I expressed this sentiment in my review of the first few episodes, and it bears repeating: I’m incredibly annoyed with Amazon’s decision to release all of Fallout’s first season at once. It’s anyone’s guess as to why they made that decision, from a decision to bypass spoilers to thinking it would lead to higher viewership to some cynical strategy for increasing ad-free subscriptions. (The latter theory was suggested by a friend of mine, and given how obvious the black pauses in episodes telegraph where commercial breaks are supposed to go, it’s my odds-on favorite explanation.) Whatever the reason, Amazon obviously made it out of “fiduciary responsibility” as opposed to any creative decision—and in doing so, either intentionally or unintentionally, wound up underlining the series’ sharpest point.

But we’ll get to that later. The main reason why this decision annoys me is that as I was going through the first season, I spent the time wishing I was reviewing it on a weekly basis for all of you. Fallout left a strong impression in its first three hours, and that positive impression only continued as the season did. Embracing the true law of the wastes, the narrative has been “sidetracked by bullshit every goddamned time,” sending Lucy, Maximus, and The Ghoul on a series of side jaunts: nearly getting dissected in a supermarket, taking refuge in a mutant-loaded vault, running afoul of bandits masquerading as a legitimate militia. The series didn’t fall into the “X-hour movie” trap that so many streaming services do, laying out episodes that were distinguishable as episodes.

More satisfying, they were distinguishable as Fallout. I spent a lot of time gushing about the aesthetics and Easter eggs of the first episodes, and I continued to watch the series in a perpetual Pointing Leo meme state as those references persisted. Every episode has featured sequences that are alternatively hilarious, violent, gross, tragic, and even step into bizarre “Wild Wasteland” territory on a couple of occasions. Allowing the characters to get distracted repeatedly never felt like killing time; it felt like an enrichment of the experience, the sense that the creative team was as excited to dick around in this sandbox as anyone else who’s fired up one of these games in the last 27 years. As a fan of the series for all of those 27 years, this has been about as rewarding an adaptation as I could have hoped for.

“The Beginning” keeps that feeling of appreciation going to the end, even if there’s only one fully bizarre element in a Robobrain Roomba and only one bit of gonzo Bloody Mess violence in Brotherhood adept taking a tumble into spinning Vertibird blades. This is a finale that’s all about tying up loose ends strung throughout the season, while scorching some of the earth behind it, and setting our quartet of wastelanders (the rebranded Dogmeat gets the bump to series regular in my eyes) off on their next objectives. And while it might be a bit too prompt in the way it ties off some of those loose ends, it makes its reveals land with appropriately atomic force.

The explanation of exactly what is going on comes as the two prominent narratives of this season come together: Lucy’s quest to see where and why Hank was taken, and Norm digging to figure out the truth of the power structure of Vault 33. (On the latter, I retract my initial skepticism of the show’s decision to go back to Vault 33, as there’s been great work by Moisés Arias, solid bureaucratic comedy, and incredibly chilling moments.) Both quests reach their apex here, as Lucy brings Wilzig’s head to Moldaver at her headquarters—Griffith Park Observatory, expertly reimagined as post-apocalyptic compound—and Norm finally gets behind Vault 31 to see why it provides all of Vault 33’s Overseers.

And it turns out, all the unanswered questions have the same horrifying answer, delivered via a mix of Moldaver speeches, flashbacks of Cooper spying on the Dr. Strangelove-esque meeting of America’s corporate leaders, and matter-of-fact exposition from the Roomba-mounted brain. When Birdie of Vault 4 asked what the experiment of Lucy’s vault was, it was clear a reveal was coming, and the reveal is awful even by the standards of what we’ve seen before. Vault-Tec decided that by creating the technology that could save the world, it was the company that would determine how best to save the world, and that they should push the world to a point where it would need saving. Vault 31 isn’t part of a trinity, it’s the puppet master to govern the events of its adjoining vaults, and by extension the next phase of human development. Hank, Betty, and Stephanie have all survived 200 years in suspended animation, and are prepared to usher in a new world order ruled by the most diabolical of all forces: middle management.

