(Ed. remark: The following contains spoilers for Fallout season 1.)
When the credits start rolling Fallout In the season 1 finale, bad dad Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan) trudges to a town on the Wasteland horizon. It’s not just any city either. It’s New Vegas – an iconic location from the video game source material of the Prime Video show (mainly the aptly named Fallout: New Vegas). So it looks like post-apocalyptic casinos and Hoover Dam shootouts are coming our way Fallout season 2.
Both are worth getting hyped about, as are the many other superficial pleasures of the New Vegas setting. But there’s another, deeper reason to get excited about Fallout heading to the Strip for the next batch of episodes. If the games are any guide, shifting the show’s focus to New Vegas should also open up the underlying moral framework. The bright neon lights of New Vegas could indeed deliver the grayscale of the live-action Fallout currently missing.
Do not get me wrong: Fallout season 1 has a lot of moral ambiguity – just on an individual level. Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), Maximus (Aaron Moten) and even The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) are regularly forced to choose between what is right, what is easy and what feels good in an indifferent world that seemingly has no preference. The same doesn’t really apply to the way season 1 plays out FalloutBut the different factions are there.
Sure, the Brotherhood of Steel is a bit of a mixed bag, and the methods of Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury) and her New California Republic remnant are early on… extreme. But generally speaking Fallout season 1 is pretty clear about who the goodies and baddies are. Vault Tec? Bad. The NCR? Good. And if we could get rid of the former and get behind the latter, the Wasteland could be a Shady Sands-esque utopia, complete with cold-fusion powered streetlights and streetcars.
For Fallout For the purposes of Season 1, this binary worldview works. It’s not all that different from some faction-oriented stories, for example Fallout 3 And Fallout 4. But it’s also not exactly nuanced – even in a world with 200-year-old mutant marksmen. Choosing a side is black and white; unless you break out of it yourself, it’s NCR or bust.
But the New Vegas environment calls that nonsense. It’s true that the NCR is a better team than most, but its record isn’t exactly spotless. It’s a bit of a land grab and has at least one Mojave Wasteland massacre under its belt. Meanwhile, New Vegas’ other major faction, the ruthless Roman Empire cosplayers Caesar’s Legion, who should definitely appear in Fallout season 2 – deals with slavery. At the same time, it also has a surprisingly well-articulated ethos rooted in serving the greater good, and makes some well-placed jokes about the NCR’s shortcomings.
And in the middle is Mr. House: the man who runs New Vegas himself, and who (as you’d expect from a Lord of Vegas) keeps his cards close to his chest. He calls himself an autocrat, but also has a bold, progressive vision for the future of New Vegas. As such, knowing who to side with Fallout: New Vegas is tough (except the slavers; you never side with slave traders). Fallout season 2 will hopefully follow suit.
Regardless of what the status quo of New Vegas is in the show’s 2296 setting – the games don’t offer a canonical answer to the question of whether the NCR, the Legion of House is currently in charge – our protagonists are on the cusp of a world Enter where choosing teams has very real tradeoffs. It’s not as simple as taking out Vault-Tec and waving the NCR flag as soon as you set foot in New Vegas. There are downsides to Lucy and company joining any faction. Maybe there are no good factions, period.
It’s a sobering scenario, but also one that could last Fallout‘s storytelling to a whole new level in Season 2. So what else is there to say besides ‘Viva New Vegas’?
Fallout season 1 is now streaming on Prime Video.