Created by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Fallout Season 2 returns us back to the wasteland and continues to follow the story of our three core characters from the previous season on their respective journeys. Lucy (Ella Purnell) and the Ghoul, aka Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins), are in pursuit of Lucy’s father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), to New Vegas with Lucy intending to bring him to justice for his crimes and the Ghoul seeking out his family. Meanwhile, Maximus (Aaron Moten) has returned to the Brotherhood of Steel, now with more status — and more disillusionment about the way the Brotherhood operates. Hovering over it all is the revelations of other secrets of Vault-Tec, the involvement of the mysterious Mr. House, and the game-changing technology of cold fusion, a limitless power source that could improve life across the wasteland, if it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
The first season of Fallout was a magnificent adaptation that perfectly portrays the wild and expansive world of the Fallout games through the perspectives of original characters and an engaging story that was loved by both super fans of the game series and newcomers. Everyone, including myself, was excited to see season 2 not only to see more of these characters and their intertwined journeys but also because this season was going to take place in New Vegas, a major location from one of the most popular Fallout installments that brings a megaton of lore along with it, including new characters, factions, and monsters. This season was clearly going bigger and bolder but was it better? In most ways, yes.
Fallout Season 2 was another fantastic season that wonderfully continues the storylines of our compelling characters in the insane world of the wasteland while simultaneously serving as a beautiful love letter to the New Vegas game. This season did have the challenge of tackling multiple connected storylines all at once, like the previous season, and while it mostly did a great job of balancing it all there were some storylines that ended up being weaker and less interesting than others. But aside from that issue, this was a near-perfect season that I loved from start to end. It felt passionately crafted by everyone involved and further cements this series as one of the best video game adaptations ever made in recent years.
The returning cast once again delivers brilliant performances as their characters further evolve, while new and surprising additions to the cast also ended up being brilliant with their respective performances, no matter how big or small their roles were. The major standouts of this season that also serve as the emotional core that drives the narrative are Lucy and the Ghoul, aka Cooper Howard, who are reprised wonderfully by Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins, respectively.
Lucy struggled between being a goody two-shoes Vault Dweller and a wild wastelander in the first season, and that struggle evolves further in this season due to her new partnership with the Ghoul and the new threats she encounters on her continuous journey through the wasteland. She is trying her best to maintain her naive optimism and innocence on her path to bring her father to justice, but the Ghoul’s polar opposite ideology, combined with numerous obstacles they endure together, are beginning to crack her morals and her sanity, leading her down a dark path she doesn’t wish to follow but can’t help but do so. Ella Purnell beautifully delivers humor, heartbreak, rage, and shock in her role as Lucy, making her a truly compelling character that most people can relate to, given how she represents players that try to be morally good in a video game series that constantly tests your morals at every turn with consequential choices.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Ghoul is a full-on nihilist who’s seen all the horrors that humanity, the wasteland, and Vault-Tec have to offer and has accepted the fact that nothing is ever going to change in this post-apocalyptic world based on both past and present experience. All he cares about now is finding his family, whatever it takes, but the journey to do so brings back both literal and figurative demons of his past to haunt him, giving us new emotional sides to the character we have never seen before. We get an incredible evolution of his character in both his pre-war storyline and post-war storylines that are both beautifully brought to life through Walton’s phenomenal performance, marking this character as easily his best among his career.
Lucy and the Ghoul serve as the leading pair of this season with polar opposite ideologies, but then you have the return of Maximus, who has his own compelling journey as secondary lead of the season, where he serves as the midpoint of morality. After achieving his initially desired role within the Brotherhood of Steel through false heroics, Maximus finds himself stuck between surrendering to the way things are within the morally bankrupt nature of the Brotherhood or striving to make something better after being inspired by the only true good person he has ever met, Lucy. He doesn’t know what to do until one choice he makes, which results in massive consequences, pushes him to forge his own path to become the hero he always wanted to be for this world instead of the false one he has been playing as. Maximus has such a beautiful journey for his character in this season that is made even better by Aaron Moten’s fantastic performance.
Also having an interesting and complex journey this season is Lucy’s younger brother, Norm MacLean, reprised by Moisés Arias, who after discovering one of the big secrets about his vault is forced to fend for himself and follow in his sister’s footsteps by going up to the surface and find more of the truth regarding the false reality he was raised in underground. Moisés Arias does a great job playing a young but incredibly smart individual who does what he must to survive, and allows us to get a deeper understanding of how delusional the corporate workers of Vault-Tec are in a satirical portrayal of real delusional corporate workers in the current corporate state of America. It’s portrayed like a cult, which, to be honest, is not far from the truth.
This season features at least three primary antagonists in three separate but connected storylines that all have their own fantastic performances by their respective cast members and unique themes involved with each. First, we have the return of Hank MacLean, Lucy’s father and former Overseer of Vault 33, who was revealed to be the one to have bombed the city of Shady Sands, killing many innocent people who were free of Vault-Tec’s lies, including Lucy’s mother and Maximus’ parents. He is clearly deluded into believing in Vault-Tec’s goal for creating a better world, so much so that he’s willing to go out of his way to build a better one himself by any means, even if it involves killing or enslaving various wastelanders and emotionally manipulating his own daughter.
He’s a truly sickening individual that you can’t help but love to hate, though also hate to love due to such a charming personality he is given by Kyle MacLachlan’s exemplary performance. He is the perfect kind of villain for Lucy to take on, not only because of the emotional stakes between them but because of how Hank represents what Lucy could have become, which is a delusional cog within Vault-Tec’s corporate machine.
