Contains spoilers for “Foundation” Season 3, Episode 4, and the book series.

“Foundation” Season 3, Episode 4, aptly named “The Stress of Her Regard,” delves into Lady Demerzel’s (Laura Birn) past, highlighting the repercussions of choices that have burdened her for ages. The episode opens with an insightful dialogue between the incognito positronic robot and Zephyr Vorellis (Rebecca Ineson) within the lush imperial gardens of Trantor. It is during this exchange that we uncover Demerzel’s sinister and strategic involvement in the terrorist incident that led to the Star Bridge’s collapse in Season 1.

Demerzel’s influence is woven throughout the series, increasingly evident as her ties to events unravel. This isn’t unexpected, considering her pivotal role in many of Isaac Asimov’s works (spanning both the “Foundation” and “iRobot” universes). Despite her significance, the opening conversation in Episode 4 marks a turning point in understanding the robot’s complex evolution: her cycle of physical and cognitive rebirth.

Existing for millennia, Demerzel features prominently in Asimov’s early robot tales, set approximately 18,000 years prior. (During that era, Birn’s character, known as R. Daneel Olivaw, appears as male.) Throughout the timeline, maintaining her external appearance in line with her positronic core has been imperative. This notion is subtly referenced in their garden dialogue at the start of Episode 4.

Demerzel and Vorellis explore themes like her potential to contravene programming by choosing between aiding the Foundation or the Empire. They delve into finding loopholes, touching upon the riveting fourth Law of Robotics, the Zeroth Law, which Demerzel helped coin in the original text. The conversation then steers into more intriguing territories.

The discussion transitions to Demerzel’s artificially prolonged existence, the likelihood of her demise, and the issue of rebirth. Demerzel emphasizes how mortality isn’t an option, and reincarnation eludes her, prompting the Zephyr to suggest that perhaps she has metaphorically perished in her various roles: as a robot governed by the Three Laws, then the Zeroth Law, and ultimately under the Empire’s control. She states:

Maybe you have died. Maybe you’ve died twice over and will die again soon.

This point stands out significantly. Why anticipate dying soon? Vorellis elaborates by indicating that Demerzel has transformed into an entirely different entity over the centuries, adding:

When Empire falls, you’ll have a fourth life. A new Demerzel is going to walk out of the palace. She can start clean. Embrace it.

This concept of a robot reincarnating isn’t just fun philosophical wordplay. It comes straight from Asimov’s books.

Toward the end of the “Foundation” story, Demerzel reveals her role in human history. While we won’t go into those details now, suffice it to say that the robot’s involvement has required tens of thousands of years of operability. This comes with your average technological wear and tear. It also means increased memory banks and more computing power, which means bigger, better internal computers over time.

In the book “Foundation and Earth,” the robot explains:

There is no physical part of my body, sir, that has escaped replacement, not only once but many times. Even my positronic brain has been replaced on five different occasions. Each time the contents of my earlier brain were etched into the newer one to the last positron. Each time, the new brain had a greater capacity and complexity than the old, so that there was room for more memories, and for faster decision and action.

This process of upgrading brain capacity and ability continues for millennia until, during the Foundation era, the robot decides that it needs something more than a man-made positronic brain. To continue functioning and helping humanity, it needs a biological one — and a superhuman one, at that. But that is a storyline for later in the show. For now, the foreshadowing is enough to keep Demerzel’s unfolding storyline front and center as Hari Seldon (Jared Harris), Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), and the First and Second Foundations hurdle toward the threat of the Mule (Pilou Asbæk) and the unknown Seldon Crises that lie beyond him.