Fallout season 2 is heading to New Vegas, and in doing so will make a huge decision for the franchise, answering a question that was first posed 15 years ago with the release of the video game Fallout: New Vegas. While season 1 introduced new characters and settings, many familiar faces and locations have already been teased in the season 2 trailer.
Season 1 followed Vault Dweller Lucy, Brotherhood of Steel Squire-turned-Knight Maximus, and the Ghoul as their paths intertwined along Lucy’s journey to find her kidnapped father, Hank. Lucy befriends Maximus, who promoted himself in the Brotherhood by stealing the identity of the Knight he was meant to be serving. He later takes credit for killing Moldaver, becoming a Knight in his own right.
Lucy and the Ghoul form a begrudging partnership as the Ghoul realizes Hank may have answers about his long-lost family. By the time Lucy finds — and then loses — Hank, the lights of Fallout’s New Vegas are seen in the distance. The pair agree to go there together, which will also reveal the state of New Vegas following the events of the video game.
Fallout Season 2 Will Make One Game Ending Canon
Walton Goggins as Cooper Howard/ The Ghoul looking outside a car window at a casino in Fallout season 2
In Fallout: New Vegas, the player interacts with several factions and makes choices that will impact New Vegas for years to come. The player, a Courier who was dug up in the small town of Goodsprings after an attempted assassination over their package (a poker chip), is sent on a quest to Vegas to confront their would-be killer, Benny.
Along the way, the Courier becomes acquainted with the three major factions vying for control over Vegas and the Mojave Wasteland: Caesar’s Legion, an imperialist slaver society, the New California Republic, reminiscent of the pre-war US military and government, and Mr. House, a pre-war billionaire who has preserved his body, uploaded his brain into a computer, and runs the Strip with an army of robots.
Ultimately, the Courier must choose to help one of these three groups gain control of the Mojave (alternatively, the Courier can kill Mr. House and seize control of his robot army). In the game’s final cut scene, the future of New Vegas is unspooled, heavily influenced by the Courier’s many choices.
Fallout: New Vegas is set in the year 2281, while the Fallout TV series is set in the year 2296. This means the timelines of New Vegas and season 2 are connected, and Lucy and the Ghoul will be walking into a city still dealing with the effects of the choices made in New Vegas. Effectively, the series is about to make one of the game’s endings canon.
Which Fallout: New Vegas Ending Should Be Canon In Season 2
Lucy, The Ghoul, Dogmeat and Maximus walking next to each other in Fallout season 2 poster
The Legion ending is objectively the wrong choice, though some players have used the Legion’s sheer strength to justify their support for Caesar. While the NCR has areas of weakness and struggles to maintain its reach, Caesar’s Legion plundered the entire town of Nipton, using a lottery system to determine who in the town was killed, crucified, or enslaved.
Despite the Legion’s brutal system of slavery, those under Caesar’s rule will be safe from any other threats in the Wasteland. Nonetheless, Caesar’s society is a self-proclaimed recreation of the Roman Empire, a major setback for modern society.
In addition to being bleak, this would also just be the most uninteresting future for the Mojave. Given both the simplicity and strength of Caesar’s Legion, Vegas and its surrounding areas would become a dictatorial slave state with few external threats or opportunities for change.
The NCR ending, on the other hand, offers more nuance and freedom. With this route, the Courier helps the Republic secure the Hoover Dam, affording them the power to gain control of the whole area. This increases prosperity and trade across the Mojave; however, it also brings the New Vegas Strip under NCR control after years of independence under Mr. House.
While the NCR ending ultimately offers a sense of order and community, weak spots in the NCR’s protection will remain if the Courier isn’t thorough in stamping out external threats throughout their gameplay. It also seems like a defeatist choice, as the NCR is the option which most closely resembles the society that led to the Great War in the first place.
Mr. House’s ending feels the most futuristic and dystopian, but also may offer the most progress. If the Courier relinquishes the critical poker chip to Mr. House, his army of securitrons takes full control of the Strip, the Hoover Dam, and the Mojave. The final cut scene for this ending reveals that the Strip becomes both “orderly” and “cold” under Mr. House’s rule.
While Cass, a potential companion of the Courier and member of the NCR, actually dies by suicide upon House’s victory, the end result offers more potential for the Mojave than expected. With the Courier’s influence, House maintains stability in Vegas and freedom for the surrounding areas, despite being sterile and detached in his approach.
The admittedly villainous Robert House, CEO of RobCo Industries and the pinnacle of pre-war old money, has less than altruistic motives for his power grab. But the events of New Vegas prove that his robot army is both all-powerful and fragile. Mr. House, his ancient body bound to the Lucky 38 casino, needed the Courier’s help to complete his mission.
The Courier could just as easily have taken that power for themself, and presumably Mr. House still remains somewhat vulnerable even after becoming victorious in the Mojave Wasteland’s power struggle. With that in mind, the Mr. House ending offers the strongest short-term future for Vegas and the Mojave, while still retaining the possibility of future regime changes.
Fallout Season 2 Has Already Hinted At Which Ending Is Canon
Justin Theroux sitting at a table with a drink in Fallout season 2
With some of the lore revealed in season 1 and glimpses seen in the Fallout season 2 trailer, we actually have a pretty good idea which way the Fallout TV series is leaning. A dialogue option with an NCR Missionary in New Vegas reveals that Shady Sands is the original capital of the NCR.
In Fallout season 1, a flashback reveals that Shady Sands, Maximus’ childhood home, was bombed. Young Maximus, hiding in a milk vending machine, was rescued by the Brotherhood of Steel from the crater that was once Shady Sands. In the season finale, Lucy confirms to Maximus that Hank is responsible for the nuclear attack on Shady Sands.
Given Maximus’ approximate age and the timeline of the game and TV show, the bombing likely happened shortly after the events of Fallout: New Vegas. The elimination of Shady Sands is a strong indication that there is no longer a large NCR presence in the area — and its susceptibility to the attack in the first place suggests that they lost the grab for the Hoover Dam.
There are actually brief glimpses of all three factions in the Fallout season 2 trailer: a Legion encampment, a tattered NCR flag, and most notably, a near-perfect replica of Mr. House‘s headquarters in the Lucky 38 penthouse — complete with an active Mr. House himself.
All of this suggests a Mr. House ending. The events at Shady Sands most likely rule out the NCR ending, and to commit to the Legion ending, the Courier must “kill or disable Mr. House”. The sight of him right as rain on his giant computer screen in the Lucky 38 suggests that this did not happen.
It also suggests that the series isn’t going with the wildcard Courier ending, which is good; it would be a logistical nightmare to introduce a character into the series who represents the player of the video game who can have infinite personalities and means something different to everyone who has played the game.
The Mr. House ending gives the series the most flexibility to explore every corner of the franchise’s lore. The final cut scene of the Mr. House ending indicates that the NCR and Legion fell back, but Mr. House didn’t eliminate every last remnant of the organizations, meaning we’ll likely get some degree of time with all three in the show.
The introduction of the Ghoul, who had ties to Vault-Tec in a past life, also creates a very exciting possibility: an interaction between two iconic pre-war figures in the Fallout franchise. The Mr. House ending offers not only the best solution for Vegas, but the richest option from a storytelling perspective, and all signs point to this being the route the series is taking.
Release Date
April 10, 2024
Showrunner
Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan
Writers
Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan
