Fallout: Season 2

Is it weird that I watch a show based on a video game I’ve never played? I mean, I played The Last of Us before watching that show and enjoyed it quite a bit. Both the game and the TV program. Well, I’m here to say that it’s totally fine and good to check out Fallout without having any clue about the game lore or play. Granted, you should definitely watch season one before watching this season or you will have no idea what the hell is going on. Honestly, even if you do that — and even if you pay pretty close attention to what’s happening in season two — you may end up, like me, kind of loosely getting who is on whose side and what the difference is between the groups and sections and whatnot. It’s very video game, but also an alternative history US that borrows real-world events and style from a familiar universe, but layers on enough sci-fi tropes and strangeness that it feels like a funhouse mirror version of what our future would never really be.

With the lore and world generally established the first season, we get to focus in on the adventures of Lucy (Ella Purnell) and The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) as they make their way to New Vegas to find Lucy’s father, Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan) and the Ghoul’s family, who he thinks are locked in cryogenic pods under the big hotel in the middle of Vegas. This is, in essence, the quest. Because what is a video game without a main quest? The season includes — much like the first season — the pair running into all sorts of bad guys on the way to their destination. And even more once they reach it. Mutant bugs and mutant monsters and even larger mutant monsters. Typical post-apocalyptic freaks and weirdos. The former husk of what was once the state militia or government or something that is basically made up of just two people: Greg from White Lotus / Uncle Rio from Napoleon Dynamite, Jon Gries, and a random woman. There’s a presumably inbred bunch of numbskulls called The Legion who are in the middle of a civil war with one side being led by a very sweaty Macaulay Culkin. They like to crucify people in the old Roman tradition, which leads to some pretty fraught times for Lucy. Point is, there are lots of things that can and will try to kill both Lucy and the Ghoul during their adventure. Especially when shit goes down and their partnership unravels.

While this is the main quest, we get a ton of background about Hank’s rise. And the somewhat janky backgrounder around Cooper Howard, back before he became The Ghoul, and his wife, barb (Frances Turner), whom he suspects of monstrous activities to bring about the destruction of the world. This whole flashback thing is important for world-building and setting up who’s Darth Vader versus who is the Emperor versus who is that giant dude, Snoke, who Adam Driver killed with his brain and a lightsaber in that The Last Jedi. Honestly, I had some trouble following the flashbacks. I was pretty distracted by the de-aged Kyle MacLachlan, but was even more distracted by Justin Theroux’s mustache and attempt at a mid-Atlantic accent. There’s a whole twisty-turny thing that involves a conspiracy between Vault-Tec, RobCo and the former US Government (shout out to Clancy Brown for playing POTUS) that I had a lot of trouble following. Some folks show up in the future in different guises. One is a brain in a bucket. One is just a somehow-alive head on a table. Another is an aged version of his former younger self. Another seemingly hasn’t aged at all. Another is a ghoul. And, lastly, one is like a Max Headroom, digital-only version of himself. Maybe? Point is, these flashbacks in some ways confuse more than they help, as the future versions of these folks are sometimes played by the same actors, sometimes different in a couple cases, but it’s also a bit head-spinning figuring out how any of them are in better shape having brought about this nuclear destruction for the sake of revenue. So, I’m not sure anyone won here and am confounded if we’re supposed to think they have.

We do carry on with some of the other characters from the vault and our buddy comedy between Maximus (Aaron Moten) and Thaddeus (Johnny Pemberton) as they also make their way to New Vegas for an obvious, but unplanned meet-up with Lucy and The Ghoul. Pemberton is especially a great comedic presence here and Moten, with his stoic earnestness, is a terrific balance in their odd-couple routine. The cast is actually pretty large for a production in 2026, when you really think about how most shows have seemingly diminished the number of people they put in their shows since COVID. We get backgrounders for a couple additional secondary and tietiery characters, all or most of whom will presumably come into, or back into, the orbit of Lucy and The Ghoul in the third season. But, as of now, it seems like they’re trying to pack a ton of story and a lot of people into an eight-episode season. In some areas, definitely too much. Everything still looks awesome, and the action is fun and plentiful. Though there are times where it feels like they cut some corners to save time and money and might have been better served to spread out the plot a bit to let it breathe. It’s just such dense storytelling that it’s tough to even catch up to figure out who is what. I’m not asking for more exposition per se, but a little more time for these different factions and components might clarify the power schema and who really wields that power in this wasteland. The show hints at a larger world outside what we’ve seen, and even shows us glimpses of what we might be expecting in a subsequent season, but things are certainly left on somewhat of a cliffhanger and a history that is incomplete — or at least not fleshed out to the point where I was able to follow 100%. It is a super-entertaining series, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of it. But I truly hope they tie together some of the pieces that either had to be rushed for time, or were just a little underdeveloped with the idea they’d make clear why they’ve shown us the things they have in subsequent episodes.