The reveal of this conspiracy is both a development that pays off the looming dread of the previous few episodes—a dread that reached its peak in Norm and Chet’s exploration of Vault 32—and also the proof of how accurate an adaptation and continuation of this story it is. Fallout the television series understands the truth that’s buried at the core of Fallout the video game franchise: how truly fucked up the world was long before the bombs fell, and that the ramifications of said fucking reverberate even centuries later. Behind the violence and wackiness is truly bleak stuff, billions of lives determined by a handful of men and women driven by profit and devoid of morals. “The Beginning” stares into that, summarized with matter-of-fact statements to horrified looks. My personal favorite, Bud’s brain explaining their ultimate logic: “America outsourced the survival of this company to the private sector. But it would’ve been insane to keep a failed nation alive. So we kept Vault-Tec alive instead.”

The revelations regarding Lucy’s family and the truth of Vault 33 are as earth-shattering as they could possibly be, though they are one of the main quibbles with the finale in that learning them leaves Lucy nearly catatonic. Watching Lucy learn the harsh realities of the wasteland and having to adjust her moral compass to survive said realities has been a consistent joy of Fallout, and Ella Purnell has been great at showing how her fundamental optimism is continually bent without being broken. Here though, she’s broken, a stunned silence governing the majority of her time onscreen. And while it’s certainly understandable, it does keep her from being a proactive member of events of “The Beginning,” save one symbolic aiming and one subsequent shot of her pistol.

The active role in current events belongs to Maximus, who returns to the Brotherhood with his decoy head in a ruse that lasts all of 30 seconds, only to earn a stay of execution by directing them to its true location. It’s a bit of a contrivance to keep him alive, but it works, especially as it continues the trend of showing that for all its display of knightly virtues, T-45 power armor and vertibirds are the only things separating the Brotherhood of Steel from any other faction jockeying for power in the wasteland. The long-departed Rubicon taught me that any Michael Cristofer character has some form of ulterior motive, and Elder Quintus displays an ambitious pragmatism that pulls on Maximus’s impulses. Even if he doesn’t know Maximus has found his own definition of home—the promise Lucy made for them to return to Vault 33 together—it’s still a perfectly calculated pitch.

Maximus’s intelligence interrupts the emotional display, as Brotherhood vertibirds swoop down on the Observatory—and instead of the expected “Flight of the Valkyries,” it’s to the velvet tones of Nat King Cole “I Don’t Want To See Tomorrow.” This is another slow-motion scene of violence, but unlike the first raider attack on Vault 33 or Maximus’s ill-advised rescue attempt in Vault 4, this is brutal warfare on a Saving Private Ryan level. Seeing the Brotherhood artillery mow down the NCR remnants, or the remnants finding the way to crack the power armor shell, you’re seeing the Fallout catchphrase of “War never changes” (spoken twice in this episode with the force of knowing the viewers are waiting for the shoe to drop) writ large.

There is a twist to the battle, as the T-45 power armor is laid low by a man who learned its weaknesses 200 years ago. As much fun as Walton Goggins has been playing a nameless gunslinger heartlessly blasting his way across the wastes—and he’s a ton of fun in the final scenes as he wipes out a full detachment of the Brotherhood—he’s been delivering even stronger work in the Cooper Howard flashbacks. Flashbacks can be a thankless part of a lot of shows, but Goggins has kept a lot of that material afloat from the polished nature of Cooper’s Vault-Tec pitch to the growing discomfort he has with Vault-Tec’s soulless nature of doing things. Here, while he’s similarly stunned into silence by his wife coldly laying out the near-extinction of the human race, he conveys as much with his face as he does with his normal loquaciousness, that despite all his hopes he’s personally and professionally in bed with pure monsters.

