This episode begins with one of my biggest pet peeves, in life and in fiction: watching someone brush their teeth. I don’t care if you’re my girlfriend, my mama, my wife, or the lovely Annabel O’Hagan as Overseer Stephanie. I don’t want to see you brush your teeth. That’s private! I’m not a prude or anything, it’s just something that always gives me the personal ick. It’s not them, it’s me. At least there’s purpose to Stephanie’s aggressive tooth cleansing ritual, since it occurs as she flashes back to her time in annexed Canada. If you remember the intro video to the original Fallout game, you know just how bad things got up there, with Power Armor-clad soldiers executing people in the streets.
Through flashbacks, we get to se Stephanie leave her mortally wounded buddy (played by Natasha Henstridge) to escape down to America, where she eventually gets a job at the Lucky 38. She’s the one who answers the call when Barb and Cooper need someone to bring a drunken Hank LacLean back to his hotel room. For better or worse, the world of Fallout is getting smaller and smaller, but I honestly don’t mind, since these contrivances and twists all add up to the larger story being told. I can see some people being put off by it in a “Darth Vader built C-3PO” kind of way, but I never really minded that either, so maybe it’s just me.
Back in the present, Steph and her unwillingly betrothed, Chet, get into a bit of a scuffle on the eve of their wedding. Chet finds Woody’s glasses in their garbage disposal. Did Steph drown him in her conveniently large kitchen sink? I’m thinking that’s the case. We never see a body, but Steph has killed before, ruthlessly, to protect herself. Earlier, Steph had blackmailed Vault 33 Overseer Pearson into bringing a package of Hank’s to her in exchange for enough water to handle that Vault’s water crisis. Steph gets the package, but we don’t see what’s so important that she needs it that badly. Still, it’s implied that Hank got Steph her job at Vault-Tec. Is it blackmail material? A memento of friendship? I have no idea.
At the wedding, Chet can’t bring himself to go through with it, and confronts Steph in front of a room full of witnesses. They mostly brush him off as eccentric and suffering from ‘cold feet,’ as it were, but they change their tune when he reveals Steph’s Canadian ID card, at which point she takes off and they chase her through the Vault like villagers with pitchforks. She locks herself in her office, and that’s the last we see of Vault 32 this week.
Out in the wasteland, Cooper has teamed up with Maximus and Thaddeus to break into the Lucky 38. Thaddeus is interested in Cooper’s status as a Ghoul, since he’s recently become something of a Ghoul himself. But Thaddeus doesn’t seem to be the same kind of Ghoul as Cooper, what with the vestigial mouth growing out of his shoulder and all. I wonder if he’s more like Harold from the old games. Ghoul-adjacent, but really something else entirely. Together, the trio go to an NCR storehouse and arm up for battle. Thaddeus picks up a sniper rifle, Cooper opts for an electric laser rifle, and Maximus climbs into a piece of equipment we’ve never seen before: an NCR Ranger Power Armor. It’s downright beautiful. But it’s not free. Cooper doesn’t allow Maximus and Thaddeus to travel with him unless Maximus hands over the Cold Fusion device. Maximus had intended to give it to Lucy, but he reluctantly agrees and gives it to the Ghoul.
Before we get to the battle itself, let’s do some more flashbacks. Cooper, in possession of the Cold Fusion device in the past, meets up with Congresswoman Welch. Together, the two make a deal, and Cooper gives the Cold Fusion device to the President of the United States, played by special guest star Clancy Brown. I can’t help but feel like a double-cross is coming, but that’s as far as the flashbacks take us this week.
Meanwhile, Lucy and Papa MacLean are in the mysterious underground Vault-Tec building (we still don’t know exactly where it is), and Lucy learns how to drive a golf cart. She does some genuine bonding with her father, but doesn’t go along with his plans. Instead she tricks him, cuffs him to the kitchen oven (lots of kitchen action this week), and runs off to the mainframe powering Hank’s experiments with the mind-controlled wastelanders.
