I don’t know what I mean by ‘Fallout falls in’, but I like how it sounds.

Spoilers for season 1 of Fallout.

The new Fallout show dropped on Amazon Prime a couple of weeks ago. I am a little late in discussing it – I had uni commitments – but I do want to talk about it now. Long story short, it’s really good. I do think there are some slightly convoluted moments (like it apparently takes Vault-Tec two years to realise that the Vault 32 inhabitants are dead). But there aren’t any problems that can’t be explained or theorised away and it doesn’t detract from the show. So I can forgive it for that. Besides, to my mind convolution is an opportunity to come up with fan theories: my favourite thing to do!

But now the season is finished.

In concept, I like the idea of a show releasing all its episodes at the same time. In practice, I just watch them all immediately and then it’s over and I’m sad. There’s something to be said for spacing it out over several weeks. From a business angle as well, I’d imagine that releasing episodes weekly helps to build long-term engagement with the show due to the suspense and excitement that builds up between episodes. But maybe that doesn’t matter for streaming, who knows?

I digress.

The wait is on for season 2 and I am very excited for that. So, it’s time to speculate widely!

The finale has obviously set up New Vegas to play a major role next season, with Hank arriving there in his stolen power armour. A few people have said that New Vegas looks like it’s been destroyed, and it does a bit, but I don’t think it’s completely ruined. I’d be very surprised if they teased it in the finale – a clear hook for season 2, meant to get Fallout fans excited – only for it to be an irradiated ruin (a la Shady Sands). Besides, Hank only saw it from a distance and it was surrounded by warring factions during the game. So, it does seem plausible that the city took a beating from one of those factions in or after the game’s events. We don’t know the canon ending of Fallout: New Vegas so anything could have happened but Mr House’s appearance in the finale’s pre-apocalypse scenes may imply that he was the game’s winner. The credits, meanwhile, show a crashed New California Republic (NCR) Vertibird on the strip which suggests that, after House forced them from Hoover Dam, the NCR tried to take the city by force and failed. If New Vegas didn’t fully rebuild after the battle, it’s likely due to the lack of NCR tourism and the resulting economic slowdown.

A Mr House victory would also explain Hank’s visit to New Vegas. He probably sees Mr House as an ally in Vault-Tec’s corporate campaign to wipe out everyone who isn’t them. Although, Mr House doesn’t seem that keen on Vault-Tec’s plans (he chose to save Vegas instead), so it will be interesting to see how he responds to Hank. If, on the one hand, the NCR did try to conquer New Vegas and subsequently damaged it, then Mr House probably has some grievance with them and may commend Hank for destroying Shady Sands. On the other hand, House may want the NCR to be restored as a source of tourism. The NCR’s imperialism in the Mojave wasteland during Fallout: New Vegas was driven, I believe, by the domestic problems that wealthy and corrupting rancher barons in California were causing (the ranchers grew more powerful than the sheriff, as the show says). But if the energy resources of Hoover Dam (and the ‘free real estate’ of Vegas) could solve those problems, then it’s likely that Moldaver’s cold fusion would have done so as well. This would have removed any reason for continued NCR aggression against New Vegas and have thus made them into good customers. Mr House might have even played a role in Moldaver’s unexplained survival and rise to power – he saw her research as a way of pacifying the NCR. If so, House probably won’t be happy with Hank.

I also reckon that the self-proclaimed president, killed by the Ghoul, was one of those corrupting rancher barons. This could suggest the region was highly contested even before the show began. Rancher barons are trying to fill a power vacuum left by Shady Sands and are subsequently in open conflict with the NCR rump state. They hate Moldaver precisely because she’s fighting for the NCR’s restoration in the region. They probably put the bounty on the Enclave scientist as well. But the ranchers aren’t the only ones seeking profit from the NCR’s misfortune, which the show makes clear from the start. The Brotherhood also wants to control the wasteland. Next season, I think we’re going to see the Brotherhood attempting to impose its tyrannical rule on a population more loyal to the NCR than to them. Although I do get the impression that the Brotherhood’s main narrative role going forward, will be as a distraction that prevents the main characters from dealing with the threat posed by Vault-Tec. Still, I did enjoy how the Brotherhood Knights were initially presented as the good guys (with a few nods to the truth) and were then gradually revealed as awful.

The NCR, by contrast, were initially presented as evil raiders who attacked the Vaults and kidnapped Hank without any reason! Only for Lucy to discover that they’re the closest thing the post-apocalypse has to good guys. They’re goal in the show is simply to restore power to the wasteland and, presumably, deal with the corrupt rancher barons. The NCR citizens in Vault 4, meanwhile, are trying to help the victims of Vault-Tec and are nice to Lucy even though she breaks their rules and hurts their people. They just conduct a brief and heavily ritualised non-punishment and then send Lucy and Maximus off with a ton of supplies. It’s true that the NCR don’t like Vault-Tec or Hank but that’s largely because they know what Vault-Tec is and because Hank destroyed their capital – which is a pretty good reason for them to not like him. The raiders in Vault 33 do act badly I admit but, given that Moldaver left them behind, I reckon that they were just raiders hired by the thinly spread NCR. The people that do leave with Moldaver seem to be comparatively disciplined and are probably actual NCR soldiers. I think it’s pretty clear that going forward, the NCR is intended to be the main (albeit morally grey) good guy faction of the show. Especially since the main Fallout theme is only heard alongside images of the NCR’s strength (the NCR flag and the NCR ranger uniform).

A few people reckon that the NCR has now pretty much collapsed and to be fair they have taken some severe blows. They lost Shady Sand before the show even began and now they’ve also lost their Los Angeles headquarters in a battle with the Brotherhood. But they almost certainly have other bases and cities as well, it is a federation after all. They’ve just been weakened in this region. The showrunners have mentioned that there’s a specific game location that they want to explore in future. That could just mean New Vegas, but I’m really hoping that season 2 introduces Arroyo as the new NCR capital. Regardless, starting next season, I think the NCR will gradually rebuild and recover throughout the entire show. To that end, the setbacks they’ve suffered are necessary to the plot. At full strength, the NCR could have easily beaten the Brotherhood (and had been doing so), and maybe Vault-Tec as well. But now they’re on the back foot and are facing multiple threats, like the Brotherhood and the former ranchers, which gives Vault-Tec room to conduct its evil plans.

I’m generally excited to see more of Vault-Tec next season as well. I’ve always thought of them as a long-since destroyed organisation. Most of their Vault experiments failed with the inhabitants either being destroyed, mutated or having long ago rebelled and left the Vaults. The result is that nothing of Vault-Tec itself remains, now there are only relics. There is the Enclave, a recurring villain in the Fallout universe (that appears in episode 2 and from whom the scientist defected). It was the Enclave that originally hired Vault-Tec to conduct its experiments and I suspect that the shadowy figure in the Vault-Tec meeting, during the finale, was an Enclave official. They’ll likely be the show’s main villain as well (and also want to wipe out the surface population, they’ve been trying to for ages), but I think it a great contribution to the lore to have Vault-Tec still be alive. Literally! The Vault-Tec executives are cryogenically frozen in Vault 31 and will presumably try to advance the, presumably shared, plans of the Enclave and Vault-Tec both.

Season 2 can’t come soon enough!

-Dexter