlier sci-fi epic The Expanse but with the sprawling ensemble approach of Game of Thrones, Foundation is an epic in the truest sense. Not only does the world of the series look and feel immersive and richly realized, but Foundation’s complex story also comes to in a story that could easily have felt overly didactic and academic.

By imbuing Asimov’s acclaimed books with a human side, Foundation makes its characters more sympathetic and, in turn, makes the show’s characters more engaging. In the process, Foundation proves that it is one of the only Apple TV sci-fi shows that is even better than Pluribus.