Questions are answered, and answers are questioned, in « The Strip. »
Warning: Complete spoilers for Fallout Season 2 Episode 8!
After episodes 6 and 7 came in at a mere 43 minutes long, I was hoping Fallout Season 2 Episode 8 would be a 90-minute corker with all the loose plot threads we’ve been following all season neatly wrapped up.
Alas, the final episode of Fallout Season 2, « The Strip », is another short one, clocking in at about 46 minutes, and it does more table-setting for Season 3 than wrapping up of Season 2. Don’t fret, though: there’s still a lot going on, a few fun reveals, some action, and a couple of resolutions.
Right off the bat, we get one of the answers we’ve been waiting for, though it’s not remotely surprising. The Legion’s civil war comes to an end as Lacerta Legate drags Caesar’s (the original Caesar, not the two interim Caesars) skeletonized corpse from the fray of battle and into a tent, where he finally reads the note of succession.
The note reads « I as Caesar. I am the Legion. It ends with me. » Wow, who would have thought this monstrous, murderous dictator was also a selfish jerk? Lacerta (Macaulay Culkin, whose real name is Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin, which is true, you can look that up), his hopium fully replaced with copium, knifes the only other witness, eats the note, and proclaims himself the new Caesar. No one in the Legion even bothers to fact-check his claim, but you know how the Legion is. Off to reclaim New Vegas!
Meanwhile, the newly awakened Mr. House basically confirms another suspicion of ours: he’s fully digitized now. « Over the years my body became something of a target for wandering travelers with something to prove », House says from his giant monitor, finally making a reference to us, the Fallout: New Vegas players, the collective Courier. « I’ve been poisoned, shot, bludgeoned with a crowbar », he says. Yeah, we did mess you up bad as you lay there helpless in your metal diaper. Heh.
The Ghoul threatens to destroy the cold fusion diode, though House warns the explosion would be so big the damage would « extend to other planets. » Uh, what? Excuse me? People have been carrying that thing around in their necks and pockets for 200 years—maybe it should have a warning label on it. They come to an agreement: The Ghoul will get to open his family’s freezer doors if he leaves the fusion chip where it is, powering Mr. House.
Lucy’s main quest comes to a head—literally. Poor Diane Welch does appear to have been just as she seemed: a sweet, boring, yet well-meaning person, now a severed head in a jar, her gentle thoughts reprogramming the wasteland savages. As people often do when Lucy meets them in horrible circumstances, Diane begs Lucy to kill her, and Lucy eventually obliges. With a crowbar.
« Like it or not, Mr. Howard, everyone works for me eventually », House says as The Ghoul put on a special Pip-Boy with House on the screen. I want that. I want one of those. It’s like in Portal 2, where we got to carry around a tiny version of GLaDOS in potato form.
