Fallout Season 2 Won't Make Your New Vegas Ending Canon

The era of great video game adaptations is upon us, and Prime Video's Fallout might just be leading the pack. The series sidestepped a direct retelling of any single game, instead weaving a fresh narrative from the franchise's rich tapestry of lore. After season one introduced us to the world outside Vault 33, the second season is taking a big leap into the heart of New Vegas, bringing with it everything from Deathclaws and Radroaches to notorious factions like Caesar's Legion and the enigmatic Robert House.

A Fresh Start in Sin City

"We sort of approach it like we do a new game," says Todd Howard, who serves as an executive producer on the show while also being the creative director at Bethesda Game Studios. "Like, hey, we're starting fresh, and okay, we're going back to Vegas. Number one, we've got to honor the journey that every player had there, and maneuvering that is tricky."

He explains that the show's creators have found clever ways to navigate the ambiguity of the game's history. "[Showrunners] Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet have some great ways to maneuver this fog of war, and 'What are the factions up to now?' But it's going back to authenticity. We're fans, so [it's] what would we want to see as a fan, make it as authentic as possible, and just come at it with a lot of thought, a lot of love, [take] what was already there, but also take some swings."

Journeys Through the Mojave

The first season, which introduced a new cast while mirroring the classic game setup of a vault dweller emerging into the world, centered on three key figures. There was the hopelessly optimistic Lucy (Ella Purnell), who leaves her vault to find her kidnapped father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan); Maximus (Aaron Moten), a young squire in the Brotherhood of Steel trying to make his mark; and the Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a hardened, irradiated bounty hunter with a past as a famous Hollywood actor before the bombs fell.

Season two picks up with the unlikely pairing of Lucy and the Ghoul, who still can't stand each other, as they track down Hank—not to save him, but to bring him to justice. The new season also leans heavily on flashbacks, offering views of a glamorous pre-war Vegas and shedding more light on the Ghoul's former life as Cooper Howard.

"We get to spend more time with Cooper this season, and, and this is a man that has had the rug pulled out from underneath him," Walton Goggins explains. "He realizes just how little control he's had over anything in his life, and, and it broke my heart."

The Ghoul isn't the only character with a complicated past. Hank's dark history before his time in Vault 33 is a source of shock for Lucy. After she confronted him, he escaped in a stolen suit of Brotherhood of Steel power armor, heading straight for New Vegas. His reasons remain a puzzle for Lucy, while her brother, Norm (Moises Arias), faces his own set of problems back in the vault. As chaos reigns on the surface, trouble is also brewing underground.

"The first season, [the characters] were really well-established, and then the second season, they got better," MacLachlan says. "They got deeper and they got richer, and I think that's a mark of a series that is growing, that is really finding its voice and its forward movement, and I'm so excited to be part of it. It's really been fun."

Recreating a Nuclear Playground

For anyone who has spent time in the digital Mojave, watching the new season is an exercise in hitting the pause button. The same meticulous care that went into season one's set design, which included filming in a real sunken city, has been applied to New Vegas. The city has been brought to life with stunning accuracy, down to individual streets and signs. Easter egg hunters will have a field day spotting the instantly recognizable likes of the Atomic Wrangler Casino or the heavily fortified entrance to the New Vegas strip, there's even an old poster for Maxis, a pre-war magician who never made it to his headlining gig, and successful pre-war singer Joey Baxter.

When asked about standout sets, Howard points to Mick and Ralph's, praising the design team for crafting all the realistic "little doodads, ammo, and stimpaks," and saying it was "like browsing the store for real." For Moten, it was "the warehouse that the Brotherhood gets into" (the Sunset Sarsaparilla factory) and "the alien in the fridge." Aliens are a real part of the Fallout universe, and whether a live one will make an appearance this season is still up in the air.

The Fog of War

Players of New Vegas know the game concludes with one of four major outcomes, none of which has ever been officially declared the true ending. This led to speculation about whether the show would finally make one of them canon. The options included Robert House (portrayed by Justin Theroux) seizing control, the brutal Legion conquering the territory, the New California Republic annexing the region, or the player's character, the Courier, taking over New Vegas for themselves.

However, according to Dworet, the series may be charting its own course. "This season of Fallout takes place about 15 years after the events of Fallout: New Vegas," she confirms. "And we tried as much as possible to avoid saying, again, [that] any canonical ending is real. Instead, 15 years have gone by, and Vegas is not exactly as you remember it, because naturally, in the Wasteland, there's constantly shifts, right? There's warring factions trying to kill each other, take over each other's territory every day. So, things would not remain the same over 15 years. [There are] some things fans will recognize as very, very much the same. But other things have changed."

The show's immense popularity has also renewed interest in the games, a phenomenon Howard acknowledges. He notes that the show has also influenced the games in return, particularly Fallout '76.

"I will say the popularity show is way more than even we expected. So it really was making sure that games are ready for all the players who are coming into them," Howard explains. "Particularly Fallout '76 has had this resurgence of popularity, and one of the things that's influenced it is bringing [in] a character like the Ghoul, this character who lived before the bombs. And it's interesting to think that every Fallout game that you've played, he was alive somewhere in the wasteland, like you think about that. So having him come into '76 and play a role there has been really great and so much of the stuff in '76 with this update, is really inspired by season two."