Fallout season 2 keeps on rolling and cements its reputation as one of the most popular video game adaptations we’ve seen in years. Not only does it manage a wonderful tribute to the world that Bethesda created, but it builds on it in a way that feels completely consistent and genuinely meaningful.
While we’re all holding our breath waiting for the next Fallout game to drop, the show is quietly filling in some of the gaping holes that the games left us hanging on. And episode four delivers – at last, after all this time, we get some solid answers to one of the biggest questions hanging over the Fallout universe, and it’s a real moment of truth.
There was already some healthy debate amongst fans about some of the show’s choices re: the timeline of events, but one of the nice things about a TV adaptation is that it can offer some pretty definitive answers to questions that were sort of left hanging in the games – like what happened to Shady Sands or just how big of a deal was Caesar’s Legion really. And episode 4 goes a step further and reveals some major info about the past of the Fallout world – confirming that the Deathclaw, one of the most feared creatures in the whole saga, was actually used as a weapon in the Sino-American war that led to the nuclear holocaust.
The episode starts off with a great big flashback to Alaska – one of the most iconic battlegrounds from the war that tore the world apart. We get to see a much younger Cooper Howard, the actor Walton Goggins plays (before he totally reinvents himself into whatever his character becomes next) – at this point, he’s just another regular soldier in power armour, in the thick of it all, and it’s a pretty grim old place to be. The power armour promptly gives up on him, the transport gets blown to kingdom come & he finds himself all alone, surrounded by bad guys. The sound of something moving in the background – that deep rumble that makes you just know something awful is about to show up – is seriously unnerving.
At first, you don’t get to see the beast alongside Cooper – but you can sense that it’s lurking in the shadows, just waiting to pounce. The director does a great job of giving us just the right little details to make you think that’s a Deathclaw you’re up against – the way those horns are bent, the sheer force – it’s not hard to see why those poor soldiers got knocked off their feet with so little effort. The whole thing is genuinely terrifying. The flashback closes with an ‘official’ declaration of victory – but we all know that was a long way from the truth – in fact, that Deathclaw was probably what turned the tide in our favour.
The series lays out in the open what for years had only been a hunch among super attentive fans that Deathclaws werent just random weirdos spawned by post-nuclear mutations. No, they’re actually the product of some pretty shady government experiments. We already got hints at this in the games and now it’s out in the open – Deathclaws were genetically engineered by the US government as super soldier prototypes, essentially a bunch of cyborg monsters designed to turn the tide of the war. When the apocalypse hit, they broke out of the lab and went wild, and now, some 50-odd years on theyre still the undisputed kings of the wastelands.
This twist just proves once again that Fallout has no qualms about digging up the mythos of the games and throwing it around like it’s a favourite toy. They take suggestions and implications and turn them into these central, blockbuster moments, some of which make you go “aha” and some of which just make you go ” wow, I forgot they were even in the games.” And of course the second season is still throwing in all sorts of nods to old fans, and focusing more and more on the New Vegas area which is just the most beloved of all the Fallout settings – and ditching all sorts of little Easter eggs that you already kinda suspected would be there, if you were one of the dedicated types who played the whole series from start to finish.
Source: Slash Film