In the present day, he shows how that realization has eaten away at him and provided the motivation beyond surviving for the sake of it, scarring Hank’s face and spitting out the question that’s been on his lips for two centuries: “Where’s my fucking family?” He doesn’t get an answer, as Hank rockets away to parts unknown—or at least unknown to him, in a final reveal that motivated my loudest Pointing Leo moment. It’s a promising direction for the series, opening up the present Ghoul in the same way it’s been opening up Cooper’s past. Even with all we’ve learned about him there’s still considerable blank space between his discovery of Vault-Tec’s plan and fleeing the bombs as a birthday party entertainer, and even more between that moment and where he is now.

And the present day shows further promising directions for a second season of Fallout, as Lucy takes the Ghoul—and Dogmeat by extension—up on the offer to join the hunt for Hank alongside the wastes, leaving Maximus to be hailed as the warrior who killed Moldavar and secured the cold fusion technology. (Also leaving poor Norm sealed in the control room of Vault 31 with all his attendant knowledge, though none of our other main characters are aware of that.) It’s the right kind of season finale, one that clears up the quests that drove the action of the first season and sets new ones in motion, and ones that leave a lot of room to get sidetracked by bullshit with increasing regularity.

Even with all the references and ground covered in these eight episodes there’s still a voluminous amount of content for Fallout to cover, the surface only scratched in terms of settings and themes and items. It’s clear that the ambition to do so is here, given the sight of a Deathclaw skull, the name drop of “super mutant” in the fateful meeting, and the final shot of Hank’s ultimate destination. And Fallout proved, with confidence and cleverness, it’s earned the right to get as far into this world as it’s willing to go. War never changes, but here’s hoping release schedules have that luxury, and we get the chance to crack that Vault door open ever wider in the future.

Stray observations

• Thanks for reading as always! A second season is coming, here’s hoping that it’s released in a way that allows us to have steadier conversations.

• I quibbled in my first review about how frequently the creative team were incorporating needle drops in the first few episodes, but either I became accustomed to their use or they became more appropriately deployed as time went on.

• Given all the buildup of “the Flame Woman” in the previous episodes, it was a disappointingly quick dispatch of Moldaver in the Observatory battle. We likely haven’t seen the last of Sarita Choudhury given we don’t get an explanation of how she also survived for 200 years, but for how much she resonated to present Shady Sands survivors and past activists, it feels off that she’s left as a corpse Maximus is unwillingly using to climb to power in the Brotherhood, and a conscience he may or may not follow.

• Quick sidebar for how great the casting remained over the course of the season, every role pitch-perfect. Highlights are Matt Berry as the voice of Mr. Handy robots (and the out-of-work sitcom actor who provided that voice), Glenn Fleshler as the gloriously named small-time crime boss Sorrel Booker, and Fred Armisen as DJ Carl playing “authentic fiddle tunes.” The latter in particular feels he stepped into the wasteland from a Portlandia sketch.

• We confirmed that Maximus wasn’t responsible for Dane’s near-crippling injury, but that they did it themselves out of fear for what they’d encounter in the wasteland. Hopefully we see more of them as the Brotherhood shifts to its newly powered position.

• On the Brotherhood scribe topic, no sighting of Thaddeus in the finale, but his running off to avoid Brotherhood judgment after being ghoulified is the smartest move that Fallout’s creative team could make. Out-of-his-element Johnny Pemberton is the best use of Johnny Pemberton, and as they’ve moved past what could have been ongoing tension between him and Maximus, he’s in perfect position to be a recurring player in future episodes. I look forward to seeing what the makeup team does to him.

• I was expecting de-aged Kyle MacLachlan in the flashback to more closely resemble Dale Cooper, but with the hair and costuming, I was more reminded of David Dastmalchian in the highly entertaining Late Night with the Devil.

• “Not much food in here, expect the occasional very large bug.”

