{"id":349220,"date":"2025-12-16T16:12:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T16:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/349220\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T16:12:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T16:12:08","slug":"fallout-season-2-is-a-slower-smarter-follow-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/349220\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Fallout’ Season 2 Is a Slower, Smarter Follow-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

When\u00a0Fallout hit Prime Video<\/a> last spring, not even Amazon itself might have expected the rip-roaring response<\/a> to the show\u2019s spin on the beloved video game RPG series (although the signs were there that the streamer knew it was onto something<\/a>). It\u2019s no surprise then that, having found Fallout a hit, the show is leaning on an iterative, rather than evolutionary, arc for its sophomore season<\/a>. But while that overall means that more\u00a0Fallout is a good thing\u2014especially in the interesting ways it builds upon what made season one work in the first place\u2014it also means that, quite like its oft-quoted line about war, the show itself never really changes.<\/p>\n

In many ways, across the six episodes of Fallout season two that Amazon provided for review (out of eight total), the show is in a state of second verse, same as the first. The show still follows the separate-yet-intermingled stories of three wasteland inhabitants\u2014Ella Purnell as Lucy, a vault dweller learning the lay of the post-apocalyptic land; Walton Goggins as the Ghoul\/Cooper Howard, an irradiated undead wanderer on the hunt for revenge; and Aaron Moten as Maximus, a member of the heavily armored Brotherhood of Steel realizing the faction he\u2019s given much of his life to is on the verge of moral and perhaps literal collapse\u2014as they march from one place to another on their merry quests.<\/p>\n

\"Fallout\u00a9 Prime Video <\/p>\n

The show still strikes a balance between an irreverent, hyper-violence-fueled jokey tone, pairing buckets of gore with \u201950s-nostalgia music cues, with a smarter, deeper emotionality that has its key players reflect on the nature of violence and capital<\/a> in a world destroyed by both. The show still, for the most part, methodically lays out a breadcrumb of mystery for its players in the \u201cpresent\u201d of the late 2200s, tied through flashbacks to the past of the pre-war 2070s. If you liked how Fallout season one approached the worldview and general approach to the legacy of the games\u2014even as it occasionally controversially strayed from established game lore\u2014then you will continue to like season two, as it keeps doing the same kinds of things in a slowly evolving context.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to necessarily diminish what\u00a0Fallout continues to succeed at, however. With the broader mystery of the origins of the apocalypse already laid out on the table, season two roots itself in exploring not so much the structural hows and whys of it all but the personal drama that paved the way to that apocalypse in the first place\u2014and how those same kinds of conflicts have continued to emerge on macro and micro scales in the distant present. Lucy\u2019s arc, now that she knows about her father Hank\u2019s (the returning Kyle MacLachlan) part in not just the underground vaults\u2019 creation but also his part in Vault-Tec\u2019s sinister plans to rule the wasteland, is less about trying to find him and more about how she is beginning to grapple with the ways the wasteland and its penchant for violent solutions have changed her, and what her sense of justice will mean by the time she comes face-to-face with her father.<\/p>\n

The Ghoul\u2019s arc, meanwhile\u2014largely more intersected with Lucy\u2019s as the duo more willingly work together to find Hank\u2014turns further inward. The series\u2019 arching flashbacks to his life as Cooper Howard exist less to add context to that seasonal mystery and more to flesh out who the Ghoul is as a person and how a man like Howard could become the cold, driven bounty hunter in the first place. It means Goggins\u2019 role this season is less the terrifying anti-hero and more a sympathetically driven man,<\/a> but it\u2019s equally compelling a role, if not arguably more, given the ways it gets to feed into and parallel Lucy\u2019s arc about the nature of violence as they spend more screentime together.<\/p>\n

\"Fallout\u00a9 Prime Video <\/p>\n

Maximus, while distinctly the most separate of the three primary storylines, still builds on his role in season one, his higher place in the Brotherhood\u2014after inadvertently taking claim for the Brotherhood\u2019s victory against the New California Republic in season one\u2019s climax\u2014only complicating his own personal need to survive and try and do the right thing, even as he continues to make spectacularly messy decisions to get there. Of the main trio, Maximus\u2019 story suffers the most simply because he doesn\u2019t have Lucy to bounce off of anymore, but it still manages to smartly tie in to Fallout\u2018s broader musings on power, justice, and violence\u2014musings that now individually shape and drive these characters as people, instead of necessarily just informing the broader context of the world around them as it did in season one. If Fallout\u2018s debut was about setting up the lay of the land, then season two is all about diving deeper into how this world has impacted upon our \u201cheroes,\u201d for want of a better word.<\/p>\n

In lieu of the Ghoul himself filling in for more of an antagonistic role this time round, Fallout season two finds some more explicit villains to shape itself around, although rather indirectly. Returning, of course, is Hank MacLean, his allegiance to Vault-Tec in the past and present now out in the open, but he largely exists in season two as a looming specter, a distant point for Lucy and the Ghoul to eventually reach, rather than an active participant. Similarly distant, but arguably much more influential to the show\u2019s broader themes, is Justin Theroux\u2019s Robert House, an infamous figure from the beloved Fallout: New Vegas.<\/p>\n

While\u00a0New Vegas fans may bristle<\/a> at some elements of the city and its sinister overlord\u2019s transition from game to TV not aligning with what was established in the former, House is a fascinating and deeply personal foil for the show to play off of, even if his presence is largely kept to allusions and flashback appearances. More so than Hank or any other force in the show\u2019s narrative, House\u2019s persona embodies every ugly thing Fallout has to say about capital, control, and power, and the consequences of those driving factors within him ripple out and touch almost every corner of the show\u2019s narratives, no matter how disconnected they appear to be in the here and now. It says a lot that House has relatively little screentime and yet compellingly dominates Fallout\u2018s narrative this season, if not directly, then by what he represents in the show\u2019s thematic core.<\/p>\n

\"Fallout\u00a9 Prime Video <\/p>\n

But while\u00a0Fallout does find plenty to chew on as it explores most of its cast more deeply this season, it often takes its time doing so to a degree that almost threatens to stretch its pacing a little too laboriously. It doesn\u2019t help that, although it\u2019s being positioned this season as a weekly release<\/a> compared to the binge format<\/a> of season one, season two doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s been made with that kind of rollout in mind, with each individual episode struggling to stand alone even as they fit into a broader, stronger narrative picture. The jury\u2019s out on whether or not audiences will react better or worse to not simply being able to keep watching, but even being able to access a majority of the season for the review, Fallout feels more methodical this time around compared to before, and that occasionally leads to a distinctly lacking sense of momentum that may frustrate viewers checking in every week.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, that issue isn\u2019t fatal.\u00a0Fallout is a show confident in itself, just as it was when it first stepped out of the vaults last year\u2014and while that means its formula hasn\u2019t really changed too dramatically for season two, minor faults and all, it means the show now knows it can dive a little deeper into its characters and world, marinate in the ideas it\u2019s playing with a little more, and turn out a show that, while familiar to us now, is as strong and interesting as ever.<\/p>\n

Fallout\u00a0season two begins streaming on Prime Video later today, December 16<\/a>, at 9 p.m. ET, before rolling out weekly on the streamer.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When\u00a0Fallout hit Prime Video last spring, not even Amazon itself might have expected the rip-roaring response to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[971,49,48,75,35767,1912],"class_list":["post-349220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-amazon","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-fallout","tag-prime-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}