As this happens, Norm (last seen getting bodied by Barrel-Chested Ronnie) gets rescued by the Vault-Tec nerds by Claudia and manages to send a message on the radio asking for help from anyone, be they Lucy, their dad, or the Vault. Unfortunately, she doesn’t hear the message, since she’s off to unplug the mainframe. But what she finds is the severed head of Congresswoman Welch, plugged into the computer. I don’t know if it’s more advanced or less advanced than a Robobrain, or if she’s something of a prototype for what Mr. House did to himself, but it’s effed up.
But we were promised a battle, so let’s get to it. Cooper, Maximus, and Thaddeus roll into Freeside, strolling down main street like “Arizona Rangers with big irons on their hips,” so to speak. They make a plan of attack. Maximus, with his Power Armor, is the only one who can actually go toe-to-toe with a Deathclaw, so he’ll be front and center. Meanwhile, Thaddeus will provide sniper support… Or he would have, if his arm hadn’t fallen off at the worst possible moment. Yeah, I really don’t think he’s a regular kind of Ghoul. He’s gonna have to sit this one out. Maximus and Cooper walk to the Strip. Maximus starts the fight while Cooper makes a break for the casino. Maximus actually does pretty well, and (with a little help from Cooper’s lightning gun) manages to kill one of the Deathclaws. But there’s still more to go. During the battle, Maximus is thrown clean through the Freeside gate. If he can’t stop the Deathclaws here and now, they’ll massacre the entire population of Freeside. But that’s a problem for next week’s Maximus.
Up in the Penthouse of the Lucky 38, Cooper finds it clean, but completely abandoned, the power shut down, and a disabled Securitron next to Mr. House’s iconic giant computer. Cooper plugs in the Cold Fusion device, which House had been pursuing for hundreds of years, and the computer reboots, with Mr. House himself showing up on its monitor, just like in the New Vegas game. But is it really him? Or a computer back-up? Or an imposter? We’ll have to wait until next week to find out.
Zak’s Thoughts
We really didn’t get a lot of Norm this season. He’s only in about half of the episodes, and he spends about half of his scenes unconscious. I’m sure they’re building to a Super Mutant story for Season 3, but I feel like they could have found a way to incorporate him more, or give a little extra depth to the Vault-Tec dweebs with whom he escaped Vault 31.
Overseer Steph’s wedding dress and matching eyepatch are 10/10. No notes.
Speaking of Steph, I take every glimpse we get at life outside of the United States as a gift. Getting to see a little tiny bit of annexed Canada is really important for the winder lore of the franchise. Like, yeah, the various American wastelands run the gamut from goofy to scary, but things were really bad just North of the border.
I love penultimate episodes of shows like this. I’m not saying any part of making a TV show is easy, but it’s so much more exciting to set up massive cliffhangers and unanswered questions than it is to actually pay them off in the inevitably underwhelming season finales. I’m holding out hope that Fallout will actually nail the landing with next week’s finale. But there’s a lot of checks to cash: Welch’s head, Mr. House’s fate, the President of the United States in the past, Cooper’s frozen (or are they?) family, FEV, the water crisis in Vault 33, Overseer Steph getting into trouble, Thaddeus’ mysterious Ghoul-adjacent condition, and what the heck is going to happen to the wasteland denizens Hank’s already brainwashed! No one episode can possibly pay off all of those plotlines, but I can’t wait to see them try next week.
That NCR Power Armor is beautiful. It’s like NCR Ranger Armor… But Powered. Honestly, it’s such a slam-dunk of a design that it’s shocking it hasn’t already been done. The knives on the forearms as a great touch and get put to good use by Maximus. Last week, he said something along the lines of “Power Armor is more trouble than it’s worth.” This week’s Maximus would have to disagree.
I like how Deathclaws are the one thing that genuinely terrify Cooper, probably due to lingering PTSD from his time in the war in Alaska. Indiana Jones has snakes, Cooper has Deathclaws.
Is that really Mr. House? Is it a computer simulation of him? My hope was that The King had set up shop in the Lucky 38, but that’s looking unlikely now. I’m honestly a bit upset that he hasn’t appeared at all this season, just a couple of his ghoulified gang members. How did they become Ghouls? That doesn’t just happen to anyone, ya know. Did someone use a radiation bomb or something to wipe out The Kings? Did The King himself survive or go into hiding? Where’s The King?!?!
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