War…war never changes. Civilizations have emerged, thrived, and have fallen, decimated in the pursuit of power and control, and for some their remnants have gone on to become something else, and for others all that remains are the things they left behind. The world has been burned to the ground time and time again as nations clashed in the pursuit of power and control. It is at that end that Fallout begins, with the decimation of the world by countless atomic bombs, and the people that rose out of its ash.
If you’re not familiar with the Fallout franchise, it’s a video games series originally created by Black Isle Studios that advertised itself as the grimy alternative to the more populist sword and sorcery fantasy approach to role playing. Their publisher, Interplay, closed them down before going bankrupt, and afterward sold the rights of the franchise to Bethesda, who would go on to make Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 (while the remnants of Black Isle would form Obsidian Entertainment and eventually develop Fallout: New Vegas).
The video games present a world with two alternative futures: one future featuring a capitalistic utopia that got obsessed with the 1950s, specifically its aesthetics and its fear of communism, and a much more distant future in which most of America is a nuclear wasteland. While the surface had been destroyed, a lucky few found shelter within vaults, underground chambers built by a company called Vault-Tec, and there they waited, and their children waited, and their children’s children waited for the right time when it was safe to return to the surface.
Fallout (2024), the TV show adaptation, is helmed by showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet [who previously worked with Walton Goggins as the screenwriter for Tomb Raider (2018)], and Graham Wagner [whose work on Portlandia (2011-2018) undoubtedly led to Kyle MacLachlan and Fred Armisen’s involvement here]. While Westworld (2016-2022) creators Jonathon Nolan and Lisa Joy executive produced the show, and Nolan directed the first three episodes, the plot is much more straightforward in comparison.
If you have played the video games, you’ll notice that a large amount of the vibe is borrowed from the Bethesda line of Fallout games, despite the fact that the show takes place on the west coast. Over the course of the season every Ink Spots song that’s made it into a Fallout soundtrack gets airtime, joined alongside other songs that could easily fit into the playlist of the various Wasteland radio stations. Original music from the series is blended into the orchestration, and every set piece is filled with so many items from the games that a seasoned 76er could construct a CAMP with all the references.
If you haven’t played any of the video games, fear not, the show is inviting to newcomers, taking its time to set up the elements of the world whether it’s something as grand as the vaults or something as miniscule as a stimpack. While the show is filled to the brim with references to the games, you won’t need to have played any of the games to get the story.
The TV show follows, for the most part, three main characters. There’s Lucy McLean, played by Ella Purnell, who grew up knowing three things: she was born in a vault, she would live in a vault, she would die in a vault. The second character is Maximus, played by Aaron Moten, an initiate in the Brotherhood of Steel: a militant organization that uses power armor, big weapons and what might be the few flying vehicles still available on Earth to pursue the remnants of old technology. The third is The Ghoul, with Walton Goggins completely devouring the role, as a man twisted by radiation (which in this case means a slightly less wrinkly variation of Ryan Reynold’s as Deadpool, but with no nose), and left to forever wander the wasteland.
All three of them will find themselves on the same trajectory, pursuing the same relic that could change the fate of the wasteland. Much like the video game it is based on, everyone will get sidetracked, and often.
This is also the reason why the main plot is as straightforward as it is. No matter how far Lucy, Maximus, or The Goul get from their goal, it’s a simple one shared between the three of them. Like the video games, it’s the side quests in the show that really build up the world and spruce up the story. Some of these moments are as innocuous as two people trying to just walk by two other people without anyone killing anybody, others involve a mystery deep within a seemingly abandoned vault, but in the end it all of its main plots tie together in an incredibly well woven series of revelations.
Until then there’s stylized action to be had (with probably one too many doses of slow motion), there’s bizarre strangers to be avoided, and somewhere in between chicken related adultery and cycloptic overseers there are moral decisions to be made about what’s right and what’s wrong in a world that abandoned both concepts long ago.
Fallout is an excellent show that doesn’t just capture the essence of the games they’re based on, it also manages, even in its short glimpse into the wasteland, to match the scale of the story it’s adapting. It’s a fantastic adventure that is a bloody good time, straddling the line between campy and dramatic, while also simultaneously is a critical look at power without responsibility, and a disgusting amount of fun.