Vault-Tec Operations Manual

• Okay, let’s get this out of the way right now: NEW. FUCKING. VEGAS. As far as dropping a teaser for a second season, prominently featuring what’s arguably the best game in the series as Hank’s final destination is the most guaranteed way to get my attention. The show takes place 15 years after the game, so history remains recent enough for characters to return. Personally, I’m hoping to see the Kings make an appearance.

• Speaking of Fallout: New Vegas, it’s hard for any fan of the series to miss “Mr. House” himself, Robert House (Rafi Silver) representing RobCo at Vault-Tec’s meeting. Though a limited presence, he gives off House’s cold profit-motivated energy (“There’s a lot of earning potential with the end of the world”) and his skepticism of Vault-Tec fits with his plan to forge his own way forward in the post-apocalypse. It remains to be seen—although it seems the safe bet—that season two is about to make “The House Always Wins” the canonical New Vegas ending.

• That board meeting is a frenzy of references, as RobCo, Big MT, REPCONN, and West-Tek are all prominent corporations whose products and headquarters are frequently featured in Fallout games. And the executive speculation bears horrifying fruit as Vault experiments: Vault 27 was deliberately overcrowded, Vault 87 was dedicated to experimentation that led to super mutants, Vault 106 pumped psychotropic drugs into the atmosphere, Vault 29 separated parents and children. A vault governed by a milkman robot hasn’t shown up anywhere I’m familiar with, but it’s absolutely not beyond the pale.

• Glad my prediction that we’d be referring to CX404 as “Dogmeat” took less than a season to come up. Still holding out for the incorporation of some cyberdog components.

• Ron Perlman cameo in season two or we riot.

Welcome to Episodic Medium’s Bookend coverage of Prime video’s Fallout, which debuted its first season of eight episodes on Wednesday. While the economics of this model still don’t make sense for full episodic coverage of (most) binge releases, in instances where we think it’s warranted we’re going to try bookend reviews for certain titles. This first review will be for all subscribers, but the full-season reflection next week will be exclusively for paid subscribers. For more information on what we’re covering in the coming months, check our out spring schedule.

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It’s not an exaggeration to say that Fallout is my favorite video game franchise of all time. From the moment I saw the first installment’s iconic box design, all the way back in 1997 on the shelf at CompUSA, it’s a franchise that’s occupied a special place in my heart. I’ve followed its progression from Vault 13 to the New California Republic to the Capital Wasteland to the Mojave to the Commonwealth and all the stops in between, logging hundreds of hours across multiple playthroughs. I’ve hunted Deathclaws with laser rifles, negotiated through extensive speech challenges, and spent entire play sessions trying to carry 600 pounds worth of loot after wiping out a bandit camp.

So when I heard the news that Prime Video was going to adapt the franchise into a series, I had the classic die-hard fan’s concern that they were going to screw it up. However, it was balanced with the fact that if a series was going to happen, it’s the best time possible for it to happen. These days, with comic book adaptations cratering left and right, video games are the IP of choice for studios and creatives. The Super Mario Bros. Movie and both Sonic the Hedgehogs made a ridiculous amount of money, and nearly every streaming service boasts at least one adaptation front and center in their lineup: HBO/Max’s The Last Of Us, Netflix’s Arcane, Paramount+’s Halo, Peacock’s Twisted Metal.1 The successes—and a lot of these are successes—are because after years of of trial and error, they either know the strength of their source material (The Last Of Us) or are unafraid to use it as a jumping off point to have their own fun (Twisted Metal).

And Fallout the TV series manages to succeed on both of those counts. It’s a show that proves its understanding of the canon, from the surface iconography of Vault Boy and power armor to the twisted sense of humor that runs throughout a setting that should in no way be funny. It matches the heightened reality of the original games and also manages to carve its own path through the wasteland, establishing its a sense of personality right away. Frequently violent, often hilarious, and boasting an embarrassment of riches in its casting, this has the potential to shoot to the upper tier of gaming adaptations.

