If The Last of Us was too goddamned depressing for you but you still want to watch a post-apocalyptic video game adaptation, then boy, do I have the series for you! Fallout is a fantastic adaptation of the role-playing video game series, capturing the spirit of the game while still feeling entirely accessible to non-gamers.
Created by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Fallout is set in a post-apocalyptic future peopled by various factions all struggling for power in the wasteland that used to be California. Episodes are directed by Jonathan Nolan (he also produces alongside Lisa Joy), Clare Kilner, Frederick E.O. Toye, Daniel Gray Longino, and Wayne Yip.
The series opens in a non-bombed Los Angeles with spectacular retro-futuristic design. Frankly, I wish more of the series took place in this “past”, just so I could ogle the production design some more. Walton Goggins stars as Cooper Howard, a famous actor reduced to doing kids’ birthday parties after a divorce. He’s at one such party with his young daughter when the first bombs fall. Throughout the eight-episode season, we flashback to see how Cooper ended up at that party, and it’s fun how Fallout weaves actual Cold War politics into the setting of the series. There’s a Red Scare, there’s existential nuclear dread, there are robots. It makes for a cool, unique setting.
In the “present” day of Fallout, Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) is a resident of Vault 33, a protected underground society that has flourished in the centuries since the bombs fell. Lacking a non-cousin romantic partner, she volunteers to be married to a stranger from a neighboring vault in order to keep the gene pool deep, but her wedding day ends in bloodshed when raiders from the surface storm her vault and kidnap her father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan). Meanwhile on the surface, Maximus (Aaron Moten) is an aspiring squire in the Brotherhood of Steel—think the Knights Templar, except they worship machines as their god. There is also The Ghoul (Walton Goggins again) wandering around the surface, a noseless mutant bounty hunter accompanied by a dog called CX404 (there is an incident of non-fatal animal cruelty in episode two). Fortunately, the show doesn’t belabor the point—The Ghoul is Cooper, and how he’s survived so long and what happened to him are part of the mystery.
The series swings between these three focal points as Lucy, Maximus, and The Ghoul all set off after the same Macguffin, the severed head of an escapee from “the Enclave”, a mystery organization up to mysterious things. Does that sound gross? It is! The props team obviously had an awesome time making the progressively rotting head. But Fallout is a violent, bloody game, and that translates to the show. In fact, the most impressive thing about the series is how well it balances its tricky tone, combining an upbeat adventure feel with bouts of brutal violence and the harsh reality of the surface world.
Ella Purnell is wonderful as Lucy, nailing both her naivete and spunky, can-do “vault dweller” attitude, raised on positive slogans and the idea that she is part of saving America. By the end of the season, Lucy is considerably hardened, but Purnell never lets go of certain affectations and always keeps a trace of Lucy’s genuine kindness alive in her ever more pragmatic being. Similarly, Goggins is clearly having a blast playing The Ghoul, but he is heartbreaking as Cooper Howard, portraying his slow disillusionment with a subtle sagging of shoulders and increasingly frozen smile. Fallout is probably too fun for the Emmys to take seriously, but this is a pair of tremendous performances.
Aaron Moten is also very good as Maximus, similarly naïve as Lucy, though for different reasons. They are on parallel journeys, overlapping again and again, they see kindred spirits in each other, but of course, circumstances conspire against them. Their romantic journey is rushed at the end—though Maximus’s reaction to even the idea of sex is funny—but they do build a solid relationship as companions. I’m hard pressed to believe they’re deeply in love, but I can buy that Lucy and Maximus are each other’s only friend and desperate to stick together just for that reason alone.
There is also a fourth plotline that develops, following Lucy’s little brother, Norm (Moises Arias), as he slowly unwinds a mystery within the vaults themselves. Lucy, Norm, and Cooper Howard’s stories converge upon a horrifying truth, which both satisfies the immediate narrative arc of these eight episodes, but also sets up a second season of Fallout that can go even deeper into this world. For covering such a big world—and the world of Fallout feels ENDLESS, it’s so full of fun details and side characters—the writers do an excellent job balancing the short- and long-term narratives.
Fallout does a great job laying out the premise, introducing the major factions, the immediate conflicts, and the bigger mysteries to solve. The cast is great, especially Purnell and Goggins, and the soundtrack is amazing, featuring a slew of Americana music that is only sometimes used ironically. And the artistic design is BONKERS, much like the pilot episode of The Walking Dead, every detail is a story unto itself. This show is a delight to look at, except maybe when limbs are being exploded by bomb-bullets. That’s pretty gross and happens not infrequently. Fallout has just enough guts and gore to not be for everyone, but whether you know the games or not, this television series welcomes everyone with open arms and a knife ready to plunge into your back.
Fallout is now streaming all episodes on Prime Video. The dog does not die.
