The “Fallout” TV series, based around the games of the same name, finished up its second season last week, proving beyond a doubt that the show is more than just fan service.

SPOILER WARNING

Picking up where season 1 left off, “Fallout” brought two of its main characters, Lucy and Cooper “The Ghoul” Howard, to the fan-favorite location of New Vegas to find her dad and bring him to justice for destroying the peaceful community of “Shady Sands”. Meanwhile, Maximus continues on with the Brotherhood of Steel, still trying to find his purpose and place in the wasteland.

The change in character dynamics between these three was one of the biggest positives from these episodes. The first season was more of the establishment of the background for each of the three protagonists. However, the plot finds all of the characters in a period of change, where each of them is struggling with their identity or reason to move forward. 

Lucy is still grappling with what she has been taught in the extremely sheltered Vault 33 and what reality on the surface is like. Her morals and survival instincts start to clash until eventually, her mental restraints snap and she begins to become selfish enough to ensure her survival, even if it means hurting or killing someone. 

Cooper continues to “guide” her along through New Vegas, acting as a catalyst for this change in her while he grapples with his own past. He sees his former self before the bombs dropped in Lucy, someone who values the morally right decision over her own safety and health, and we finally see one of the defining events that has altered his worldview from hers into the stone-cold killer he is in the present. 

Before the United States dissolved, Cooper was able to get his hands on an infinite source of energy in a cold fusion diode that is coveted by multiple corrupt corporate and political parties, and gave it to those he thinks will help keep the world from plunging into an era of destruction and darkness. He thought he had helped spare his wife and daughter from nuclear annihilation; however, with the hindsight of the future where he ends up in the radiated ruins of his past life, it is evident that he may have actually doomed the future. 

This brings so much more understanding to why Cooper has turned away from acting for the good of others and only for the sake of his survival. He has come to his own flawed understanding through his mistake that trying to fix the world is futile and that he only needs to focus on his own desires to fulfill himself. 

In turn, Lucy also acts as a form of change in Cooper. Where he brings out the worst in her, she has softened up his heart of stone, even butting his head into situations that before he would never go near in order to save her. These two act as foils of each other, creating a great dynamic that makes the journey these two go on all the more enjoyable.

On the opposite spectrum of this revelation, Max finds himself becoming a better person through his own mistakes. As a civil war is poised to break out between the Brotherhood of Steel factions in the wasteland, he finds himself in a situation where he becomes “friends” with a representative of one of his biggest faction rivals: Xander Harkness of the Commonwealth. 

The two stumble across a warehouse full of extremely irradiated children known as ghouls, whom the Brotherhood sees as abominations, on an unauthorized expedition. As Harkness prepares to exterminate this group of children, Max tries to persuade him to stop, to no avail. When words had no impact, he used the ultimate last resort and killed Harkness before he could commit an unspeakable act. 

He is immediately outcast from the Brotherhood after the murder, as it plunges the army into chaos. However, it gives Max his first chance to explore who he really is outside of just a loyal soldier. He eventually discovers the New California Republic in New Vegas as he flees the base, one of the factions that formerly presided over his old home before it was destroyed.

In discovering one of the major forces behind the prosperity of his childhood home, it shows a new chapter in Max’s character arc where he is no longer fighting to advance the power he admired as a kid, regardless of what cause it was promoting, but rather to be a light and protector for the people who need it in the wasteland. 

Similarly to the dynamic between Lucy and Cooper, Max and Lucy share a similar but more wholesome connection. They both give each other hope in a way that there are still good people who exist in a wasteland where survival instincts reign over morality. 

In a game series that is so centered around the NPCs that inhabit its world, it feels fitting that the TV series has a major focus on its main characters’ development and acts as one of its biggest strengths. Even though the season finale left Cooper going on a different path than Lucy and Max, there’s no doubt that these characters still have more to discover in their fight for survival in the brutal remains of America.

Categories: Arts & Entertainment