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Fallout Season 1 handled its ending with quite a bang. While no liberty primes or super mutants were nuked along the way, the ending was explosive enough to reveal some harrowing truths about the wasteland. Someone was pulling the strings and probably still is. However, the show had a limited, 8-episode run, and Season 1 sets ends itself on a cliffhanger to whet your appetite for Season 2.
Those who haven’t played the games will surely be confused about what’s happening. Why is a crumbling city on the horizon that houses a tower resembling the Stratosphere in Las Vegas so important? I’m here to answer your possible questions and why Season 2 is bound to be more exciting. Also, spoilers ahead.
Fallout Season 1 Ending Sets the Stage to New Vegas
Season 1 didn’t really feature the notable locales and cities prominent in the games. There was no portrayal of Washington D.C. ruins (from Fallout 3) or Boston (from Fallout 4). Lucy had to journey all across the ruins of California and couldn’t stay in one city, after all. Not that there was any city left in California since Shady Sands is a crater.
The Fallout games starting from Fallout 3 have always featured ruined US cities that somehow survived and retained their geography after 200 years. The games then take place around these cities and their immediate vicinities.
Enter Season 1 of Amazon’s Fallout series. The season finale ends with Hank McLean (Lucy’s father) fleeing to a city in the middle of a desert with The Ghoul and Lucy chasing him. This city is none other than New Vegas from Fallout: New Vegas.
The unmistakable silhouette of the Stratosphere casino hotel is right there and breaks the skyline. The casino has a different name in Fallout: New Vegas, of course. It’s called the Lucky 38 but it still serves the same general purpose, to make money and to serve as a haven for gamblers. Meanwhile, the surrounding area would be the Mojave desert.
So I’m almost certain that Season 2 is going to be a treacherous journey for Lucy. New Vegas is a post-apocalyptic haven for criminals and gangsters, rebuilt from the ruins of Las Vegas. It’s also a free and independent city where several factions thrive (at least that’s how it was in the game).
New Vegas Changes are Abound
Picking a New Vegas setting gets more complicated. Fallout: New Vegas, which took place in 2281, was known for popularizing the New California Republic (NCR) and its capital city Shady Sands. The game’s plot sees the NCR vying for control of the city of New Vegas.
Therein lies the confusing potential direction, Season 1 claims that Shady Sands was destroyed already as early as 2277 (but the New Vegas game takes place in 2281). Meanwhile, the remnants of Shady Sands, led by its high-ranking member, Lee Moldaver, were also destroyed in 2296 right at the end of Fallout Season 1. The Brotherhood of Steel attacked and wiped them out.
The New California Republic would practically be nonexistent in Fallout Season 2. That is unless Moldaver managed to set up backup settlements around the Mojave or other NCR members took root someplace else. Still, the NCR considered Shady Sands to be its capital, but there was no mention of its destruction in Fallout: New Vegas.
It’s not clear what will be changed in Fallout Season 2, but it’s fair to expect the NCR to be diminished or nonexistent.
Effectively, that means Season 2 might pick a canon among Fallout: New Vegas‘ four endings. Or rather, it might eliminate the NCR ending as canon. During that game’s timeline in 2281, three major powers were vying for control over New Vegas and one of them was the NCR.
Seeing as Moldaver holed up in Griffith Observatory instead of turning New Vegas into a fortress after Shady Sands’ destruction, that might well be an indication that the NCR is no more.
Why Hank Fled to New Vegas
Until we see some trailers, drip marketing, or cryptic tweets, we can only speculate. For all we know, Hank MacLean might have just stumbled into New Vegas after his power armor ran out of fuel.
The other possibility is that Hank might have friends in high places in the city. However, Hank MacLean claimed that Vault-Tec won’t tolerate competition. Now, a city as big and as bustling as New Vegas is as much a threat to Vault-Tec as Shady Sands. New Vegas is a free city or Free Economic Zone, but it’s definitely a working bastion of civilization.
Who Controls New Vegas?
Whoever controls New Vegas is a faction. A faction that Vault-Tec would want to destroy lest they take dibs on wasteland reclamation (and they already did). Robert House, New Vegas’ founder also had the original intent of using the city as an attempt to restore civilization. He even welcomed the NCR and gave them a region in the city.
Based on how Hank and Vault-Tec treated Shady Sands and the NCR, his interests would align against New Vegas and whoever controls it in Season 2.
With that said, who knows who controls New Vegas? Come 2296 (Season 1’s timeline), New Vegas might be under new management or even under Vault-Tec’s influence. That would imply that Hank didn’t merely stumble upon New Vegas and was going there to inform his ‘superiors’ there just as The Ghoul claimed.
If that’s the case, there would no doubt be zero NCR presence in New Vegas, or Vault-Tec would have known.
The Brotherhood of Steel Has Become a Major Power
But enough about New Vegas and Vault-Tec. The new power player in town is none other than the Brotherhood of Steel thanks to the Fallout Season 1 ending. They inherited unlimited energy and can now take more territories if they utilize this power.
The Brotherhood, lore-wise, is a technophobic society that believes it knows how to best use technology and would thus hoard it to prevent humanity from causing another apocalypse. With Maximus at the helm of the faction, things might take an interesting turn.
He could chase Lucy all the way to New Vegas with his Brotherhood army in tow and inadvertently start another war or wipeout. The Brotherhood has never had this kind of power before, after all. Now, they practically control California.
What Happened to Vault 31 and Where is The Ghoul’s Family?
Norm, Lucy’s brother, didn’t really have a choice and had to freeze himself in a cryogenic pod to survive in Vault 31, along with the other pre-war officials. He’s more or less out of the story for now or maybe even for the whole of Season 2. The alternative is that he could have chosen to sabotage the cryogenic pods and kill every pre-war official in Vault 31. But that wouldn’t answer his questions.
The Ghoul, meanwhile, has the end goal of finding his ex-wife and child, who were presumably frozen in a cryogenic pod as well. Given the circumstances, there’s a slim chance The Ghoul’s family is in Vault 31; the list of names in the cryogenic pod console didn’t show Janey or Barb.
And since Hank MacLean ran away to New Vegas instead of Vault 31, my working theory is that Vault 31 didn’t house the most important Vault-Tec officials. Vault-Tec’s heads might be somewhere else, or might even be affiliated with the Enclave, somewhere in New Vegas. All that’s left is to wait for Season 2 after the open-ended Fallout Season 1 ending.
