This article contains major spoilers for “Fallout” Season Two, and some for Season One.
“Fallout” Season One released on April 10, 2024, to critical success, winning two Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards in Outstanding Music Supervision and Outstanding Emerging Media Program, a Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Television Series, and Emmy nominations in Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actor.
The show was an instant success, drawing in new fans to the series with memorable characters like Walton Goggins’ Cooper Howard/”The Ghoul,” and appealing to existing fans of the franchise with classic “Fallout” icons like Vault-Tec and the Brotherhood of Steel.
Season Two aims to continue the first season’s success by continuing the stories of Goggins’ ever popular Ghoul and the other main characters, Ella Purnell’s Lucy MacLean and Aaron Moten’s Maximus. The second season will also dig deeper into the nostalgia bin for old “Fallout” game fans with the re-introduction of New Vegas, the setting of 2010’s “Fallout: New Vegas,” widely considered online as the magnum opus of the IP, and a vast array of characters (like René Auberjonois’ Mr. House, now portrayed in live action by Justin Theroux, the King’s Gang (now ghoulified) and Victor, the Securiton), as well as classic locations like The Lucky 38/The Vegas Strip, Freeside and Novac, and classic creatures like Deathclaws and Radscorpions.
The first episode of Season Two came in strong, introducing another pre-war storyline, that being of Robert House, who originated in 2010’s “Fallout New: Vegas” as a major player in the game’s main storyline. It also continues the pre-war story of Cooper Howard, his wife Barb, and daughter Janey, and Kate Williams, the pre-war name of Sarita Choudhury’s character Lee Moldaver, as Cooper begins spying on Vault Tec pre-war at the behest of Williams/Moldaver. In the post-war storyline, The Ghoul and Lucy MacLean continue their hunt for Lucy’s father, Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan). The post-war and pre-war storylines connect with Robert House’s – or, perhaps Vault Tec’s – brain chips. This episode saw the return of another iconic part of New Vegas, the Great Khan minor faction, who control another icon of New Vegas, the dinosaur housing city of Novac. The vault-based sub-plots continue with Lucy’s brother Norm (Moises Arias), trapped in Vault 31, thawing all of the pre-war executives while Vault 32 struggles with leadership and Vault 33 with their water chip (a possible call back to the plot of 1997’s “Fallout,” the origin of the franchise).
Episode Two honed in on the developing Brotherhood of Steel storyline, focusing on Maximus’ childhood in Shady Sands around the time a caravaneer – under the control of one of the prior brain chips – brought a nuclear weapon into Shady Sands, an event which led directly to Maximus joining the Brotherhood and the beginning of the NCR’s slump from a major power. Lucy and the Ghoul discover wounded people in a building, nearly losing their lives to a Radscorpion. Lucy saves the life of one of the wounded, a woman, and leave Cooper to suffer with his injuries. The woman, soon revealed to be a slave, leads Lucy right into the hands of Caesar’s Legion, sans Caesar, who capture Lucy and crucify her. In Vault 31, Norm leads the now thawed Vault Tex executives into escaping Vault 31 under the guise of a grand test from Bud Askins. Hank MacLean continues the testing of the brain chips, testing them on mice, resulting in their heads exploding. Back with the Brotherhood of Steel, they settle into their new base of Area 51, where Elder Quintus convinces a council of Elders of various chapters of the Brotherhood into staging a civil war against the Commonwealth Brotherhood of Steel, last seen in 2015’s Fallout 4. This council is interrupted by the arrival of Paladin Xander Harkness (Kumail Nanjiani), an envoy from the Commonwealth.
Episode Three opens in the pre-war world, where a man supportive of Robert House confronts Cooper Howard at a veterans event about Howard’s loyalties, hinting the two will meet again. It’s revealed as Lucy is crucified that Caesar’s Legion has split into two warring factions following the death of Caesar. The Ghoul, now recovered from his injuries, seeks aid to rescue Lucy from the Legion. He visits an abandoned NCR camp and reunites with Victor, last seen in 2010’s Fallout New Vegas as the Securitron under House that rescued the game’s protagonist, the Courier, from dying in a shallow grave after being shot in the head. Victor gives the Ghoul the location of the last NCR holdout in the Mojave. When the NCR refuses to give aid, the Ghoul negotiates directly with the Legion, trading the last of the NCR for Lucy’s freedom. Upon the two’s exit, the Ghoul’s true scheme is revealed as an explosion reignites the conflict between the rival legion factions. Back with the Brotherhood, the plan for the civil war falls apart with the arrival of Harkness. Maximus (Aaron Moten) offers to kill Harkness for Elder Quintus (Michael Cristofer), but is shamed. Maximus later kills Harkness anyway to prevent the Paladin from killing an innocent group of children.
