If there’s one thing that bothers me about this new era of prestige TV that has it’s six to eight episode run try its hardest to play like an extra long movie, it’s the fact that they rarely stick the landing. There’s something especially jarring about a series that goes out to hit all the usual beats of a film and then go all “see you next time” the second we go into the third act of the final episode. Maybe it’s because we live in a streaming era that any show could be cancelled at any moment (Netflix, I’m looking at you…) that’s given me a pathological fear of a cliffhanger ending, but these days you’ll really have to pull out the stops to get me to thoroughly love an ending loaded with questions that far outweighs the answers.
Enter the season finale of Fallout’s first season that is somewhat tellingly entitled “The Beginning”, that seems dead set on opening at least two new book for even one that it closes – and yet, can it manage to provide a suitably epic ending while keeping things wide open in a way that doesn’t give me completion issues?
It’s all, finally, starting to come together. A battered Lucy McLean with those impossibly wide eyes opened even wider by her time on the surface, is finally back in possession of Wilzig’s severed head and has reached Moldaver’s stronghold and is finally within arms reach of rescuing her captive father, Hank. Extracting the missing element Wilzig had implanted in his skull before it was removed, Moldaver confirms that it is the missing ingredient need to create cold fusion to give the surface world power, but it has been quashed centuries earlier by Vault-Tec. It’s here that the secrets all finally leak out, much to Lucy’s horror.
In a nice bit of timing, both Norm, Lucy’s brother who has broken into the secretive Vault 31 and the noseless, gunslinger known as the Ghoul have their discoveries/flashbacks at around the same time to paint a full picture of what Vault-Tec was actually responsible for; and the short answer is – everything.
Realising that starting the nuclear war that occured two hundred years ago would give them an utter monopoly, the Vault-Tec bigwigs (including the Ghoul’s wife) engineered world war 3 to literally obliterate the competition and run the various vaults in any way they see fit and all the Overseers that Vaults 32 and 33 have ever had have come from the cryogenically frozen Vault-Tec junior executives that have been store in – you’ve guessed it – Vault 31. Hank was one of these executives, as was Betty and it’s just all a form of control to enable the corporation to keep things being run their way. If anything rises to conflict with that, such as the settlement of Shady Sands, then they were ordered to be destroyed by Hank himself after his wife took his children, Lucy and Norm, to live there.
While these revelations devastate Lucy to her core, the Brotherhood of Steel show up in force (Maximus included) in order to take the cold fusion for themselves, but as chaos reigns, Moldaver has one last shock in store for Lucy. One that concerns the true fate of her mother.
I have to say, if one thing has surprised me about Fallout more than anything else, it’s the tone it’s managed to keep going for all eight episodes. When I watched the original trailers, they tended to pit the quirky sense of humour in the forefront, giving an almost Guardians Of The Galaxy feel to it that wasn’t quite accurate. Sure, the series had laughs, even if they were great big dark sarcastic ones, but as the show went on, the sheer size and ruthlessness of the Vault-Tec conspiracy was actually as serious and heart breaking as a fucking myocardial infarction. Never is this more evident than in this majestic season finale, which finally throws the dirty, tattered tarpaulin off the whole enchilada to give us the apocalyptic skinny on what actually occurred and right from the word go, all the wry asides and lashings of irony suddenly dry up. As a result, all the devastating reveals and seismic shifts in the show suddenly become incredibly emotional as both Lucy and Maximus find that their sweet little plan involving them settling down together back at Vault 33 is an utter impossibility.
Obviously, Lucy gets it the worst. While her efforts to find her father, Hank (welcome back Kyle Maclachlan) finally pays dividends, it comes with some genuinely traumatic backstory that exposes her dear old dad is not only something of a tyrannical despot, but he is responsible for the destruction of Shady Sands purely because his wife had left him and taken her kids to the surface. What truly sinks the deal, is that the skeletal Ghoul that Moldaver has chained at the dinner table is Lucy’s mother. Talk about your awkward family reunions. Meanwhile, Norm has cracked the conspiracy from the other end after finding that Vault 31 is nothing but frozen, future Overseers watched over by a motorized brain in a jar (Bud’s, to be exact). However, while his sister has to face her fate while a full blown assault from the Brotherhood rages around her, Norm has to wait out the results of his discovery for an unknown length of time in a cryo-tube or simply starve to death in the re-sealed Vault.
Finally, we have Maximus who also has a cruel fate in store because after defying the Brotherhood by deliberately bringing them the wrong head, he somehow ends up obtaining his fondest dream – being accepted by the order as a hero – right at the time when he was ready to give it up and we leave him being hailed and fully recognised as a Knight as the look on his face is clear that, by obtaining his original dream his new one of find peace with Lucy is now impossible to realise. It’s all heavy stuff, loaded with gravitas and great to see all the plot threads collide in ways that juxtaposes nicely with the more humorous butting of heads that occured in the second episode.
And they collide spectacularly, as Fallout justifies its quieter episodes with a big blowout that contains battle craft, powersuits and copious blood squibs that remains suitably epic, but doesn’t drown out the drama.
However, the best thing about The Beginning is, ironically, the end, which manages to close off all of its plot points while opening brand new ones that genuinely leave you salivating for more. With Norm off the board in Vault 31, the closing moments sees Maximus now entered into the upper echelons of power in the Brotherhood, Lucy and the Ghoul teaming up in order to make Vault-Tec pay for what they’ve done to the world and a fleeing Hank who ends up – pay attention Fallout fans – at New Vegas. In fact, it does everything that a good season finale should, and thus eases my lingering OCD about streaming shows ending with massive cliffhangers.
Apparently, season 2 has already been given the thumbs up, so we’re golden either way, but if it manages to pull of the same awesomeness as season one while expanding its world even greater, you can definitely sign me up for more Vault time…
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