Is Saul Durand a Wallfacer in Three-Body Problem Season 2?
Not yet in Season 1, but almost certainly in Season 2. Saul Durand is Netflix's version of Luo Ji, the book character who is chosen as one of humanity's four Wallfacers. The assassination attempt that closes Season 1 is the setup for exactly that arc.
In the source novel, the Wallfacer Project is humanity's answer to a problem the sophons create: alien-controlled particles can read every word, file, and conversation on Earth, so the only place a strategy can stay hidden is inside one person's unspoken mind. Four people are handed enormous resources and told to build their real plans in their heads while deceiving Trisolaris with lies. Saul, following Luo Ji's path, is set up to become one of them.
Who is Saul Durand based on in the book?
Saul Durand is Netflix's adaptation of Luo Ji, the aimless astronomy-and-sociology academic at the center of the second book.
The show splits and renames Liu Cixin's characters, and Saul inherits Luo Ji's defining traits: clever but unambitious, dragged into a cosmic war he wants no part of. The clearest tell is his link to Ye Wenjie. In the novel, Ye Wenjie hands Luo Ji the two axioms of cosmic sociology shortly before she dies—survival is a civilization's first need, and matter keeps growing while the total mass of the universe stays fixed. Netflix keeps this beat: Ye Wenjie seeks Saul out for a cryptic final conversation whose weight nobody grasps at the time.
Why do the San-Ti want Saul Durand dead?
Because Saul is the one person who can independently work out the dark forest theory and broadcast the coordinates of Trisolaris to the rest of the universe.
The dark forest logic treats the cosmos as a place where any civilization that reveals its location gets destroyed. If Saul reasons his way to that conclusion, he holds a switch that can doom Trisolaris and humanity at once. The San-Ti do not know when he will figure it out, so the rational move is to kill him early. The irony—which the novel plays beautifully—is that the assassination attempt is what reveals his value to humanity, and it is precisely why he gets chosen as a Wallfacer.
What makes a "nobody" like Saul the right pick?
The reason Saul is chosen is not his talent—it is that Trisolaris already wants him dead. Of everyone on Earth, only one person's death gets prioritized by an alien civilization, and that alone marks him as holding something dangerous to them. A confused, underachieving academic being picked over famous scientists is the whole point of the arc; the qualification is the threat he poses, not his résumé.
Does Saul Durand become the Swordholder?
In the book's arc, yes—Luo Ji eventually becomes the Swordholder, the single person whose finger rests on the deterrence trigger. Netflix has not confirmed how far Season 2 will take Saul, so treat this as the book's trajectory rather than a locked plot point. What Season 2 almost certainly delivers is the first half of that journey: Saul resisting the role, then being forced to confront it and reason out the dark forest for himself. That bullet that missed him in the finale is where the real story starts.