Diksha Sundriyal
Prime Video’s post-apocalyptic drama series, ‘Fallout’, returns for a second season, continuing to build the violent world from the eponymous video games as new dangers are introduced in the first episode, titled ‘The Innovator.’ It opens before the catastrophic events that turned the world into a wasteland, forcing people to live in the vaults, until Lucy finally emerges from it and learns shocking new truths. We see the people’s outrage against RobCo Industries and their robots. The dissent is on the streets as protesters destroy robots with baseball bats, and in a bar where a group of construction workers watches Robert House’s interview and shares their opinions on him. Their words are challenged by a strange man, who riles them up by praising House. The conversation leads them to settle things with a fight in the alley behind the bar.
The strange man asks Bill, the construction worker, to punch him in the face because he thinks he’ll like it. Next, he offers Bill $31 million in exchange for allowing him to clip a device to the back of his neck. Bill doesn’t consent to it, but the man doesn’t care. He sees his chance and forces the device on the nape of his neck, and that’s when Bill loses his agency and becomes a killing machine. While the man is fascinated by it, he also becomes aware that after killing his friends, Bill is turning his sights on him. So, he presses a button that revs up the device to the point of exploding Bill’s head, while the man has a satisfactory look on his face. He calls it progress. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Ghoul and Lucy Trace Hank’s Steps
Turning its attention back to the Wasteland, we find the Ghoul and Lucy in a precarious situation. He has been tied up with a noose around his neck, while a group of men around him are happy that they’ve finally caught him and can bring him to justice. In a distance, Lucy sits with her sniper rifle with Dogmeat by her side. The plan was for her to free the Ghoul by shooting at the rope, but this would mean unleashing the Ghoul on the men around him, leading to their violent ends. She tries to give them a way out of it by telling them about their plans, where she also offers the possibility of her and the Ghoul walking away peacefully. When the men don’t accept it, she says “okey dokey,” shoots down the rope, and as expected, a freed Ghoul kills everyone mercilessly.
As they leave the place, the Ghoul expresses his dissatisfaction with the way she works. He asks her if she is always going to hesitate like this, shooting people in the legs and ass, and she says yes, because she doesn’t have the same taste for murder as he does. From a distance, they set their eyes on New Vegas, as Lucy wonders why her father is there and whether the Ghoul’s wife and daughter could still be there, alive and well. She also wonders why, when the bombs fell, New Vegas was spared when the rest of America wasn’t. The Ghoul reveals that the bombs heading towards Vegas were shot down, and “they” didn’t do the same for America because there was never a “they,” only one man named Robert House. Their journey continues as they find a man stomped by Hank’s armor and split in half at the waist. They find an old woman who sells flea soup and tells the duo that Hank took her son, which makes her sad because her son owed her money, which she won’t get back now.
Pointed in the right direction, Lucy and the Ghoul keep moving forward until they find Vault 24. It is clear that Hank entered and exited the place, but the Ghoul is more interested in why he was there in the first place. They open the Vault using Lucy’s key and find several dead communists with the brain-imploding devices in their necks, with no heads. A video plays on loop, and Lucy realises that the dead people were brainwashed into becoming communists. Further, she finds a computer, but its hard drive is missing, which clearly is in Hank’s possession now. They also find the flea soup woman’s son, who has a device in his neck. He tells Lucy to go back to the Vault, and his head explodes in the end. The Ghoul wonders if this has made Lucy reconsider her journey, and she is going to go back home. However, she knows now that her father is not going to stop hurting people, and she must stop him, so they must keep going.
Norm Makes a Bold and Irrational Decision
While Lucy is out there tracking her father, Vault 33 is struggling to get back on its feet after the debacle of last season. Betty is in charge, and she notes that fixing the water chip is their biggest issue at the moment. But while she and the others try to fulfil their purpose, Reg doesn’t know what to do with his time. So, Betty tells him to start a club to lift people’s spirits. She even gives him a budget for snacks, and sure enough, Reg creates a club, though it’s more of a support group for people who are a result of inbreeding. Only three people attend the meeting, two of whom are siblings who believe that the rule against inbreeding should be changed, while the third woman discusses how her mother may have been jealous of her, among other things. In Vault 32, Chet feels purposeless as well, especially as Stephanie takes charge and he is left to take care of her son, who everyone thinks is his, even though he’s not.
People have started calling the baby Chet Jr., and Stephanie doesn’t have any problem with it. Her primary concern is how to work the computer, and when she asks Chet if he knows anything about it, he says that this was Norm’s department. Of course, no one knows that Norm is trapped in Vault 31 with the future “managers” sleeping in their cryo pods. Bud asks him to give up and just enter his father’s empty cryo pod. He also points out that if Norm doesn’t do as asked, he will die of dehydration and starvation. He even offers to give him a quick, painless death. Norm fights as much as he can, but eventually, he concedes. Cryo and death are his only rational choices, so he decides to turn towards irrational choices. The talking brain will have to open the door if he is not the only human around, so he thaws every single cryo pod.
Cooper Faces a Tough Choice
Taking a break from the chaos of the Wasteland and the vaults, the show gives us flashbacks to the time before the bombs were thrown all over America. The last time, Cooper spied on his wife and discovered that not only is she complicit in the crimes against humanity, but she is also one of the orchestrators of it. He is so horrified by this discovery that he thinks about running away with his daughter. He asks little Janey to pack a bag, and they are on their way out when the alarms sound. While everyone around them panics, it is also clarified that this is just a test. It also makes Cooper stop and look at a Vault-Tec billboard with his face on it, asking people to keep their families safe. He feels a pang of guilt about the role he has played in this mess, which is why perhaps he decides to meet Moldaver.
Cooper tells her everything he overheard using the device she gave him, but she is not really surprised because she knew about it all along. Her main motive was to open Cooper’s eyes to this horror and then turn him into a spy. So, she tells him about Robert House, who not only has enough wealth to own half of Las Vegas, but he also has the arsenal that will be used to enact the plan that Vault-Tec is working on. Moldaver knows that Rose is about to go to Las Vegas to sell cold fusion to Robert House in return for his bombs, so she asks Cooper to join his wife. Even as Cooper doubts his ability to be a spy, he knows he must do it. So, he takes his daughter back home, and when his wife arrives, he greets her with a smile.
Back in the present timeline, Hank has made his way to Vault-Tec HQ. Here, he finally gets to drop his metal armor and changes into a bespoke suit. He also gets to drink some coffee before exploring the place and sending a message to an unknown person. He discusses his discovery in Vault 24, specifically the brain-exploding device, which has been successfully miniaturized into a chip-like version. He assures the person that he is going to finish what that person started, and perhaps this will finally get them talking about his promotion. He also mentions that once he is done, the person on the other end of the line will be begging him to help them.
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