For those new to the franchise, Fallout takes place in an alternate history where America followed the 1950s retro-futuristic template well into the late 21^st century, until a nuclear war over resource scarcity reduced the entire world to ruins. Survivors hid in massive underground bomb shelters known as “Vaults,” designed to reopen and repopulate the world after the dust settled. Said world, a century-plus after the war, has become your traditional post-apocalyptic setting where pockets of civilization exist alongside the dangers of raiders and mutants. Success largely comes from what you can scavenge from the pre-war world, how well you are able to harness the resources that are left, or how successfully you can kill and loot anyone who succeeded on the first two counts.

Fallout the series sets its events firmly in that context, using a setup both familiar to Fallout players and simple enough for newcomers to grasp. Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) has lived her whole life within the confines of Vault 33, which has remained sealed since the bombs fell 219 years ago. When the Vault is breached by a raider attack and her father Hank (Kyle MacLachlan) is abducted, she decides to leave the safety of the Vault and go after him. In short order, she’s swept up in a conspiracy that could potentially decide the fate of the Wasteland, finding herself at odds with two figures who understand it much better than she does: Maximus (Aaron Moten), an ambitious squire of the techno-theocratic Brotherhood of Steel, and “The Ghoul” (Walton Goggins), a sardonic bounty hunter who’s been alive since the war.

All of these details are laid out solidly in the first three episodes, written by showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, and directed by executive producer Jonathan Nolan. And crucially, all three episodes put to rest early concerns that I had starting out. “The End,” while the longest of the episodes at 75 minutes, gets all of its table-setting out of the way before rolling credits, getting Lucy out of the Vault and setting everyone’s primary quests in motion. “The Target” puts all three of its main characters in the same location early on, setting their objectives at cross-purposes with each other, and removes the threat of a Game Of Thrones scenario of multiple bubble shows. And “The Head” shows how the show can kill time on an episodic basis with random monster encounters and sidequest hooks (an essential part of the Fallout gaming experience, summarized in one of Goggins’ best line deliveries, “Thou shalt get sidetracked every goddamned time”).

Even more crucially than narrative, these three episodes set the tone for what Fallout the series can be, and while it’s not a dead ringer for the Fallout games, it certainly occupies the same strata. Nolan’s direction invites comparisons to Westworld, but the feel is very different, less an artificial construct and more a lived-in world held together with glue and grit. From the faded decorations of the Vault to the ramshackle construction of Filly to the wide shots of the now desolate Santa Monica Pier, the post-apocalyptic aesthetic is constantly on display. And that aesthetic is littered with references and callouts to the original source material—the construction of the laser weapons and the Mr. Handy robots, the product iconography of Sunset Sarsaparilla and Nuka-Cola, and the ever-present thumbs-up of the series mascot Vault Boy. It doesn’t call attention to itself, nor does it add details to a degree you need to have the Nukapedia open to pick out every bit of what’s going on—it’s a regular stream of Easter eggs to reward those in the know.

And if you need additional proof that the creative team are fans of the franchise, look no further than how violent this show is, a clear indication that everyone involved selected the Bloody Mess perk starting out. In three episodes alone there are limbs and heads blown off, skulls crushed by armored gauntlets, forks stabbed in eyes, rifles shoved in mouths and fired, bodies blown apart by explosive rounds, a mutant bear clawing an armored knight to pieces, and mutant axolotl guts pulled out like taffy. Every action scene is over-the-top, frequently switching into slow motion, and even more frequently pairing the bloodshed with 1940s and 1950s pop music.2 And all of it feels tonally in keeping with the world we’ve been presented, the feeling that in the post-apocalypse there’s little in the way of boundaries or restraint because death is too commonplace to really warrant either.

