[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Foundation Season 3 Episode 3, “When a Book Finds You.”]

Lee Pace‘s Brother Day can’t seem to catch a break in Foundation Season 3. His Cleonic Dynasty is going to end in months, but he couldn’t really care less about that. No, this “goblin” version of the emperor — Pace’s word — is more devastated by the fact that his courtesan (Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing) was just ripped from his life. It’s an intimate, human moment in such a sprawling sci-fi epic.

Episode 3’s ending is a turning point for Day. He just set his plan to abandon his empirical duties into motion. He’ll accompany Song (Wong-Loi-Sing) back to her home in the Mycogen sector. Everything’s going right: The Claviger commander (Ibraheem Toure) commits to helping them escape from underneath advisor Demerzel’s (Laura Birn) watchful eye.

But when Day lets his lover in on the Empire’s biggest secret — that Demerzel is a robot — Song turns out to be part of an illegal robot-worshipping religion. When she exposes her faith to Demerzel, the robot erases her memories and sends her away for the good of the Empire, just as her programming demands.

Even though the robot could have killed Song, Pace thinks that it wasn’t a real act of mercy. Demerzel’s actions seem to solidify to Day that she, or “it,” as Season 3 Day would say, is nothing more than an obstacle in his life. She takes away his agency and “fills him with irrational rage.”

“He hates that robot,” the actor told TV Insider. “There’s something juvenile about this season’s Day for sure. He’s not a well-developed person, and he resists her, and it’s difficult for him to see her as anything but a villain.”

Just like Day has changed, becoming completely disillusioned with the power he holds, so has his relationship with Demerzel. In Season 2, they were lovers, despite the fact that the robot also raised him. A “nasty and corrupting” development, Pace said. At their core, Pace still considers Cleon and Demerzel as “complicated soulmates,” even in Season 3.

“I have a great time working with Laura Birn on this dynamic,” Pace said. “They love each other and hate each other in all three seasons, in different ways.”

Pace believes that the events of Season 2 influenced the version of Day we have now, even though his clones are no longer perfect copies and Demerzel tampers with their memories. Last season, Day realized that no matter how much he loved and trusted Demerzel, he was still disposable to her.

“She left him to do what he was going to do and suffer the consequences,” Pace said. “And I think that that action has, in a way, led to the Day that we have now, right? Because he is messy. He’s messy, and he’s influenced by the generations that came before him and the realizations that they had that shaped the culture of these clones.”

By taking Song away from him, Demerzel also shuts down Day’s attempt at being normal. “I think he romanticizes that in a juvenile way, what it means to be normal, what it means to have freedom, what it means to really just relax and enjoy your life,” Pace explained. “And he’s got a fantasy of what that life might be with [Song] outside the palace and what they had was real.”

There’s real love between Day and Song, Pace stressed, and that feeling also still extends to Demerzel. “I think he also loves Demerzel, even though he doesn’t treat her like [it],” he explained. “There is an iron thread between them.”

Now that Song can’t remember him, will Day stick to his plan and leave the Empire? Only time will tell, but Pace teased that Episode 3’s ending sets off big sequence of events for Day’s arc this season. “It’s where his story really starts tumbling forward,” the actor said.

Foundation, Season 3, New Episodes, Fridays, Apple TV+