“Fallout” is a post-apocalyptic drama series released in 2024. It is a much-awaited live-action adaptation of the popular apocalyptic RPG game series of the same name. This series is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video. It is created by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, with Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Kyle MacLachlan, Moisés Arias, and Walton Goggins being some of the central cast. This TV series’ first season is a captivating trip through California’s radiated desert many years following a nuclear catastrophe and it follows the lives of a few survivors who are trying to make their way through waste lands.
Plot Summary
In a post-apocalyptic California, Lucy, a curious young woman raised underground, longs for answers about the world above. When her father disappears, she proceeds to walk out into the irradiated desert, full of strange creatures and scavengers. It is there that she runs into Maximus, a jaded soldier seeking freedom from the oppressive Brotherhood of Steel. The two of them travel through a complicated web of danger while discovering secrets about Lucy’s past and the sinister company that caused the war. As they are pursued by members of this organization, Lucy and Maximus must choose between loyalty and the truth, with a shocking revelation leading to Lucy losing faith in everything around her. Without any help left, Lucy starts a new journey with an unknown ghoul, leaving Maximus behind and trying to save his land from destruction.
How Does The Story Begin?
The story is set in the year 2077. It’s a nuclear-powered world, and a birthday party is on the way. Kids are being entertained by Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins), who was once upon a time an eminent actor. The actors who are not as successful as before find little jobs, like playing cowboys. Often, he takes his daughter with him. They are partying, and at the same time, there’s talk about war and atomic bombs on the television programs in their house. Suddenly, there are bombs falling from above, and people run into underground shelters that they call vaults. Cooper has to run somewhere else since he didn’t shell out money for the vault facilities.
200 years later, Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) is going to be married inside Vault 33, where people live because the outside world still has too much radiation for habitability. But her wedding gets turned into a nightmare when raiders from outside, led by Lee Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury), attack Vault 33. Many are taken captive, including Lucy’s dad, Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan), who was also the Vault Overseer.
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At the same time, a guy named Maximus hopes to become a squire in a group called the Brotherhood of Steel. They’re like a private army, protecting the world from old technology. Despite trying his best, Maximus isn’t chosen. Instead, his friend Dane gets picked. But Dane gets hurt by hidden blades in her shoes, so Maximus gets the job instead, serving a knight named Titus.
In another place called the Commonwealth, a strange guy without a nose wakes up and kills some bounty hunters. He’s called the Ghoul, and he’s been alive for over 200 years because of radiation. He used to be an actor, Cooper Howard, before becoming the Ghoul.
Lucy decides to leave Vault 33 to look for her father, despite advice against it. She is accompanied by her brother and cousin. They meet Maximus and the Ghoul during their varied searches, but when a scientist from the Enclave group disappears with important technology, their destinies become intertwined forever.
Why Does Howard Cooper’s Stardom End?
The series spends a lot of time showing life as it was before the calamitous nuclear disaster. This period forms the bedrock for Cooper Howard, who later becomes Ghoul. When the show begins, he is seen to be an out-of-work actor with no money to live on. During his heyday, Cooper starred as the heroic figure in many Western movies. Additionally, he served as the main spokesperson for Vault-Tec, the company responsible for making the vaults used in case of a nuclear disaster. As a matter of fact, Vault Boy, who is Vault-Tec’s mascot, was inspired by him.
Even though Cooper has close connections with Vault-Tec, he soon gets the whiff that something fishy is going on. A lot of people from the film industry as well as secret political groups are very against this organization, arguing that it has become too powerful and does not act in regular people’s best interests. Initially skeptical about such claims, Cooper, however, starts having doubts after he attends one meeting organized by these secret groups, where it turns out they know some things concerning Barb, his wife.
Vault-Tec had Barb Howard in a high position during that time, and she was responsible for dragging Cooper into their advertising programs. During the meeting, one of the political women told them that they were not communists but were labeled as such because they opposed the government. She hinted to Cooper that Barb had more information than she was letting him know. To get to know more, she handed Cooper an earpiece to install on Barb’s Pip-boy so he could listen to her in-office discussions. Initially hesitant, Cooper eventually used the device.
Through eavesdropping at a meeting between Vault-Tec and other bomb shelter makers chaired by Bud Atkins, Barb’s boss, Cooper, found out something disturbing. The topic of discussion pertained to how these shelters would be set up after a nuclear fallout. In essence, it meant shaping rules for life in new societies. It is most disconcerting when Barb unveils Vault-Tec’s intention of dropping atomic bombs themselves through government cooperation. This initiative aimed at recreating the world again, only this time with an edge for Americans, as per her statement. Disturbed by this revelation, Cooper confronted his wife, or Vault-Tec, head-on. However, his actions attracted accusations of communism, which saw him blacklisted from the Hollywood film industry too. Consequently, he resorted to taking up low-income jobs like entertaining kids during birthday parties.
What’s the Secret Behind Vault 31?
