The first season of Prime Video’s Fallout was the latest in a string of successful video game adaptations that proved, when done right, they can actually expand on their source material in fruitful ways. As cinematic as it can be, video games are an often untamable medium when translated to film and television, and no adaptation is perfect — this year’s uneven outing for The Last of Us was a reminder of that. But, when done right, they can be as exciting as their playable versions.
Fallout faced bigger challenges than just translating a story from one medium to another, though. An open-world franchise with deep lore but loose plotting, the video games are massive epics. Yet season 1 of Prime’s adaptation managed to tell a sprawling, taut story about what happens after the apocalypse and the hubris that led to it. In its highly-anticipated second season, though, Fallout hits a sophomore slump of sorts, expanding the scope of the series to mixed results. Ella Purnell’s Lucy McClean is as plucky and tenacious as ever, but she’s no longer the center of the story and season 2 strains to come into focus.
Despite Its Flaws, Fallout Remains One Of The Best Video Game Adaptations
Fallout immediately picks up after the events of season 1’s finale as Kyle MacLachlan’s Hank heads to New Vegas with his spurned daughter and Walton Goggins’s The Ghoul in pursuit. Elsewhere in the wasteland, Lucy’s brother Norm (Moisés Arias), her ally Maximus (Aaron Moten), and a cast of Vault Dwellers (Leslie Uggams, Zach Cherry, and Rodrigo Luzzi, among others) attend to their own post-apocalyptic business as war looms.
And that’s not even factoring in flashbacks to The Ghoul’s life before the apocalypse, where we meet Justin Theroux’s mysterious Mr. House. It’s a lot of story, one that might go down easier now that episodes will be released week-to-week rather than dropped all at once like the first season.
Luckily, riveting action and skin-crawling creatures are still part of Fallout‘s DNA. Thanks to Lucy and The Ghoul’s journey, we get to see more of the Wasteland than ever before, diving deeper into various factions across the New California Republic like the Legion. Even with its lack of focus, the world of Fallout feels fully formed, as nightmarish and darkly humorous as ever. From detailed hideaways to Roman-influenced encampments, the world of the Wasteland is a sight to behold.
The same can be said about Fallout‘s various characters and the odd couple pairings they end up in. Thaddeus and Maximus end up back together, the goofy excitement of the former clashing with the insecure self-seriousness of the latter. Of course, it’s Purnell and Goggins who steal the show, though. The pair is a delight to watch as they continue to bounce off each other, the gruff Ghoul and the happy-go-lucky Vault Dweller turned desert warrior a match made in apocalyptic heaven. Purnell especially gets to add new layers to Lucy as she continues to evolve.
Of course, it’s Goggins and his work as Cooper that steals much of the spotlight. Though told in brief flashes, watching Cooper process and eventually counter his wife’s role in the ending of the world is just another reminder of Goggins’s power, especially when he’s opposite Theroux’s Mr. House, a curious character seen even more sparingly than Cooper Howard.
Fallout is no stranger to dividing its time between the show’s “present day” and the past, but it feels particularly imbalanced here as the series plots out its future. If anything, season 2 proves that there are so many places in the Wasteland to explore that it’s almost overwhelming. And, though all of this is supposed to be building to something bigger, to larger revelations about how and why the bombs went off, there’s a lack of urgency in the storytelling.
Fortunately, for all its flaws, Fallout remains a good time most of all. Despite its harrowing subject matter, the humor and heart present in the first season is still here and that may be most important of all. The end of the world is a lonely, scary place and Fallout makes sure to invest in its characters as much as it does its world so that, even when the story falters, we are still anchored within this intricate world.
- Release Date
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April 10, 2024
- Showrunner
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Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan
- Writers
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Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan
