Quite the way to describe the world of Fallout, right? This week sees our heroes continuing along their journeys in the aftermath of their missteps from the previous episode, which inevitably lands them headfirst into more missteps. More of the sinister intentions of the trio Vaults are teased, and a big pre-War reveals something previously unconfirmed.
A lot happened, so let’s get into this week’s episode of Fallout, titled “The Demon in the Snow.”
The title, for those who watched, refers to the deathclaw that Cooper watches massacre Chinese soldiers during the fight for Alaska back before the bombs dropped. Another of the creatures shows up at the very end of the episode when Lucy and the Ghoul arrive on the New Vegas Strip, but unfortunately we won’t see how they handle that until the next episode.
Besides serving as the first live-action appearance of the iconic Fallout monster, the opening scene also confirms that these creatures were used before the bombs fell. We knew they were created before the bombs, but never knew if they were deployed. This could be a way to eventually confirm future Enclave involvement in the creation of deathclaws, and also Enclave involvement with the current plot. Fandom speculation already has the possibility of Hank being an Enclave spy due to the mind control chips, though they are more easily traced back to House, and we know Fallout never lets the Enclave stay dead. They already played a role in season 1 since Dogmeat and the cold fusion relic both came from an Enclave lab.
The deathclaw was an interesting new wrinkle to the lore of the series and one I’d imagine will be explored further, since Cooper’s pre-ghoulification plot has been a steady source of new Fallout lore.
The deathclaw was also a pretty great way to bookend the episode. These are the scariest monsters in the Fallout franchise and were treated as such here. I fully expect Lucy and the Ghoul to narrowly escape their encounter in the next episode, unless theories of the deathclaws being engineered to ignore American soldiers from the war are proven true and it ignores Cooper, but either way this was a peak debut.
It’s almost a distraction from the state of the Strip, which is abandoned, seemingly irradiated, and littered with debris and broken securibots. As expected this is causing lots of whining (let’s call it what it is) among online Fallout communities who want Fallout: New Vegas entirely recreated, or at the very least want one of the more definitive endings confirmed.
There is also valid criticism that the New Vegas setting is seemingly not going to feature the many amazing factions that fans love from the game. At this point we can assume that they seemingly went with a nihilistic version of the Yes Man ending where everyone is pushed out but New Vegas couldn’t sustain independence, or House winning but not maintaining power for very long.
This has left many factions seemingly nonexistent. The NCR may be out there, but they have zero influence in the Mojave at the moment. Novac was dead, and many Khans slaughtered. The Kings are gone now at Lucy’s hand. The Three Families are most likely gone with the destruction on the Strip. There is a vacant feel to the setting and I understand why some people have a bigger problem with this than others.
I’m not yet at a point where I am particularly bothered by any of their absences or deaths. I’m left more excited because of all the questions and plotlines being set up, of which the destruction of the Strip is one among many. This episode set up numerous plotlines that will presumably intersect by the end of the season.
Maximus ends the episode fleeing the Brotherhood with cold fusion in hand and Thaddeus at his side and you have to imagine he will end up in Vegas soon enough to intersect with Lucy. This was yet another great episode for him, as our favorite representation of a murder hobo playthrough finally broke with his adopted frat bro family.
I thought he might try and cover up Xander’s death a little longer than he did, or be left with no choice but to flee after Thaddeus was found out, but there’s a certain joy in Maximus just deciding to try and escape the trouble of murdering Xander by immediately murdering Quintus. His character arc so far is basically a series of deaths he stumbles into while feeling increasingly guilty about it, and while I do feel awful for Maximus and his sad eyes, I’m incredibly entertained.
I also appreciate that Fallout did not delay this final break in the Brotherhood, even if the civil war will be more immediately local than I expected. In retrospect I realize that expecting the Commonwealth to show up so early, when it’s so much easier to limit the fighting to the factions introduced, was probably too high of an expectation, but I’m not disappointed in the slightest. The same effect is achieved and the Brotherhood still falls apart in a way that also breaks any faith Maximus had in the faction.
What’s sad is that Quintus was so close to talking Maximus off the ledge. I’m not sure how much of a difference it would have made, since the fighting began entirely unrelated to their confrontation, but maybe if Quintus keeps Maximus and cold fusion in his control, the fighting wanes and everything is brought back under control. He may even have been able to strengthen his own position with at least one of the other Elders now laying dead in a mess hall.
Instead, he threw it away and probably doomed himself due to ghoul hatred. At least one extremely valuable airship Hindenburgs into the ground and the West Coast Brotherhood will be weaker than ever.
There’s a compelling dichotomy between Maximus and the Brotherhood losing everything as a consequence of him protecting ghouls in the same episode where a drugged-up Lucy gleefully dismisses the Kings ghouls she’s murdering as “just ghouls,” right to Cooper’s face.
I mentioned in previous recaps how Lucy’s sense of heroism and morality would be tested in the aftermath of her run-in with the Legion, and hoo boy did we see the start of that in this episode. The reveal that the Ghoul put her on a two-day dose of Buffout was hysterical, and I would only love this whole arc more if we find out the Ghoul had some Fixer on him this whole time, and will only give it to Lucy when he feels sufficiently annoyed or endangered by Lucy’s highs and withdrawal.
We’ll see how long that takes, but in the meantime we have a tweaked out Lucy happily falling to the vices of the Mojave. She’s losing her heroism at the same time that Maximus is rediscovering his after many long years of losing it. It’s a terrific narrative choice that you know will lead to Maximus helping lead Lucy back to being the person who inspired him in Fallout’s first season.
I’m not looking forward to Max Sad Eyes when he sees what has become of Lucy since they last saw each other.
Norm is facing his own struggle with the wasteland, though his conflicts are likely to arise from the old world. Like everyone else, I caught the FEV initials from the middle manager he spoke to. Norm and the trio Vaults are also serving to reveal what Bud Askins was up to, what Vault-Tec was up to, and what exactly the experiment in the trio Vaults was meant to be.
Whatever it is, Steph and Betty both seem to realize the experiment is over now that Norm emptied Vault 31, though they have very different interpretations of what this means for 32 and 33. Steph recognizes her advantage and is happily exploiting it to consolidate power, which may be less of a dumb, selfish move and more of a sinister one with the reveal that she is Canadian.
(Only in Fallout is being Canadian so suspicious.)
Now that we have a general suspicion about Hank and whether he truly works for the benefit of Vault-Tec, we can ask the same question about Steph, who may be on Hank’s side or working towards the goals of some third party we are unaware of. All we know for sure is that Steph wants something of Hank’s, she is leaving Betty out in the cold, and it doesn’t seem like Betty will be able to keep control for much longer with the incest party planner wasting all of the resources and turning public sentiment against her.
The only question remaining about these Vaults at this point is whether Norm will arrive in time to stop them from devolving into the kind of catastrophe Fallout players usually discover inside a Vault after the catastrophe is over and everyone’s dead or has lost their mind. We don’t even know if that is Norm’s goal, or if he will lead his super managers out to explore the wastes and possibly find his father.
Fallout has established a lot of dangling plot threads that all intersect in obvious and not-so-obvious ways that are all destined to collide, whether they do so this season or next.
Images Courtesy of Amazon Studios
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