The Wasteland Widens in Fallout Season 2
For reasons we all understand, adapting a popular video game into a movie or TV series is a gamble that fails more often than it succeeds. Games can get by with lazy narratives and characters because gameplay and interactivity fill in the gaps. 2024’s Prime Video take on Bethesda’s Fallout was the happy exception. It took the game’s iconic post-apocalyptic world and populated it with a stellar cast, an engaging story, and a perfect blend of fan service and general accessibility. Fallout has returned for a new season, broadening its scope a bit and adjusting the pace. It feels a little bit like a game that has moved from being linear to open world. There’s more breathing room.
Old New Vegas
Fallout Season 1 was essentially about vault dweller Lucy McLean (Ella Purnell) and uneasy ally and traveling companion The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) searching for Lucy’s father Hank (Kyle MacLachlan) in the irradiated wilderness of the New California Republic. The first season was focused on world-building, introducing the general public to a fiction so many gamers knew by heart.
Premise and world established, Season 2 relaxes its focus a little and divides its attention. Lucy and the Ghoul continue their journey, but there’s a lot more time spent on Cooper Howard’s backstory prior to the apocalypse. Season 2 introduces Mr. House, a name that some players might recognize from Fallout New Vegas. In addition to following these narrative strands, life, drama, and intrigue continue in the vaults. The six episodes we were able to preview felt like a show trying very hard to keep a lot of plates spinning. And mostly succeeding.
Season 2 goes broader and deeper into the game’s fiction, and fans will happily recognize landmarks and lore from Fallout New Vegas. One of the game’s strengths has always been its setting. Fallout’s unique alternative history of postwar America and the Cold War drips with irony and allegory. Prime Video has the talent and resources to add the kind of detail and texture that the game couldn’t afford to.
Practically Speaking
Fallout Season 2’s script continues to balance drama and humor. The Ghoul and his pre-apocalyptic persona are taken much more seriously this season. There’s more than a little well-earned pathos in Goggin’s effective star turn. Lucy adds layers of emotional armor, barely flinching at the violence. Justin Theroux’s Mr. House is interesting from the start, and MacLachlan’s Hank starts to move away from the blandly smiling cypher he was last season.
Visually, Fallout Season 2 continues its exciting mixture of gruesome practical effects seamlessly wedded to digital magic. Let’s just say there are a lot of exploding heads. The gore is done with just enough ironic distance to make it palatable. The game’s tradition of using 1950s and ’60s popular music as commentary is spot on again.
Season 1 felt like Fallout was determined to both honor the game and explain itself to everyone else. It succeeded on both counts. Season 2 feels like a show settling in for a long run. It isn’t like the main quest has disappeared, but the side quests are there to enjoy, too. I have no idea how the season ends. What I’ve seen so far suggests that there’s much more to come once the 8 episodes have aired. If you enjoyed the first season of Fallout, Season 2 will not disappoint you.
***Episodes provided by Prime Video for preview***