Exactly what this violence is going to do to our main character is the big question of the series, one underlined by multiple characters judging her on first glance as out of her league. Purnell sells the wide-eyed optimism that comes from Lucy’s sheltered life, as well as her desire to find the most morally appropriate choice in a setting—what we call a high Karma playthrough in game terms. Crucially, though, she allows herself to be practical when those morally appropriate choices are off the table, and even exudes some of the wasteland’s deranged energy on her own: she leaps into her marriage with the opposite of “blushing bride” energy, and bears up a little too well after having to slash her husband’s throat with a pitcher. At times it’s straining credibility how well she’s adjusting—she does chop off a man’s head with a Ripper her second day above ground and barely seems affected by it the next day—but it’s refreshing to see that whatever moral struggles she might be experiencing, they’re not going to preclude the plot from moving along.

By contrast, Maximus is taking a more neutral Karma route to the story, a character driven by ambition and a chip on his shoulder. He’s a bit harder to figure out than Lucy, keeping a grey area on his motivations—it remains unclear if he did in fact sabotage his fellow scribe Dane for a chance at service—and he’s less expressive as a performer thanks to being obscured by power armor for a good portion of his running time. Yet that power armor is also a source of both some of the best early jokes in the series, as well as an example of the CGI playing nice with the practical effects. The showrunners are aware how recognizable power armor is as iconography of the franchise, and also how overpowered it would be at this stage of the game, and Maximus’s fumbling to master it strikes the right balance of keeping it both impressive and restrained at the same time.

Of course, the biggest name in the credits is Goggins, and for anyone showing up on the strength of his casting, he’s giving you exactly what you want. “Is this an Amish production of The Count of Monte Cristo, or the weirdest circle jerk I’ve ever been invited to?” are his first words in the post-apocalyptic present, and it’s easily the best introduction of the pilot, total nonsense that’s so perfectly tailored to Goggins’ diction that it just feels right coming from his mouth. Going back to the Westworld comparison, The Ghoul has definite shades of Ed Harris’s Man in Black, someone who’s explored every available corner of this violent world and keeps going less for profit than some new experience to liven up a weary existence. And as the one character whose existence goes all the way back to before the bombs dropped, he’s also the one who can justify adding flashbacks: “The Head” gives hints that we’ll be seeing more of his pre-war life as a fading actor and Vault-Tec pitchman, and he carries himself expertly both inside and outside the makeup.

All three leads feel smartly cast, and that extends throughout the show in what might be the most impressive early achievement of Fallout. I knew MacLachlan would be perfect in the role of Overseer—an actor whose every action easily conveys earnestness but also the sense of something wrong underneath the surface—but every new character reveal with a recognizable actor is someone equally suited for their role. Michael Emerson (reuniting with his Person Of Interest showrunner Nolan) as the mysterious Dr. Wilzig who has the secret to the wasteland’s power structure shot into his neck? Check. Michael Cristofer as a mysterious and stern Brotherhood elder? Check. Myketi Williamson as a bounty hunter looking for one last score? Check. Johnny Pemberton as an obsequious Brotherhood scribe? Check. Zach Cherry as an officious Vault Dweller? Check. Michael Rapaport as a jackass Brotherhood knight? Check. This is high-caliber talent showing up for often brief appearances, and it makes a big difference in raising the series’ credibility.

That credibility is about as high as Amazon or anyone else involved in Fallout could have hoped for starting out. While it’s seeding its narrative with a lot of loose threads in the early going—what does Hank know about Moldaver’s motivations, what secrets is Vault 33 hiding, what is rattling around in Wilzig’s head, what did The Ghoul do when he was Cooper Howard, etc.—answering those mysteries is so far a secondary concern to establishing its mood and feeling. I mentioned at the start of the review that I’ve spent untold hours in the Fallout universe, and Fallout the series is at the start doing exactly what it should as part of that universe: making me want to spend a few hours more.

Stray observations

• Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of Fallout! Sadly we won’t have too much time to spend together thanks to Amazon’s all-at-once release schedule, but I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone thinks of the show. We’ll be back next Friday, April 19, with a review of the season finale and discussion of how well this promising start paid off.

• In the interest of keeping these reviews accessible and trying to evaluate the show as more than just an adaptation, I relegated the bulk of my speculation and geeking out over the source material to the Vault-Tec Operations Manual section below.

