Diksha Sundriyal
Prime Video’s ‘Fallout’ takes place in a post-apocalyptic America where the world order has turned upside down. What makes it worse is that this atrocity was brought down by a bunch of people looking for nothing but profit. Certain individuals played a drastic role in bringing about this series of events, and Robert House is revealed to be the most influential player in all this. While the first season gives us a glimpse into his position in the world, the second season presents a more fully formed picture. At the same time, the audience is also introduced to a device called the Black Box, which plays an important role in the events before and after the apocalypse. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Black Box is a New Threat in the Fallout Universe
The Black Box is introduced in the opening episode of the second season when we meet the real Robert House. He sits in a corner of a bar, where construction workers express their anger towards House and his robots, who have taken their jobs away from them. House instigates them into following him into the alley behind the bar. They think they will beat him up and take out their anger on him. But they don’t realise that he lured them outside to experiment on them. He offers them $31 million in exchange for letting him place a device, called the Black Box, on the back of their heads. The workers have no intention to do that, but House succeeds in planting it at the nape of one man’s neck. The device latches onto the man, but it starts to work only after House pushes a red button on the device in his hand.
The Black Box starts humming, and then House hands a baseball bat to the man, asking him to beat up his friends, and that’s precisely what the man does. This incident shows that the device is used to control a person’s mind, and the subject on whom it is used will become subservient to the one who activated the device. However, the Black Box is still in its early phase. It needs to be refined more, which becomes clear when the man, having beaten his two friends to a pulp, turns towards House, ready to do the same to him. House tries to increase his control by turning the dial on the device in his hand, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect on the man. When the dial touches its extremity, the device explores the man’s head. This means that the Black Box needs to be refined more, especially if one doesn’t want their subject to die after just one round.
The Black Box Will Play a Major Role in Future Events
When the bombs fall, House, who has saved Las Vegas and changed it to New Vegas, continues the work on the Black Box. Several vaults are used to conduct experiments, through which the device’s usability is refined. However, by the time Hank McClean and, later, Lucy and the Ghoul find the samples of the device in Vault 24, it appears that the problem of head explosions has persisted. Later, Hank informs his boss, who is most likely Robert House, that the experiments in Vault 24 have made significant strides, especially in the development of the device’s brain-computer interface. This might mean that the device allows a more extended period of control over a person’s mind.
This is also evident in the fact that Hank installs the device in the flea soup woman’s son’s neck to leave a message for his daughter, asking her to return home and not follow him. It also turns out that people in another vault had been working on reducing the size of the device, so now it is considerably smaller, rather chip-sized, than what House used about 200 years back. Hank also believes that he can get rid of the kinks, mainly the head explosion, and turn the Black Box into what House had wanted all along. This indicates that the device will remain a significant plot point throughout the second season, and one must keep an eye out for who will become the next subject and who will be in charge of pushing the button.
Read More: Who does Justin Theroux Play in Fallout? Is Robert House Recast?
You must be logged in to post a comment.