REVIEW: Fallout – Season One [2024]

Rating: TV-MA | Episodes: 10 | Runtime: 60 minutes
Release Date: April 10th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Amazon MGM Studios / Amazon Prime
Creator(s): Geneva Robertson-Dworet

There’s a lot of money in selling the end of the world.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to see Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s names attached to the series adaptation of “Fallout”. They aren’t its creators like they were on “Westworld”, but they are executive producers with Nolan directing the first three episodes. The similarities are obvious, though. Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner—the showrunners—have crafted a narrative that can’t help but recall “Westworld’s” own first season of “awakening.” Because while Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) and Maximus (Aaron Moten) aren’t androids, they aren’t quite fully human either. No one that naive could be.

Set at the end of the world, the plot takes on a three-pronged attack … and let me preface things by saying I know absolutely nothing about the video game or how much of what’s on-screen is cribbed directly from that franchise or built atop its scaffolding. All three are unique yet still ultimately set upon the same course: finding the so-called “target” (Michael Emerson) and procuring the artifact in his possession. An artifact that can change the world.

Prong One: the Vaults. This is where Lucy grew up. A hermetically sealed institution meant to sustain life for centuries after atomic extinction so they may one day repopulate the earth.

Prong Two: the Brotherhood. This is where Maximus grew up. A sort of militarized religion (which, taking the Crusades into consideration, is a redundant descriptor) seeking to control the Wastelands and bring order under its sole domain.

Prong Three: the Wastelands. This is where The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) was born even if it isn’t where the man he once was hails from. As we gradually discover from flashbacks, Cooper Howard was an actor, a shill, and a husband who tragically discovers the truth too late.

The Ghoul is the only one of this trio who has his eyes fully open to what the world has become as a result. He’s a bounty hunter who’s lived the past two hundred years on a cocktail of aerosolized radiation that keeps him immortal as long as he has enough bottle caps to ensure his meds stay replenished. He enjoys killing. He enjoys surviving. And he has his reasons for staying alive this long.

Lucy and Maximus are conversely lambs being led to slaughter. Raised by indoctrination, they inevitably through opposite motivations. He has been waiting his whole life to go out into the wilds and prove his might to one-day don the mech-like armor of a knight. She has devoted her own to never experiencing the real world until the time to build it anew arrived. Unfortunately, the abduction of her father (Kyle MacLachlan’s Hank) by the infamous Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury) accelerates that timeline. Neither therefore knows what awaits. Neither is prepared for the Hell they’ve entered. But both are more than up to the task.

The season is thus an exposition dump in many ways. With the first episode being entitled “The End” and the last “The Beginning”, this realization shouldn’t be shocking. We’re experiencing the present through the eyes of not-so-innocent-anymore innocents (Lucy and Maximus) while learning about the past through the memories of a grizzled vet (The Ghoul). Many characters inexplicably populate both, the hows and whys soon to be discovered once this trio converge at their common rendezvous point and Lucy’s brother (Moises Arias’ Norm) fulfills his own detective mission inside the insulated yet maliciously secretive vaults.

And we get to know them along the way. Who they think they are as a result of where they reside and what they’ve been told as well as who they allow themselves to become as a result of the reality their quest provides. The adventure leads them into fights with monsters and non-humans alike (these things always prove how we’re the real monsters and destroyers of worlds), comedic exchanges (Dale Dickey, Fred Armisen, Chris Parnell, Mat Berry, and others make appearances for color and gags), and mythology lessons as far as whose sense of the timeline is correct (if any). In the end, this is as much an exposition dump for the characters as it is for us considering everything they’ve ever known is a lie.

I liked Purnell and Moten a lot. They exude bright-eyed wonder and childish frustration perfectly—stunted kids in adult bodies finding clarity for the first time. The supporting cast is a delight, the production value is top-notch (save a very bad attempt at de-aging during the finale), and the scripts equally informative and entertaining as far as endearing us to the heroes and getting a lay of the land. But the real highlight (as he often is, ever since his “The Shield” days) is Goggins. Not just because he’s an effectively sardonic badass Ghoul, but also because he’s an effectively human Cooper trying to reconcile the blind patriotism of a war veteran with the empathetic, “traitorous” heart of hero.

Lucy asking The Ghoul who he is only for him to respond by saying, “I’m you.” is all you really need to know about what “Fallout” seeks to do with its wall-to-wall paralleling. This world, much like our own, has watched its tribalism fracture the very fabric of mankind into cruel, deceitful pieces. And only the product of that cruelty can hope to stop it. Not by changing the minds of those they love, but by acknowledging that those they love have been their enemy the whole time.