Spoilers for this week’s episode of Fallout ahead.
While last week focused on Lucy (Ella Purnell), Cooper Howard aka The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), and their pursuit of Hank (Kyle Maclachlan), this week we caught up with the newly knighted Maximus (Aaron Moten) and his chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel. We also got a peek into another faction of the Mojave Wasteland, one that could potentially spell danger for our protagonists and their questline.
The episode opens up with a flashback to Shady Sands in its prime; A welcoming city that almost resembles life before The Great War. We open up on Maximus’ parents in their lovely home where his father is testing the radiation levels in the water and discovers most of the water beneath the city is safe to drink and could provide a long term home for Shady Sands’ residents. Life is good until a traveling nomad muttering to himself arrives with an atomic bomb, putting the city in danger. Acting fast amongst the panic and chaos, Maximus’ father attempts to disarm it but accidentally activates the bomb’s failsafe, starting the three minute timer to detonation. With little time to spare, he puts Maximus in the kitchen refrigerator and he along with his mother give a tearful goodbye before they’re killed in the blast.
Elsewhere, in Vault 33, we see a young Hank Maclean getting ready to read Lucy a bedtime story. His pip-boy reveals he was the one that remotely activated the bomb.
In the present day we follow Knight Maximus as he leads a squad of power-armored knights into a ghoul infested facility. After taking them out in bloody fashion, the squad recovers a piece of old world tech that’s important to their cause. Later, Elder Cleric Quintus (Michael Cristofer) informs Maximus that the piece of tech his squad recovered is a vital piece in helping their cause of reclaiming the lost world. Using the piece of tech, the Brotherhood is able to activate windmill turbines that blow away massive sand dunes, revealing the buried Area 51 facility beneath it.
When we catch up with Lucy and Cooper’s journey, the pair are discussing how the wasteland will change Lucy more than she knows. After reiterating that she’ll never end up like Cooper, she hears a voice calling for help from an abandoned hospital. In keeping with her “golden rule” of treating others the way she wants to be treated, Lucy sets out to help despite Cooper telling her not to.
Inside the hospital, they find an injured man and woman that Cooper refers to as “tunics,” implying they’re from farther east. Cooper walks up to the injured man, shoots him, and then eats a piece of his skin before spitting it out in disgust. He turns over his body and realizes he’s been stung and poisoned. Before they can react, Cooper, Lucy, and the injured woman are attacked by a pack of radscoprions. While dispatching them, both Cooper and the woman are stung. With poison coursing through their veins, Lucy has to make a choice on who to use the last stimpak on. She decides to save the woman and help guide her home, but not before an angry Cooper reminds her of her “golden rule.” She promises to come back for him.
Meanwhile in Vault 31, all the junior Vault-Tec executives begin to wake up after being frozen for 200 years. Amid the confusion, Norm Maclean (Moisés Arias) tells them its Reclamation Day and that Bud Askins is dead (He’s not. He’s just thrown in the trash.) He tells the executives that he’s been chosen to carry on his work and that they need to find a way out of the vault that they’re trapped in. This goes about as well as you would expect and causes the group to panic.
At the Vault-Tec facility in Vegas, Hank begins his experimentation on the miniaturization of the mind control device using mice, but is repeatedly met with failure. He gets close when a mouse begins to sit upright, but alas that one fails, too.
Back at Area 51, the Brotherhood of Steel enter the facility and uncover a trove of old war relics, weapons, and cars from throughout American history—as well as an icebox. Using the cold fusion that they won in the battle of Griffith Observatory, they make Area 51 fully operational as a homebase. It’s here when Scribe Dane (Xelia Mendes-Jones) begins questioning Knight Maximus and his personality changes upon his promotion. Maximus mentions Lucy and how, now that she’s gone, he needs to focus on his duties to the Brotherhood. However, Dane assures him that Lucy could still be out there.
Elder Cleric Quintus sets up a meeting with fellow Brotherhood chapters from the Grand Canyon and Yosemite about banding together against the chapter from The Commonwealth. The other chapters suggest that The Commonwealth won’t give up power without igniting a civil war. Quintus reveals that following them uncovering Area 51, they now have more fusion cores than humanity has ever seen and could use them to power their conflict. The other chapters agree to unite against The Commonwealth.
On the road, Lucy is guiding the tunic woman home when she begins to act suspiciously. After giving Lucy a vague warning, she disappears. When Lucy looks around, she finds torch bearing soldiers in the hills watching her. When she gets closer to them it’s revealed that they’re all wearing Roman garb. They are Legion.
In Vault 31, Norm bands together with the junior executives and they brainstorm a way to escape the vault through the ventilation system. Using the open hatch, they all escape to the surface where Norm admires its beauty, seeing the sky for the first time in his life.
Hank continues his experimentation on mice when he notices a hall for Vault-Tec Premium Elite Plus customers. After thawing out one of them, he attaches a device to the back of his neck and begins asking him about why he purchased the Premium Elite Plus package for himself and what happened to his family. The man reveals it was expensive and he didn’t buy it for his family. Hank doesn’t take kindly to this and tells him “family is everything.” He then activates the device, exploding the man’s head into a bloody mess. Another failed trial.
With multiple chapters of the Brotherhood of Steel under one roof, the energy becomes chaotic with drinking, partying, and fighting. In the midst of the commotion, Maximus is challenged to hand-to-hand combat by a fellow brother for being the one to kill Moldaver. Against his desire to do so, Maximus engages in bloody combat that ends with him stabbing the brother in his stomach with his own knife. Dane exchanges looks with him disapprovingly, not recognizing the man Maximus has become.
As the fight comes to an end, a mysterious Vertibird arrives uninvited. Departing from the ship is Paladin Harkness (Kumail Nanjiani), a liaison from The Commonwealth chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel. He makes an announcement that he heard rumblings of a civil war and was wondering where his invite was, signifying The Commonwealth’s knowledge of the approaching conflict.
This week’s episode was a shakeup to the status quo. Lucy and Cooper ended up separated, Maximus immersed himself in the Brotherhood’s mission, and Norm finally reached the surface with a full party of followers. This episode also showed how fractured the wasteland truly is. From the Brotherhood of Steel, the Legion, and the Great Khans, everyone wants a piece of pie and it can be assured it won’t be without violence. If it’s anything we know about Fallout it’s that “war… war never changes.”
