Fallout Episode Three – “The Beginning” | Review

Full Spoilers

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

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It’s Fallout Episode Three and we’re back with Cooper Howard on a movie set. It’s a cheesy old Western and they’re trying to get him to shoot the bad guy in the head for the finale. He’s reluctant as the White Hat good guy sheriff. During a break from shooting, we get to meet his wife Barb brings him a “change out outfit, intrigue!”. Quit cut the Wasteland over 200 years later and Ghoulgins is hacking up a storm over the headless corpse of Dr. Wilzig. Dogmeat pulls him in search of her former owner’s head scent and we’re off.

Lucy is looking over the Doc’s head wondering what’s so special about it as she follows the coordinates given to her to meet Muldaver. A nice glowing white spec behind the head’s right ear zaps her when she pokes it, making a noise of course. We cut to Maximus as he’s attempting to repair his stolen power armor. Base is wondering why the suit is stationary and he tells them his squire died, so they decide to send a new one. Being the idiot he is Max can’t talk his way out of it, so he smashes the suit’s radio instead.

Inside the scrap town of Filly Max needs help with a fix for the part Ghoulgins damaged the last episode. He’s one bottle cap short (this world’s currency) so he sells a few teeth to get the repair completed. As he heads back to the armor he left out in the open a group of raiders are all over it and they beat the tar out of him. After blacking out for a few seconds Max gets up, grabs a tire iron, and is able to injure a few and use the power armor’s arm to horrifically crush half the skull of their leader. This poor guy has gotten his ass beat multiple times already and we’re only three episodes in.

As he is recovering the sound of a Vertibird is heard and one of his tormentors from the base is dropped in to serve as Knight Titus’ new squire. His name is Thaddeus and he’s played with aplomb by Johnny Pemberton. There’s a short period where Maximus, while in the armor, contemplates murdering Thaddeus but he can’t bring himself to do it. Instead choosing to treat Thaddeus in the same shitty fashion that Titus did to him.

Lucy approaches a beautiful scene where a small deer is drinking out of what is most likely highly radioactive water. As one would assume a massive creature quickly attacks, killing the deer and attempting to get Lucy. She is able to evade it but not before it eats the doctor’s Head, which she had put a tracker into previously. Making a bad situation worse Ghoulgins shows up and demands the head, which has now been lost.

We then go back into Vault 33 for the first time in a while. Norm and Chet are punished for helping Lucy leave the vault. Norm loses his job as key master and Norm is given a job they think he’ll hate, bringing food to the raiders left alive after their assault. I don’t know about you but with the looks Norm is giving I wouldn’t let him anywhere near those people’s food or else it’s poison city.

Thaddeus is now climbing up a tree as Maximus is forcing him to look for an apple. It’s a dead tree, so it’s obvious Max is just screwing with him, and Thaddeus eventually falls about 12 feet down, flat on his back. They’re both now at the Doc’s headless corpse wondering what to do. Maximus has no clue as he’s kinda dumb. Thankfully Thaddeus does. He uses his radiation tracking device to follow the extremely high radiation that the artifact in the Doc’s head evidently gives off, though Max had already seen the footprints of Lucy, Ghoulgins, and Dogmeat in the sand anyway.

Back at the flooded lake, Lucy is being lowered into the water by Ghoulgins thinking he is torturing her. For the audience, it’s clear he’s just using her as bait and it works, a bit too well. The creature shows up and attacks them but they’re barely able to fight it off. In the scuffle Lucy smashes Ghoulgins bag against the creature, destroying his anti-feral medication in the process. He’s extra pissed off now, as they don’t have the head and he needs to go find more medication asap.

We catch up with Thaddeus and Max as they have a bit of a heart-to-heart about things while Thaddeus refills the power armor’s water supply. This is where I really started to feel the fade to black/full silence commercial interruptions hit in these screeners. Because it’s not cutting to the next scene and instead going to commercial it can be jarring to have all the audio stop and then immediately start again, but I digress.

We’re back in Vault 33 for the next scene as the three people vying for control of the vault hold an audience on what to do with the Raiders who were left behind after the attack. Everyone wants to teach them the arts, sciences, and how a “proper civilization should be”. Norm wants to murder ‘em, causing everyone else to gasp in horror. All except for Steph, who lost her husband and an eye to the Raiders. She’s pregnant and was Lucy’s best friend before shit went down. They share a knowing look and Norm pretends to the rest that he didn’t mean it.

Max and Thad have followed the head’s signal to the lake where Max decides to use the power armor to go into the water and locate it. Before they can do much the giant abomination attacks. Max is dumbstruck by it and is saved when Thaddeus shoots the creature in the mouth to get its attention. This doesn’t go well for him as it chases him down and begins to devour young Thaddeus whole. Max comes to the rescue though and is able to pull Thad and the creature’s entire entrails out with a massive effort, killing the creature and recovering the Doctor’s head in the process. Here we notice the creature’s “teeth” are made out of fingers, a horrific mutation.

We end with two scenes, the first has Lucy and Ghoulgins trudging through the desert as he is a total prick who refuses to give her any water despite her pleas. The final scene is Coop in the classic Vault suit as he poses for pictures, at one point giving it a huge thumbs up giving us the backstory for the Vault Boy himself!

Wrapping Things Up

That’s the end of episode three. The Brotherhood has the head via Max and Thad, Lucy is stuck with Ghoulgins, and the Vault dwellers aren’t really sure what to do with their captives. It’s another beautifully shot episode, and though it has less action than the previous the story beats all hit for me.

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