The fourth and latest episode of season two also opens in the pre-war era, during the Sino-American War in Alaska. Cooper Howard, during his time as a US Marine, barely survives a Chinese ambush after the soldiers were slaughtered by a Deathclaw, an iconic creature in Fallout’s history making its live action debut. In the present post-war time, Norm begins to grow suspicious of a pre-war Vault Tec executive who hints to know more than they thought. Meanwhile, a water shortage in 33 leads to negotiations between vault overseers Steph and Betty of 32 and 33 respectively. Negotiations fall through after the revelation that Vault 31 is empty and the experiment is over, and Steph refuses to give 33 water until she receives a personal item from Vault 31. Chet, Lucy’s cousin and Steph’s lover discover she has a Canadian ID. To prevent civil war, Maximus attempts to kill Quintus, bringing Thaddeus (Johnny Pemberton) back in power armor as a stand-in for Paladin Harkness, but the plan falls through after chaos erupts following Dane stealing the cold fusion relic, forcing Thaddeus and Maximus to flee Area 51 as the brotherhood airships over the base begin firing on each other. Lucy recovers from her crucifixion back at the NCR camp, but as a result of her treatment she becomes addicted to Buffout, a chem (drug) in the Fallout universe. She later joins the Ghoul as the two enter the now abandoned New Vegas Strip, discovering a Deathclaw living in one of the buildings along the strip.
Overall, as a longtime fan of the “Fallout” series, I am very satisfied with season two of “Fallout.” While some fans have been unhappy with the series adherence to design changes made for Fallout 4 (like the assault rifle or mech-suit style power armor), as someone who was a fan of Fallout 4’s art style I think the show stays true to the designs and does them well. Also as a big fan of “Fallout: New Vegas,” I really liked a return to New Vegas as a setting. The return of Caesar’s Legion, the New California Republic, and other minor factions like The Kings or Great Khans were great surprises. While I’m not a huge fan of some of the story decisions, like the Great Khans taking over Novac, the Kings becoming Ghouls, the nuking of Shady Sands (the New California Republic’s capital), or the Strip falling and becoming abandoned, these minor grievances were more than made up for by expanded roles for Mr. House, who made a brief appearance in Season One, the Legion Civil War storyline, and as opposed to some online opinions, I am a huge fan of the Brotherhood storyline. The introduction of the other chapters expanded on the faction that serves as the face of the franchise in an area we haven’t seen them in a major role in since 1998’s “Fallout 2.”
At some points the show does feel very much like nostalgia bait. The appearance of the NCR was good but the sudden appearance of an NCR Veteran Ranger, the face on the cover of Fallout New Vegas and one of the most iconic looks in the franchise, felt almost forced, and some decisions like the Deathclaw in New Vegas, have felt less like impactful decisions and more like something to draw in old fans to watch this show. And the additions of big name actors this season like Justin Theroux, Macaulay Culkin, and Kumail Nanjiani have felt like moves to drag in a larger, more mainstream audience, but at the end of the day this is a show, and shows serve one purpose over anything: to make their studios money. And it sure has succeeded in that department, making Bethesda Game Studios and their parent company Zenimax, owned by Microsoft, over 80 million dollars in the short term with projections that it could exceed 100 million by the end of the season.
It’s hard to predict what will happen next in the show, as much like the games, “Fallout” is an everchanging landscape where anything can happen. I can almost guarantee that Lucy will reunite with her father Hank; how that showdown ends could be anyone’s guess. I can also guarantee that Lucy and the Ghoul will become involved in some way with the Brotherhood of Steel war, and the Legion won’t fade out of the story quietly with Macaulay Culkin being such a big name actor and the Legion being such a major faction (This could be up for debate, especially the Culkin point, as another popular actor, Nanjiani, was killed within two episodes of his first appearance, but Culkin is a bigger name).
I do hope the Legion come back, as their design as a faction is one of my favorites (some thing about a post-nuclear faction of tribals LARPing as ancient Romans itches something for the brain), and I think the civil war storyline would be a great additional storyline to the other major ones already playing out (Pre-War Cooper Howard, Lucy and the Ghoul, the Brotherhood of Steel, and Norm and Vault 31).
If I had to give it a rating, I’d give the first half of “Fallout” Season Two a very solid eight out of ten. This may be biased as I am a fan of the series as a whole, but I think it stays true enough to the game lore and design, and retains that classic “Fallout” blend of humor and seriousness well enough to be both a good show and a good adaptation. And the soundtrack, much like any other “Fallout” project, has been amazing. There’s something about a post-apocalyptic world full of robots, mutants, lasers, and other staples of science fiction with music from the 1950s and 1960s playing over it. Returning tracks from the games like Marty Robbin’s “Big Iron,” Nat King Cole’s “Orange Colored Sky,” the Ink Spot’s “It’s All Over but the Crying” and Betty Hutton’s “He’s a Demon, He’s a Devil, He’s a Doll” have been paired perfectly with songs unique to the show like Bert Weeden’s “Lazy Day Blues,” Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang,” and Roy Hogsed’s “Cocaine Blues.”
