The second episode of its sophomore season sees ‘Fallout’ entrench its big new arc in a look back to its recent past.
Fallout is not a direct adaptation of the beloved games—neither the Black Isle/Interplay classics nor the revived Bethesda/Obsidian era of the series—which means that there’s plenty of space for it to carve out its own imagining of the franchise in its corner of the wasteland. That hasn’t stopped game fans, especially as the show begins to play more directly with plot beats from the games, from bristling when the show makes a departure from the source material, big or small. But in this week’s episode of the show’s second season, the series is already returning to its biggest and most controversial swing away from the games… and tying it all into another fascinating twist it’s dealing with this season.
After the premiere episode caught us up with the Ghoul and Lucy’s journey towards New Vegas, “The Golden Rule” checks in on the now-separated Maximus, back firmly within the arms of the Brotherhood of Steel after he was cut off from finding Lucy again in the climax of season one. It’s an episode that is more broadly about how the ramifications of Maximus’ actions across season two have come home to roost and his willingness to survive in spite of those ramifications regardless of the cost. But before we even get to all that (and a potential simmering schism among the Brotherhood), it opens with a flashback to a defining moment in both Maximus’ life and one of Fallout‘s most controversial choices: the destruction of Shady Sands, the heart of the New California Republic, through the machinations of Vault-Tec.
In isolation, it’s a great sequence—tense and tragic in equal measure, not just for the impact it has on poor young Maximus’ life as his parents sacrifice themselves to keep him protected from the blast, but because of that inevitable gutwrench of getting to see a civilization that managed to really thrive and establish itself in the aftermath of the war get snuffed out just as it was on the verge of endurance.
