Written by: Temisan Ekperigin
WARNING: Spoilers for Fallout Season 1 and 2. And I haven’t played the games!
To say I’m disappointed in the last episode of Fallout Season 2 would be the understatement of the decade. Before I dive in, let’s recap Season 1 of Fallout. The first season is set in a retro-futuristic society that is operating after a nuclear holocaust 250 years prior. Our main characters include: Lucy, a girl who grew up in Vault 33, sets of underground societies that were established before the bombs dropped; The Ghoul, a.k.a. Cooper Howard, a 200 year old mutant who was famous actor before the bombs fell; and Maxwell, a member of the religious military order, The Brotherhood.
Season 1 began with Lucy’s father, Hank, getting kidnapped from their vault and brought to the surface. Even though she’s forbidden to leave the vault, Lucy goes to rescue him. On her journey, she meets a scientist who is also trying to reach her father. Strangely, he tells Lucy that, when he dies, she needs to bring his head to her father. The Ghoul catches up to her and takes her prisoner because he’s also looking for the head. Maxwell, who is squiring for a Knight, is on a mission to find the head as well. All three plot lines converge at the end of the season when the main characters discovered the mystery within the head: it holds a limitless energy resource called Cold Fusion. For you to understand my frustrations, I need to start by explaining the many plotlines from this season:
- VAULT 33: With Betty as Vault Overseer, a citizen starts a club that gains popularity. When Vault 33 starts running low on water, no one can see eye to eye on rations, and Vault 32’s Stephanie is being unspeakably difficult.
- VAULT 32: Congratulations to Stephanie, who is now Vault 32’s Overseer! She’s really bad at her job, and her fellow re-populants that were forced out of Vault 33 make everything even more difficult. Also—she’s insane. And from an enemy state: Canada. And Hank’s first wife. Good for her, I guess.
- NORM: After getting locked in Vault 31, Norm’s escape plan includes opening the cryo chambers for all of Bud’s Buds, escaping to the surface, and winging it from there. We also find out that Norm is also a bad leader and not good at winging.
- LUCY: Lucy and The Ghoul travel to New Vegas. Lucy gets the run around a few times and The Ghoul saves her. After episode five, though, Lucy is sent to the underground VaultTec base where she gets to see what her dad has been up to. Speaking of dad…
- HANK: He escapes and journeys back to New Vegas and starts working on miniaturizing the Brain-Computer Interface chip. Which he does, allowing him to make mindless servants. Congrats, Hank.
- THE GHOUL: After Lucy leaves him impaled on a telephone pole in New Vegas, he’s saved by a mutant who asks him to join their ranks. He says no and runs into Max, who has the Cold Fusion. They fight some monsters and The Ghoul plans to give Cold Fusion to whoever is in Robert House’s casino.
- MAX: He is knighted by The Brotherhood. The four factions of said brotherhood are trying to start a rebellion. Instead, Max kills the envoy from their capital and accidentally sparks a civil war. He escapes with the Cold Fusion and runs into The Ghoul in New Vegas. Funny how that works!
- THE PAST: Scenes from the past include, but are not limited to: Barb and Coop fighting, VaultTec meetings, Robert House’s introduction, Barb and Coop joining a senator to stop the war, Stephanie escaping Canada, sort of finding out what the Enclave is, etc. etc.
I imagine you know where I’m going with this: eight episodes that tried to tie in eight different storylines but failed to make more than two have a proper impact. The pacing was awful, with the shallow bits of information being revealed too slowly. On top of this, the entire season was presented in a way that made me feel like I wasn’t clued in on a big secret; was I missing something? Did I not pay close enough attention? Take, for example, the mystery of Cold Fusion. Or The Enclave. Or Senator Welch, an activist from before the bombs fell, whose brain powered the underground VaultTec office.
Oh yeah, or the mutant who healed The Ghoul with uranium. Or the New California Republic military who came to rescue the residents of the New Vegas Strip. Also, The Legion, another religious military group, is going to New Vegas for some reason. Plus, Norm and the one survivor of Bud’s Buds escaped the murderous roaches—where in the world are they going? Stephanie tells “them” (The Enclave, I guess?) to start Phase 2… which I can only assume is the Forced Evolutionary Virus. The Brotherhood had a surprise appearance in episode 8, too—something about starting a war, probably. Like, come on. All of these moving parts make me so mad that my curiosity fades into frustration.
Even still, this season had some beautiful moments. I did tear up watching Maxwell’s flashback of Shady Sands getting nuked. Same with Lucy saying goodbye to her father. And The Ghoul’s moment of relief when he realizes his family was safe. Max finally seeing Lucy again was very sweet, too, even with grief leaving her eyes empty.
But these bits can’t make up for the terrible pacing due to Fallout’s overcrowding. It can’t make up for the dead time in the vaults or the uselessness of some of the flashbacks. Even the character growth fell to the wayside in favor of all the new plot points. All in all, Fallout Season 2 felt like living in Vault 4 before their revolution—it sucked.
Featured Image Caption: Lucy, staring at The Wasteland, believes that every terrible thing that comes next is her fault. I personally blame the showrunners.