The second villain to have a huge presence within the series, both in the pre-war and post-war storylines, is an iconic villain pulled straight from the New Vegas game: Mr. Robert House, the CEO of RobCo Industries and ruler of the New Vegas Strip in 2281, played amazingly by Justin Theroux. Mr. House was a reclusive New Vegas businessman who commanded an army of Securitron robots and ruled as the city’s technocratic dictator in the game, and this series fully explores his origins while showing just how scarily similar he and his company are to real tech companies that put profit over people in increasingly dystopian ways.
While he may not have been the direct cause of the world ending the way it did, he certainly helped move it along with not just his actions but also how he profited off it for himself, making a perfect villain that is all too real, creating a sense of dread that you feel throughout the season. Justin Theroux perfectly executes the brilliant, cunning, charismatic, and ruthless madman that is Mr. House from the game, making for a perfect supporting antagonist that haunts the leading characters on their journey nearly every step of the way.
The third and final antagonist is the strongest element of this season’s weakest storyline and that is Stephanie Harper, former resident of Vault 33 now turned Overseer of Vault 32, played by Annabel O’Hagan. Everything that was going on with the Vault 32 & 33 storyline this season was mostly uninteresting and dragged the season down a bit despite having some entertaining moments but Harper was the stand out not only for the intense performance that Annabel O’Hagan delivers for the character but how she serves as a terrifying representation of a modern morally absent dictator who stole her way to the top rather than earned it. Sound familiar?
The way she enforces her madness and will upon others too stupid to realize what she’s doing is scarily relevant to current events, despite being portrayed in a satirical fashion. It’s an accurate portrayal of both the villains in the games and the villains we are currently dealing with in real life that, if not stopped, can make things worse if everything is allowed to be under their control.
This season also features numerous fun performances from supporting cast members and special guest stars that continue to make the weird and wild world of Fallout feel more alive than ever, especially with its inclusion of various factions such as the New California Republic (NCR), a democratic republic attempting to restore representative government and maintain law and order, and Caesar’s Legion, a violent totalitarian army of tribal slavers inspired by the Roman legion. We also get numerous references to the involvement of another faction from the Fallout universe known as the Enclave, which is hinted to be the true cause of the war instead of Vault-Tec themselves, as we were led to believe in that bombshell reveal of the season one finale. It’s clear that this faction is set to have a much bigger role in the next season and I truly can’t wait to see how they get adapted, given what they are capable of in the games.
On top of all the factions, we also get the inclusion of the most iconic monsters of the Fallout lore, which are the Deathclaws, genetically engineered apex predators that were originally created by the U.S. military before the Great War as battlefield replacements. We were teased with their inclusion in the first season’s finale, with the skeleton of one being featured, but in this season the Deathclaws are terrifyingly brought to life through a gorgeous mix of practical puppetry and CGI, serving as one of the main obstacles our leading characters have to go through. They live up to their reputation in the games as one of the most dangerous threats in the wasteland and serve as the only beast that scares the hell out of a badass like the Ghoul, showing exactly how terrifying they can be.
The second season’s narrative shifts the ongoing story and action to New Vegas, focusing on Lucy, the Ghoul, and Maximus navigating its complex factions while pursuing Hank and the mysterious cold fusion technology, while also going into expanded pre-war flashbacks revealing more about Cooper, Mr. House, and the origins of the war. This season also delves deeper into themes about loyalty, power struggles, and the clash between the various factions of the wasteland with starkly different ideologies, while simultaneously offering further exploration of the lore of the games and further development of the characters as more secrets and twists are revealed.
This season has a lot going on, and while for the most part it is all handled really well there were some storylines that dragged the pacing of the season a bit due to how uninteresting they were, namely the Vault 32 & 33 storyline I mentioned earlier. This season needed to slim things down a bit, or at least make the weaker storylines be more interesting, because it would have made for a more perfect season that I would have considered better than the first in every way.
Thankfully, the finale brings the season to a wonderful end by delivering multiple earned payoffs, heartbreaking twists, crazy good action moments, and great conclusions to several major arcs and threads while leaving others open for the next season to follow. There was also a lot more fan service this season for fans of the games, especially New Vegas fans, that was littered throughout each episode, which I felt was all handled perfectly without taking anything away from the ongoing story.
Just like in the games and the previous season, this season isn’t short of endlessly bloody action and gore that is all done mostly through well-crafted practical effects and some occasional CGI that thankfully isn’t too distracting. The second season clearly had a major budget increase because there were lots of impressive practical effects on display in terms of sets and beings brought to life from the games, from the terrifying Deathclaws to the amazing Securitron robots. One of the most notable improvements for CGI from season one to season two was actually a major fix to one of the biggest issues I had with season one, which was the de-aging for Kyle MacLachlan as Hank in pre-war flashbacks.
There is beautiful cinematography put on display that gives this show its gorgeously epic looks and feels in every frame, along with a fantastic score by composer Ramin Djawadi and a perfect needle drop soundtrack of 1940s to 1960s music.
This season may not have been completely perfect in all areas, but it certainly was a brilliant sophomore outing for the series that continues to prove itself as one of the best ongoing video game adaptations out there. I can’t wait to see more of these characters and the wild adventures that await them in season 3. I’m going to give Fallout Season 2 an A = 97.
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