Fallout Episode One – “The End” | Review

Full Spoilers

Jesse 'Doncabesa' Norris 3 weeks agoLast Updated: April 10, 2024

0 606 6 minutes read

Welcome to the wasteland. You may have already caught my full season review of Fallout Season One. This is the first in a decently comprehensive episode-by-episode breakdown series, with a review score at the end because people love ‘em so much. Let’s get started then with Fallout Episode 1, titled “The End”.

The End

We open to Nat King Cole’s “Orange Colored Sky”. Walton Goggins is lassoing trickin’ it up at a kid’s party. His character’s name is Cooper Howard, a nod to Todd? He’s a seemingly washed-up movie star, having to make money at birthdays to pay off his alimony. Tension in the house is thick as War is never changing. The radio and TV in this future-retro LA of 2077 are worried about the end of the world coming after a long war between the US and the “commies”. Coop and his daughter are cleaning up after their performance when the first bombs start to drop.

Chaos erupts as the shockwave hits. The homeowner is knocking out his friends as they try to join him in his bomb shelter basement. It’s a mad dash on their horse as the world starts coming to an end around them, and we cut to our cold open. It immediately feels like Fallout. Everything looks and feels like the 1950s except for the futuristic levels of technology like flying robot butlers. The scene with Coop’s daughter as she is the first to notice the bomb going off is terrifying because she looks so freaking terrified. Every title card for the series matches the tone of the first scene, with this one featuring a smoldering sign still on fire from the nuclear blasts.

Vault 33 (219 years later)

We shoot far into the future, to the year 2296. Emma McLane is putting her case forward to a group of three individuals about how she should get a husband (who isn’t a cousin). She goes over her S.P.E.C.I.A.L. skills with everything looking perfectly Fallout. She’s pretty great at everything, and is very much a daddy’s girl. Ella Purnell plays her with aplomb, stating her case as more classic music plays. She wants to be part of the “tri-annual trade with Vault 32”, and is quickly approved with a thumbs up on her Pip-Boy.

A big old “Lucy” title card pops up and we start up our marriage ceremony montage. Life is seemingly perfect here. Lucy’s dad Hank, played by Kyle McLachlan, is the Vault’s Overseer. “After 10 years of cousin stuff I’m excited for the real thing”. While the show looks and feels expensive it definitely takes some risks with its dialogue and I’m here for it. Vault 33 is the “ideal” Vault experience it would seem. Everything looks and feels so nice, happy, and perfect.

Lucy and her Dad talk about her late mother, and share some feels before heading over to the Vault 32 entrance. They’re directly connected! Vault 32’s inhabitants seem a little more reserved, though Lucy is quite happy when her intended “breeder” is a strapping, handsome fellow. Vault 32 seems in rough shape, with a blight that took out their wheat. Things look up though, as Lucy and her new beau Monty get married, hang out for a few minutes, and then immediately go to bang the night away in their new home.

After noticing odd behavoir, like cleaning his post-coital junk on her curtains, Lucy uses her PipBoy on Monty and realizes he’s irradiated, Raiders! A fight ensues and Monty stabs her in the side, after which she rips his jaw off with a broken glass pitcher. Jesus Christ it’s gory as hell already and I love it. Lucy drugs herself up with a game-accurate Stim-pak and the fight is on. Vault 33 is getting their asses whooped by the Raiders for a while until they’re able to start turning the increasingly violent tide. Lucy helps with a tranq gun and Hank finishes Monty off by drowning him in a pickle barrel. In the end though Hank is kidnapped by the leader of the Raider group, Moldaver (played by Sarita Choudhury), shit.

The Brotherhood of Steel

The Brotherhood of Steel is up next. We see a young recruit getting the snot kicked out of him before his friend comes to help him get back to class. Getting hit in the nose seems to be a running gag for our new friend, Maximus (played by Aaron Moten). His Brotherhood teacher asks him to identify a relic of the past and whips him right on the nose when he gets him wrong, what a dick. It all looks very early 2000s armies mixed with some medieval monk outfits to start with, that changes once the Knights show up in their power armor as they fly in on Vertibirds.

They look so damned good. The power armor sounds and feels heavy, but extremely empowering. Maximus’ friend Dane is chosen to be a squire for a Knight, and our boy is feeling jealous. Though not for long as someone sticks a razor into the side of Dane’s boot and they’re severely injured. Everyone blames Maximus and he gets pulled away from the main camp with a hood thrown over his head.

After a quick cut, we’re back in Vault 33 as the damage is assessed. Lucy wants to immediately go and save her Dad, which scares everyone else as their vault door has “never been opened before”. Lucy, her brother Norm (played by Moises Arias), and the cousin she used to “fool around with for a decade” Chet put a plan into motion to leave the Vault. Well Lucy ends up leaving, as Norm is a coward and she tranqs Chet to keep him from following her (for his own safety). We get our first look at the wasteland and see that Vault 33 is right next to the ocean, with Anakin Skywalker’s least favorite thing, sand, covering every inch of the horizon in every other direction.

Back to the Brotherhood’s base. At this point I don’t think Maximus did it, but we are led to believe he could have as he admits that he wanted something like that to happen. He’s a bit of an asshole, and too stupid to know how to hide it. After pledging his life to the brotherhood, he is chosen as the new squire for Knight Titus. They are being sent after someone who looks suspiciously like actor Michael Emerson, and he has a German Shepherd with him (Dogmeat!?!). He has an object of “profound potential to harm our nation, or to save it”. We have our Maguffin! The unknown item that is key to the season’s plot. What it is, we have no clue, so let’s hope if it is answered by the end of season one that it’s something worthy of all the mystery.

Our final scene takes place at night, seemingly in a graveyard. Three men dig up a coffin referencing a Ghoul whom a local boss likes to “eat slices of” every now and then. Ghouls of course are the irradiated, drugged-up zombie-lookin members of the Wastelands from the games. You have “nice”, well still sane ghouls who have to take a drug through an inhaler to stay sane. If they don’t they go feral, and lose all sense of self and control. The man they’re digging up is Walter Goggins, Coop is still alive over 200 years later, because he’s one hell of a kick-ass bounty-hunting ghoul. I shall call him “Ghoulgins” now to differentiate from all the upcoming Cooper scenes throughout the season.

Ghoulgins takes no shit, and isn’t the kind-hearted soul that his former self was. Instead of taking the men up on their offer to hunt down the season’s Maguffin he quickly murders two of the men before resigning the third to death inside the coffin they just dug Ghoulgins out of. All three of the main characters, Lucy, Maximus, and Ghoulgins are on the move now heading towards our Michael Emerson and Dogmeat maguffin, and this glorious Fallout episode one comes to an end.

Wrapping Things Up

The show looks and feels extremely faithful to Bethesda’s Fallout universe. It’s not as dour as the original few games were though as you’ll see throughout the season I think it properly reveres their history. If you had an issue with the Halo TV show or most video game adaptions, then fret not as Fallout’s never-ending focus on being a part of the game’s universe instead of rewriting it holds up for all eight episodes. This was just the first though, and it was as solid a start as I could have ever hoped for.

Fallout Season One Reviews