Hundreds of years after nuclear annihilation has befallen a retro-future society, a group of survivors is sheltered in every sense of the word inside one of a series of bunkers. When raiders invade and abduct their leader, his daughter -- the resourceful but naive Lucy MacLean -- sets out to rescue him. Meanwhile, a young "squire" named Maximus tries to better his standing in the harsh, caste-driven society of the surface dwellers. An ageless, mutated "Ghoul" wanders the wastelands as an outlaw gunslinger. And the destiny of all three is intertwined.
I never played the Fallout games (I was more a fan of Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series), but it seems the writers of the television series have chosen to adapt the setting of the games more than any particular main storyline. It's a sensible approach to adapting an open-world RPG for a narrative-driven format that would not tolerate "side questing." And by creating in essence three main characters, the television series isn't forced to focus on just one aspect of the setting -- it can follow several.
But of course, this approach means the average viewer is going to find some storylines more compelling than others. I was not super into the early episodes of the show, centered mostly on vault dweller Lucy, played by Ella Purnell. The show spends a lot of time reveling in her "fish out of water" qualities, challenging her politeness, forcing her into uncomfortable or outright gross situations, and generally beating her down as she learns the ways of the outside world. It's the only way for her to experience a good character arc... and yet it starts to feel repetitive awfully fast.
I was more pulled in by the story of Maximus, played by Aaron Moten -- a put-upon grunt in a military-like organization, serving as squire to an ungrateful and unworthy "knight." Like Lucy, he begins the stories with an idealized view of the world -- but his blinders come off much more quickly, before a similar sense of repetition set in for me. His storyline loses some steam later in the season, though by that point Lucy has developed in more interesting ways that allow her to take up the narrative slack.
But most of all, I was pulled in by the story of the Ghoul. At first, this was about performer more than anything else; the character is played by Walton Goggins -- who was pretty much everywhere in my TV viewing diet at the time I was finally catching up with Fallout. (He was also in season 3 of The White Lotus, the final season of The Righteous Gemstones, and voicing a character on Invincible.) Goggins had been cast as an imposing baddie with a charming wit -- basically his character from Justified, with makeup and visual effects. And if that was all his role ever was, I probably would have enjoyed it. Late in the season, however, we get more deeply into the backstory of the Ghoul, and suddenly Goggins was asked to do more than twirl his figurative mustache.
And that's pretty much how the arc of watching the series went for me. Early on, I kept watching more because my husband was enjoying it quite a bit, and I didn't dislike it enough to say "you can keep watching without me." In particular, some oddly recognizable faces in the smaller roles hinted to me that the show might be building to something better -- or at least, might be saying that a lot of video game fans wanted to be part of this; either might explain the appearances by Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Emerson, Matt Berry, Michael Rapaport, Chris Parnell, and others.
By the time the eight-episode season concluded, however, I was liking the series myself, and found myself disappointed that I couldn't forge right ahead to see what happens next. I'll need to get used to that disappointment; filming on the new season just wrapped, and lengthy post-production likely means we won't get more episodes until 2026. But that also means if you were late to Fallout like I was, you have plenty of time to check it out and see if it's for you. As I said, I thought it was a bit slow at first, but as a whole, I'd give the first season a B.
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