Review: Fallout, "The End," "The Target," & "The Head"| Season 1, Episodes 1, 2, & 3

Prime Video's adaptation of the lauded post-apocalyptic RPG gives viewers a proper welcome to the wasteland

Image: Amazon Prime

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.

Image: Amazon Prime

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.

Image: Amazon Prime

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.

Image: Amazon Prime

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.

1. Editor’s note: Les included The Witcher here initially, but it’s a weird case where there’s no question that the adaptation is drafting off of the games’ success, but it is technically speaking an adaptation of the books the games are already adapting. I’d argue it’s still part of the larger trend of video game I.P. being mined successfully, but the asterisk is warranted.

2. One criticism: they’re leaning real heavily on the needle drops early on. This style of music has been part of the series going back to its introduction, and later games have great soundtracks to listen to while exploring, but it feels like every ten minutes they’re rolling out the Nat King Cole, Johnny Cash, Ink Spots, or one of a dozen other artists. Even if they’re often effective in context, it’s too much of a good thing.