Fallout Review

A note before I begin the review: I’ve never played the game Fallout or any other game in its universe. So, I cannot comment on how the series is like the game or how it brings in any characters or creatures from the game. This review will look at the series solely as a standalone narrative.

When it comes to a television series from the duo of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, you can kind of guess what you’re in store for from the jump. You’ll get a high concept story with some puzzle box moments (and a MacGuffin or two), and you’ll have to hope against hope that the story manages to come to some sort of satisfying conclusion. And, for the most part, that’s what you get in the first season of Fallout, their new post-apocalyptic story based on the popular video game series. Although the jury is still out on whether or not this particular tale will come to a satisfying conclusion when all is said and done.

There is a lot to be intrigued by with this series, and I’m always a sucker for a post-apocalyptic story (although I have found pretty much every story set in a post-apocalyptic world eventually starts hitting on the same plot points – namely that despite all the potential dangers awaiting our protagonists out in the world, humans really are the most dangerous of them all, which is also the case here). The story itself plays out like a series of video game quests. We meet our three central characters: Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell, trading in the horrors of teenage girls in the Yellowjackets wilderness for the horrors of Fallout), a resident of Vault 33 who ventures out into the surface world in a quest to find her kidnapped father, The Ghoul (a great Walton Goggins), who was once a Hollywood actor until the nuclear holocaust and has transformed into a human creature over centuries of exposure to radiation, and Maximus (Aaron Moten, giving us the hero’s journey arc), a member of the military group The Brotherhood of Steel who, like our other two leads, gets roped into a quest for our MacGuffin (that would be Michael Emerson). Each of these three characters fulfills a key archetype: Lucy is the naïve newbie, trying to understand a harsh world she isn’t prepared to survive in; The Ghoul is the battle-tested fighter who has seen it all and doesn’t have patience for emotions and kindness; and Maximus is the young soldier who quickly becomes jaded by war while still being convinced he can save himself and his mission by completing the task set for him. So, archetypal characters, but three performances that offer just enough oomph to make you think there might be more here than meets the eye.

Once we’ve met our characters, they interact and complete various vignettes. Characters A and B encounter threatening people while trying to complete their quest. Character C tries to rid themselves of Character B for a price, leading to C getting captured and taken away on his own quest. Lather, rinse, repeat. Throughout the adventures of Lucy, The Ghoul, and Maximus (sometimes together, sometimes apart), we return to Lucy’s former Vault, as her brother tries to figure out if there’s something sinister happening in the Vault leadership – arguably one of the more interesting puzzles of the entire series, despite being set away from the central action. In fact, there are a number of puzzles linked to the Vaults, from flashbacks to their creation (when The Ghoul was fully human and acting as a famous pitchman for the shady company charged with creating the Vaults and preparing for the inevitable nuclear winter to come from the escalating threats of the Cold War) to seeing how different Vaults have very different policies (and very different people living within their confines) and just what that means for the Vault situation as a whole. Heck, I would have been content following just this one piece of the story, but I suppose there needed to be mutant monster animals and cannibals to get people really excited about the show.

Which takes me to my next point: A lot of what we see in this version of post-apocalyptic America isn’t all that different from the other TV shows dealing with the same subject matter. The Last of Us has their not-zombie zombies, along with the requisite horrific humans and military tropes (which feel less like a retread story-wise thanks to the central story being so insular to our two leads). The Walking Dead had walkers, and the requisite horrific humans and military tropes (which grated after awhile because the story refused to grow beyond the recipe of “think they’ve found safety, surprise there’s a new threat!”). And Fallout has the same. Our characters are trying to get their MacGuffin to the right people to get what they need in exchange (their father back, their place in the military back, the bounty so that they can survive, etc.). But they encounter all of the same threats we’ve seen time and time again, just slightly updated to fit the confines of this world. Which is why the question of just what is going on with the Vaults is so interesting to me – it’s not something I’ve seen before in one of these stories. And while I figured out the answer earlier than the show expected me to, the journey to get there full of intriguing questions.

So, is Fallout worth your time? Well, there’s certainly nothing you haven’t seen before in other post-apocalyptic shows. However, the cast makes a strong case for their characters and there’s absolutely potential for something intriguing should the series be granted additional seasons. But I feel it’s warranted to add this caveat: Nolan and Joy have taken big swings in several of their past television outings, only to fail to make it home. With that in mind, if this genre is your jam, you’ll want to watch this one. If not, it’s probably a skip.

Fallout premieres on Prime Video on April 11. All eight episodes were provided for review.