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The strange happenings in Vault 31 are puzzling to Lucy’s brother, Norman MacLean (Moisés Arias), who decides to investigate. No one else appears to be bothered, despite his father’s abduction and his sister looking for him. While exploring Vault 32, he realizes that the crops are not there, which seems suspicious. Later, when Norm comes back with Chet, he discovers that the original inhabitants committed suicide en-masse instead of being killed by raiders. Raiders shockingly used Norm’s mother’s Pip Boy to open the vault at 32. On approaching the new Overseer about his mother’s Pip-boy, Norman was told it had been buried with her.
Norm also uncovers that Overseers of Vaults 32 and 33 were initially from Vault 31, and finds horrifying messages left by Vaulg 32’s first occupiers. It is crystal clear that the puzzle lies in Vault 31. Instead of a community, Norm finds cryogenic tubes inside this place. This connects directly to Vault-Tec’s strategy for societal control following the nuclear war. “Bud’s Buds” was thought up by Bud Atkins, a Vault-Tec executive, where executives would be cryogenically frozen to lead society after radiation cleared. Their storage facility was referred to as vault number 31, and those who served as overseers were none other than senior staff members of VTech, in reality carrying out their employer’s intentions all along. Despite superficial appearances of democracy, however, Vault-Tec still controlled everything, even centuries after Doomsday happened.
Why Was Hank MacLean Kidnapped By Lucy Moldaver?
Later in Fallout, we learn that Moldaver, who happens to be the leader of the raiders, was at one time the leader of an anti-government group before everything went wrong. Strangely, she somehow managed to remain alive for over two centuries and still wanted to help others, as she claimed. This is a very powerful thing that Vault-Tec created in Cold Fusion, which could provide unlimited energy. It had the potential to help many individuals survive in the wasteland, but Vault-Tec concealed it under a pseudonym known as the Enclave.
Cold Fusion was stolen by a scientist named Wilzig, who implanted it into his own head. He intended to give it to Moldaver so she could help others. However, immediately after, he was followed by the Brotherhood of Steel. Thus, he fled to Moldaver’s camp and gave it to her.
Lucy brings Wilzig’s head with her and shows it to Moldaver, who then demonstrates how powerful cold fusion really is. She explains why she kidnapped Hank MacLean. Hank, an ex-boss from Vault-Tec, resided in his frozen form within Vault 31 until becoming the chief of Vault 33 later on in life.
But Rose, Hank’s wife, started to believe that it was possible to venture outside. Hank got angry, and they argued with each other. Rose took their children, Lucy and Norm, to a place called Shady Sands. Moldaver befriended them. Angry with this betrayal, Hank destroyed Shady Sands, thinking he had annihilated all of them. He deceived Lucy and Norm into believing that their mother was dead, but she wasn’t. Though her skin burned off, she still survived as a Ghoul.
Moldaver and the raiders used Lucy’s Pip- Boy to get into the vaults. Moldaver lived through all this and then waited a long time to get the Cold Fusion chip. Only a big boss at Vault-Tec could use it, and Hank was one of those bosses. That’s why Moldaver kidnapped him—she needed him to use the chip.
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Lucy MacLean is shocked to discover these secrets that have been kept from her for many years, and she must choose between believing her father or Moldaver. As a suffering body wears the same necklace her mother once wore, Lucy is sure the rebel leader has told her the truth, and she rejects helping Hank’s self-claiming acts of love for his children.
The place gets invaded by the Brotherhood of Steel right at that moment after Maximus lets slip the location of the real head to save himself from being executed. In search of Lucy, whom he wishes to spend his life with, Maximus eventually opens up Hank’s cell since he has heard that this was his beloved’s dad all along. Eventually, Hank equips himself with Maximus’ power armor before striking down the unconscious boy.
Meanwhile, in this area too, the Ghoul showed up having interrogated individuals concerning Moldaver’s hideout as he sought out the truth on his own. Still missing, Cooper Howard (the Ghoul) wanted to find out what had befallen his dear family members ever since atomic destruction, because then he had lost them.
In the end of “Fallout,” Hank makes his way out of the place with the power armor, while Lucy MacLean decides to partner with Ghoul to explore further about this world.
Norm MacLean is forced into his father’s bed for him to sleep in a cryogenic condition at Vault 31, as he knows too much about Vault-Tec being evil. After Maximus wakes up from the coma caused by the injury, Moldaver suffers a heavy injury as a result of fighting with the Brotherhood of Steel. She runs back to her room and switches on Cold Fusion, which instantly brightens up everything in there forever using the inexhaustible energy it has; however, Moldaver dies soon after.
Consequently, Maximus is found in his chamber by members of the Brotherhood of Steel, who acclaim him as the one who killed an enemy and activated Cold Fusion. From this point on, it becomes clear that the Brotherhood of Steel will now be able to utilize an immeasurable source of power, whereas Maximus will rise high above through luck only. In its last scene, Fallout depicts Hank MacLean arriving in post-apocalyptic Vegas, where probably next season might be based.
