By Elijah Noggle, SCO Cultural Critic
Back in 2024, Amazon Prime Video graced us with what I would consider one of the best video game adaptations of all time- The Fallout TV series. Historically, video game adaptations (film or TV) have a reputation of being hit or miss, but Fallout is one of the ones that really stood out. It didn’t try to reinvent what Fallout was or ignore the source material (looking at you, Halo series).
It had a deep reverence for what came before and its new story fit perfectly into the established lore. And just to clarify before i continue, I haven’t played the Fallout games but I have a friend who has and they’ve filled me in on how the series fits into the established canon.
Now we have the heavily anticipated Season 2. After being teased in Season 1, this follow-up takes us to the area of New Vegas. This season takes a lot of inspiration and pre-established lore from the fan-favorite 2010 video game Fallout: New Vegas.
It’s a little hard to explain what’s going on in this season since there are actually a lot of plot threads. Or to explain without spoiling the first season. But basically in a broad sense, it expands the story of this series and the journeys of most of its characters. We get more exploration of many characters from Season 1 and more locations and lore about the wasteland.
One thing I can definitely say for sure is that this season has more impressive action sequences than the first one did. Feels a bit like the creative team and the studio were more willing to drop the budget for the special effects needed to craft these types of sequences. In particular, the scenes that feature Brotherhood power armor were incredibly fun to watch.
Without giving too much away, I’ll say, one of my favorite main characters this season was probably Cooper Howard aka The Ghoul. Cooper, much like in Season 1, is the lens through which we learn about what was going on over 200 years ago before the bombs dropped.
Those scenes were, again, some of my favorites not only because they give us so much context on how what was going on back then informs what’s going on in the wasteland, but they help us understand the juxtaposition between the dark and morally grey Ghoul as he is now, and the well-intentioned movie star he used to be. The ghoul is a stark representation of how the wasteland changes people. It’s hard to root for him as a person, but damn, he is a really compelling character that I hope Walton Goggins can win some kind of award for.
One of the strongest positives of this season for me was the connection to the game Fallout: New Vegas. (without spoiling anything too major) From what I understand about the pre-existing lore of the fallout universe, and especially what was established in New Vegas, this season of TV remains remarkably true to the details. The way these sets were designed, especially the Vegas strip itself, is so well put together and looks almost identical to the game.
Robert House, a character taken directly from New Vegas, feels completely in line with how he was portrayed in the game. Many of the factions from New Vegas like the New California Republic and Caesar’s Legion are well fleshed out, building naturally on what was established about them in the video game. Overall, another impressive showing by the creative team, further proving their deep appreciation and understanding of this franchise.
My biggest criticism of Season 2 is the pacing and overall structure of some of it. This season is juggling a lot of plot lines. Storylines that are being continued from Season 1, and some new threads. The issue is that it feels like the creative team had a bit of trouble properly balancing screen time for all of these plot lines. This results in a couple of them feeling less fleshed out, or less focused on than others. There’s a particular group established early on in the season that doesn’t even show up again until the final episode, and I found that strange, and slightly frustrating.
It is setting up a Season 3 and I know not everything can be fully resolved, but you may be disappointed at some plot threads being left on a cliffhanger by the end of the season. Despite these issues though, I do think that for the most part overall, the season’s overarching story does come together pretty well, and there are some really good payoffs to things that were set up throughout the season. The writing is still top notch and the season finale is one of my favorite episodes of TV I’ve seen in recent memory.
To conclude this review, I wouldn’t say Season 2 is quite as good as Season 1 in terms of overall quality due to the pacing issues, but it is still a very worthy successor and it comes highly recommended from me. I think I would give this at least a solid 8/10.