With two seasons and 16 episodes behind us, it’s now quite easy to safely and confidently say that the smartest decision Bethesda and its TV production partner Kilter Films made was to ensure that Fallout’s foray into the world of TV was canon to the games.
Fallout is, in a sense, built for this. Each entry in the series is pretty much standalone after all, only broadly connected by major events and the occasional cameo. The segregated nature of the vaults and the irradiated US supports this – each vault is unique, and though there are attempts at larger organisations, really each territory is its own pocket of chaos. Even so, it would’ve been easy to either make the show a separate universe entirely, or set it within the universe of the games but stay far away from the places, eras, and characters covered by the source material.
Like I say, the show’s creatives made the right choice to not do that – but it was doubtless also the hard choice. That leaves you with more canonical detritus to trip over, for a start – and it makes the framework within which the show must exist tighter. Plus, this is a series where pretty much every game has multiple endings, all of which must be vaguely respected. The cost for doing this would be to potentially sully the universe itself, which is a precious golden goose. Plus, the hardcore fans that should be the show’s biggest cheerleaders could quickly become a toxic drag on discourse around it.
Season 1 already toed the line pretty closely on this front, with revelations about the history of Vault-Tec that completely alter the way one might look at the games and the brutal off-screen destruction of a beloved location from the first two games. The second season goes further and harder, though. It’s more bold and ambitious out of the gate. We knew this would be the case when the end of the first season teased New Vegas, really – if you’re going to that city and the timeline is set after the game, some level of acknowledgement of what is arguably Fallout’s best narrative must happen.
At first blush, Fallout’s second season seems to struggle a little with the threads left from the first. Knight Maximus (Aaron Morten) is separated from the show’s other main characters and feels a little like he’s on a wheel-spinning side quest, even if he’s surrounded by compelling and well-realised folk. This is a supremely well-cast show, and well-shot, too.
That fact draws you along through the first few episodes. Ultimately New Vegas proper is held back in what I will childishly call the House Edge until a few episodes in, with The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) and Lucy (Ella Purnell) gradually making their way there over multiple episodes. When they finally arrived, I felt that pang that the showrunners risked: vague disappointment at how a beloved game location was represented – familiar but decidedly not.
You have to trust the process, though. Over the course of the show, all of the decisions made do begin to justify themselves. By the end, your mind is positively buzzing with the opportunities and potential this season has set up, as well as with the implications of each of the revelations about the existing Fallout lore.
One can also sense a third party taking a look at the games through fresh eyes. For instance, Robert House is arguably one of the best characters the games have generated – so regardless of how the end of New Vegas played out, who wouldn’t want more of him? The narrative is built to find a way to that conclusion. There’s a few decisions like this, and there is a refreshing honesty to them.
This is where I think the choices made around the TV show’s canonicity and its choice of subject material really lands. Even when the show is a little unsteady on its feet, it is doing things that ultimately only deepen my interest in, fan affinity for, and dedication to the Fallout universe. The risks it takes have made me into more of a fan, not less.
In the end I didn’t feel this season was as strong as the first – I can easily see this later being viewed as a ‘bridge’ between the first and whatever comes next. But I nevertheless left it with a very familiar feeling – mind racing with the thoughts of what this all means. For the show, for the next game, for the series in general. Any tie-in or spin-off that can achieve that is a winner.