• If anyone is curious and looking for a concise history of Fallout’s development as a game property, I recommend the Triple Click episode “The Fall of Fallout.”

• Ramin Djawadi composed the score for Fallout, and it’s up to his typically excellent standards. Watching the show with subtitles, I laughed a lot at the captions of scenes with score alone: “pulsing intriguing music playing,” “dramatic ethereal music playing,” “tense percussive music playing,” “ominous eerie music playing.”

• The one storyline that doesn’t click in the early going is the return to the Vault, where Lucy’s brother Norm (Moisés Arias) is dealing with the wake of his sister’s escape. While the incompetence of the vault dwellers is amusing in a bureaucratic satire way, it’s detracting from all the fun happening above ground.

• Aside from the violence and humor, the moment that made me have to pause viewing was an early scene in “The Target” when Lucy enters a long-abandoned beach house with a family of skeletons gathered around the table and sees the “Vault-Tec Plan D Econo Savings Package.” It’s the sort of quiet storytelling Fallout games are at their best, giving you an idea of how bleak the approaching end of the world was despite the pop gloss sheen, and Purnell sells her gradual realization of what happened beautifully.

• Also affecting: the fact that Lucy adds her signature to the wedding dress in Vault 33, making it clear just how limited resources are down there.

• “Messing around with your cousin, it’s all good when we’re kids, but it’s not a sustainable long-term sexual practice, you know?”

• “Get that jelly mold out of here!”

• “It’s just… the guy was fucking my chickens.”

• “That is a small drop in a very, very large bucket of drugs.”

• “It’s hard to walk upstairs when you’re wearing a 12-piece cast iron skillet set.”

• “I think this conversation would benefit from some actual ideas.”

Vault-Tec Operations Manual

• Holding out hope that we get a Ron Perlman narration of some kind before the end of the season. “War… war never changes” is one of the most iconic phrases in all of video gaming, and incorporating that is the one piece of fan service I must insist upon.

• It’s an open question at this point how canonical the events of the show are to the established canon of the video game series, but at 2296 it’s at least eight years after the events of Fallout 4, so while the events might be influenced by the games there’s no risk of them directly overlapping.

• On that note, interesting that the Enclave is still operational decades after their major operations were destroyed in Fallout 2 and Fallout 3. Curious how much they’ll explore that or just leave it as the introduction to our MacGuffin.

• Given the show is set in the ruins of Los Angeles, I assume Filly must be close to New California Republic territory, though potentially off their radar given the total lack of an NCR police presence.

• Lucy’s introduction shows that she’s got Speech, Science, and Repair as her tagged skills, and points allocated to Small Guns. A solid choice for starting characters, as that’ll help in finding the nonviolent conversation options and fixing terminals to improve your exploration in abandoned vaults.

• The trifecta setup of Vaults 32, 33, and 34 fits perfectly with Vault-Tec’s established M.O. of vaults serving as psychological experiments. Between vault resident trading and Vault 33 remaining sealed far beyond the timeline of other vaults, there’s definitely an air of something fishy going on, compounded by Hank knowing more about the outside world (i.e. anything) than he should.

• Over/under on how long it takes for someone to start calling CX404 “Dogmeat,” or how long it takes before he gets cyberdog components?

• Maximus carrying Knight Titus’s supplies is a perfect visual representation of a Fallout player pushing the limits of their carry weight until they can get to a merchant. And his response to Knight Titus’s fatal wounds is exactly the option any Fallout player with a chance for a free suit of power armor would take.

• Goggins joins Raul Tejada of Fallout: New Vegas in the ranks of the series’ ghoul gunslingers, albeit with a more traditional American Western appearance rather than Raul’s vaquero look.

• The Vault engineer calling out the malfunctioning water chip is a great callback to the plot of the first Fallout game. Better make their way to Vault City, they’ve got a shitload of them.