Fallout is finally back for its second season, with a season 2 premiere that links somewhat seamlessly as a continuation of season 1. After a lengthy six-minute recap, “The Innovator” jumps right into its events with the expectation that you know what is going on, or will at least be able to pick the plot up quickly. Does it succeed? I sure think so. Fallout picked up right where it left off, for better and worse, and the better far outweighs the worse.
A strange aspect of this episode is how little effort Fallout puts into kicking the second season off with a big premiere bang. Typically, television shows like to start off their season with something new and exciting, or large set pieces, or shocking twists to signal the start of the next phase of the story.
When I say that “The Innovator” connects seamlessly to season one, I mean that as the episode feeling like it could have just aired right after the season one finale. This sort of felt like another episode in an ongoing season. Lucy is on the hunt for her father. The Ghoul is with her, and still looking for information on his wife and daughter. Hank is in Vegas and preparing his next steps. Norm is still locked up in Vault 31. We don’t even see Maximus and the Brotherhood.
To be clear, this is not a criticism of the episode. Fallout has not lost a single bit of the charm or fun or expert Fallout atmosphere that made the first season one of, if not the best, video game adaptation yet. The chemistry between Lucy and the Ghoul remains exactly where we left it in their opening scene spent taking down a group of Khans. They take the bulk of the attention in this episode, as does their ongoing moral battle about how to handle the Wasteland, as seen in Lucy’s failed speech check to avoid the Ghoul’s plan to kill the Khans and instead seek peace.
(Did I clap like a fanboy seal watching the Ghoul massacre gangsters to “Big Iron?” Of course.)
While I enjoyed most of the characters in season one, there is no doubt that the Lucy/Ghoul pairing is the one that really elevates Fallout. I want to see what Maximus and the Brotherhood are up to, but if you’re going to pick a duo to focus the first episode around, the choice is obvious.
A good deal of the episode is also spent on flashbacks showing more of Robert House, as well Cooper’s continued entanglements in the plot to stop Vault-Tec from ending the world. Opinions on season one’s decision to shift Fallout’s political commentary away from the Cold War and firmly onto big corporate capitalism are somewhat divided, but I love the choice, and season 2 wastes no time reaffirming how Vault-Tec and the evils of end-stage capitalism will serve as the main evil of modern Fallout.
House is set up comically evilly in the opening scene, where he attends a meeting of disgruntled workers and insults them into taking him out to the parking lot for a beating. The mind control device he uses is clearly going to be an important plot point this season, as they are found on the corpses littering Vault 24, and Hank also uses one to communicate through someone in the same Vault.
(Fun fact, Vault 24 was cut content from Fallout: New Vegas, and joins the budding tradition of really cool callbacks this show utilizes throughout.)
We’ll have to wait and see what exactly the recast, or rather addition, of Justin Theroux’s version of Robert House is all about. The preview of future episodes reveals that the House we saw in season one will be a part of season two, so this is not a simple recast. Speculation has this as a nod to the body doubles of real life business magnate Howard Hughes, who House was based on back in the day.
Whatever the case, any fan of The Leftovers (go watch it please) can tell you how fantastic Theroux is on screen. He makes an immediate impression here and I can’t wait to see what else Fallout does with him. We know Cooper is going after him with dubious plans to kill him, with hopes of stopping him from launching the nukes that end the world. I’m curious if this will lead to Cooper killing the body double, or if Cooper somehow ends up involved in pushing the button himself. Considering everything Cooper is learning about his wife, it’s interesting that he still seems so hell bent on finding her.
(Another obvious callback occurs while Cooper is taking his daughter to the meeting with Moldaver, as he drives through a neighborhood strikingly similar to Sanctuary Hills from the opening of Fallout 4, complete with a very similar looking Vault-Tec representative.)
Probably the least interesting part of the episode was the goings on at Vaults 31, 32, and 33. Between party planning, water chip repairs, and Stephanie Harper’s child neglect, these scenes serve more as a reminder that these people exist and that Norm will eventually change their lives considerably. Norm’s brief scenes continue to build him into one of the best characters, though, and I’m quite excited to see what he does with a Vault full of defrosted Bud’s Buds.
Overall, there’s no doubt that this premiere did the job of setting up plot lines moving forward. We still don’t have any real answers about the state of New Vegas (except for poor Novac) or what direction the show will take the conflict over the city and the Hoover Dam from the game. We can’t yet be sure what exactly is going on with Robert House or what Hank’s ultimate plan here is.
What we seemingly can be sure of is that Fallout will be every bit as good as the first season. Everything I loved about it remains intact, from the gore to the flea soup to the biting critique of the ultra wealthy and villainous corporations.
It’s good to have Fallout back.
Images Courtesy of Amazon Studios
