‘Fallout’ Season 2 review: A stark warning against letting tech billionaires decide humanity’s fate (Image Credit: Space.com)
After a shorter-than-expected wait, Fallout is back on Prime Video for a second season that’s hitting the road and rushing to New Vegas, the iconic location from hit 2010 entry, Fallout: New Vegas. Thankfully, Season 2 has much more to offer than video game references and fun tonal swings. In fact, it might be one of the most relevant shows of 2025.
Fallout Season 2 is led by the same characters that made us fall in love with the first set of episodes last year. Ella Purnell (Lucy), Walton Goggins (Cooper Howard, aka The Ghoul), and Aaron Moten (Maximus) all guide with strength and resolve. But it also places more narrative weight than we expected going in on the antagonists, with an obvious focus on what happens when the wrong folks are entrusted with our future.
After a twisty Season 1 finale, Kyle MacLachlan’s Hank MacLean is on the run, looking to restart his work in the Mojave Desert. Lucy (his daughter) and The Ghoul (an old pal with a score to settle) are hot on his trail. Elsewhere, Maximus has to deal with newfound responsibility and the ambitions of his Brotherhood of Steel chapter. Meanwhile, in the past, Robert House (Justin Theroux) is the mystery to solve.
Since the entire show has been built as a canon continuation of the events in all the games released so far, fans know Mr. House survives the nuclear apocalypse, but what’s happened in the 15 years since Fallout: New Vegas’ events? Which of its endings does the show go with? And who was he before the bombs fell?
Those are answers I won’t give here, but rest assured, the showrunners and writers’ room found smart ways to tie everything together while charting a new future for the Mojave and its inhabitants. References, winks, and even fan-pleasing cameos abound, but unlike in many big-budget IP adaptations, all of them make sense for the story being told and don’t take attention away from the main players. Robert House’s shadow covers the entire season (he even gets the first scene), yet it’s less about making the gamers celebrate his digital persona and more about unveiling more about the man he was and what his ultimate goals were.
Theroux — unsurprisingly — had a lot of relaxed fun with the character, who’s portrayed in an even more unpredictable manner than in the 2010 game. Neither Vault-Tec nor the billionaire at the top of RobCo Industries are clean, and all signs point to them being behind the end (and new beginning) of the world. All for what? Too boost profits? To create a new society ruled by those deemed worthy of calling the shots?
As real-life billionaires rush to build doomsday bunkers and run headfirst into AI that’s far from ready to do anything meaningful (but primed to dissolve who we are), Season 2 might feel too on the nose to some, but the time for subtleties is over.
One way or another, the ruling class won back in 2077… even if many of them are dead. The table was cleared, yet war never changes. Before Vault-Tec’s plans – seemingly led by Hank MacLean’s own agenda – could take shape, however, what remained of North America was filled with more factions with vastly different political views than you can think of. And then you have the scavengers and mutant horrors, of course.
If Fallout: New Vegas was all about the clash of different groups and cultures away from the more barren Capital Wasteland of Washington DC, then Season 2 dutifully picks up its baton, using the fragmented setting to reflect on human nature and how history seems doomed to repeat itself.
The righteous Brotherhood of Steel is also in danger of breaking apart in this season. As teased previously, there’s a thin line between fighting for the greater good and religious fanaticism in the name of peace. With many chapters of the Brotherhood spread across the United States, it was only a matter of time before inside factions started to appear.
There’s a depressingly familiar lack of empathy and mutual understanding out there, yet even the more well-intentioned groups can’t see they’re repeating past mistakes. It underlines not just the season’s central themes, but what Fallout has always been about. In this scenario full of shifting alliances, Maximus remains a player character-like guy, following his heart to navigate difficult situations inside and outside the Brotherhood.
Even back in Lucy’s home of Vault 33 and its sister, Vault 32, conflict is brewing, demolishing Hank MacLean’s views of a world in need of saving by Vault-Tec. His initiatives are also far more sinister than previously teased, and before long, you wonder whether Robert House is the lesser evil.
Regardless, they’re two men who had far too much power and money at a time when the United States needed more humanity to avoid a total catastrophe. Fallout Season 2 isn’t shy about its politics, also making the instrumentalization of the working class by the wealthy a centerpiece of its narrative.
With the gun-toting and tormented Ghoul and the still idealistic Lucy roaming the desert in search of very different kinds of justice, Fallout Season 2 gets to explore whether the (admittedly primitive) Wasteland needs to be saved by people who’d only save part of humanity and fear free will. The actor-turned-cowboy at one point states that maybe things die for a reason and thus should stay dead. As we learn more of the pre-War world and its remnants, he might have a point… even if he’s looking for a few lost pieces himself.
Fallout Season 2 is a more focused and clearly defined season of television that delivers an all-you-can-eat buffet of video game references and perfectly recreated locations and characters. But more than that, it’s an uncomfortable examination of what the time before total disaster looks like and how that cycle is bound to happen again unless we fix our hearts.
Fallout Season 2 will premiere on Tuesday, December 16, at 9 pm ET on Amazon Prime Video with a single episode. The eight-chapter season will debut new episodes every Wednesday after the premiere (starting on December 24) at 3 am ET.
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