So much happened. It’s time to review Episode 7 of Fallout Season 2. We hit every major plot thread, multiple times. The Ghoul, Thaddeus, and Max team up to take on a pack of Death Claws. Lucy waffles in her beliefs before making a big discovery. The Vault 31 bunch are all upset at Norm, and ready to kill him if the handbook allows. Finally, Steph’s reign of terror comes to a head as she pushes Betty and Chet to the brink. This show continues to be really damned good, ya hosers.
Ya Hosers
We start off with a flashback to Steph and her mother escaping an internment camp in America’s 51st state. In a Trump-dream, the Fallout universe saw the United States annex Canada during a brutal struggle for resources.
Steph and her Mom are caught by a man in power armor who then gets taken out by a suicide bomber. Steph’s poor unnamed Ma, who looks a lot like Natasha Henstridge, is mortally wounded.
She tells her daughter “Don’t think of them as human beings. Think of them as Americans”. Steph coldly dispatches a few gentlemen on her way down south, and we get a Canadian-ified Fallout logo.
Livin La Vida Loca
We catch up with Lucy and Hank as they discuss just what the mind control chips do. They induce amnesia and Hank informs Lucy that the process is irreversible.
After some back and forth with Lucy watching just how nice and happy everyone is her conscience comes back and she tells her Dad that she’s going to shut it all down.
Hank quickly acquiesces and tells her they should take “the gold cart”. Lucy, having no clue what the hell that means ends up driving it terribly in a funny father-daughter scene.
Lucy’s first trip down here ends quickly as the Legion member who tried to kill her last episode is super nice, and mopping up! He warns them to be careful, in a scene obviously setup by the devious Hank.
It has been fun to see the ways in which Hank is such an evil manipulator. He loves his daughter. In his mind these are learning experiences to help mold her into something that can survive this broken world.
In reality he really does just really suck. His base instinct is always to control, and if he cannot then to destroy.
Ghoulpin
Thaddues, Maximus, the Ghoul, and Dog Meat are walking towards some unknown goal. Ghoulp wants to know how the hell Thaddeus got his hands on Cold Fusion. We know that in the past it eventually ends up with The Enclave. That is until Michael Emerson’s Doctor character steals it.
We’ll learn later, that Coop has tried to do “the right thing” once, where this technology is involved. In the present Thaddeus is talking with Ghoulp, trying to learn the ropes about becoming a ghoul, to no avail. It turns out the place they were heading is warehouse full of fighting goodies.
New rifles, grenades, and more are eclipsed by what the Ghoul shows Max. A fresh set of New California Republic branded Power Armor. It looks absolutely glorious, and I immediately started geeking out inside my head.
In the past Coop has setup a meeting with the congresswoman we’ve seen a few times this season. She promises him a meet with the President of the United States. There Coop can personally hand him the Cold Fusion, and they have a deal.
We know that there is something off with both her and The President, if The Enclave somehow end up with Cold Fusion. Her promise of “giving energy away to the people” obviously never comes to pass in this apocalyptic wasteland.
Vault Dwellin
We get a few short scenes with Norm an the Vault 31 crew in this episode. The first sees Norm waking up from his serious concussion just long enough to hear the 31’ers talking about killing him. How dare he impersonate management!
After another serious concussion knocks him out a bit longer the only other sane person there, Claudia, unties him. Instead of immediately fleeing, Norm puts out a call on the radio to Lucy and Hank, begging them for help, before the two are found out by the rest.
In Vault 33 things are bad. The water is nearly gone, so Betty gives in to Steph’s demands and takes Hank’s case to her. Betty just wants to keep her people safe, but Steph the Canadian? She wants to see it all burn.
Poor Woody’s glasses are found by Chet in his and Steph’s apartment sink. With the realization that Steph is a liar, potentially a murderer, and worst of all not even American, he finally gets some courage.
At their wedding when asked to say I do, Chet says “I don’t”. His accusations against Steph of wanting to hurt them are met with angry shouts. No one believes him, even about Woody’s glasses, until he shows them Steph’s Canadian ID.
At this point the Vault 32 dwellers are furious, wanting to know who she really is and how she could lie to them. Steph books it back to the overseer’s office as her carefully laid plans begin to fall apart.
It’s nice to see this story finally go somewhere, sadly the Vault 31 crew is still spinning in place for the most part. I’m curious how, if at all, these storylines end up coming together in any meaningful way.
The House Always Wins
Back in the management vault we see Lucy putting on the yellow dress from the trailer. Hank wants to have a nice dinner with her, but uses the NCR Ranger from earlier in the season as a waiter.
This ends up setting Lucy off, and she handcuffs Hank to a stove as she heads off back to the basement to shut all this crazy sh!t down. Now it’s time, finally, for us to fight some Deathclaws.
Outside we see the people gather as Max and his NCR branded Power Armor are a sign of hope. It’s a hope that Lucy talked to her father about. How one side wants to kill and maim all in site, while the other side can be ‘bothersome’.
The NCR are the good guys, not the perfect ones, just generally good in a way few others are in the Fallout universe. Thaddeus ends up staying behind, he has a mouth growing out of his right shoulder and his left arm falls off, yikes!
The fight scene is pretty good. The Deathclaw effects held up well in my screener copy (provided shortly before the episode went live). We got to see them in full CGI-form in the daylight and it looked damned nice.
After a short back and forth with a cannibalistic Deathclaw, Max’s armor gets stuck in a car door thanks to his arm blade. Ghoulp is trying to get to the Lucky 38 casino and starts laying some heavy energy weapon fire into the Deathclaw.
I could tell if it was a Tesla Cannon, Gauss Rifle, or something else, but it looked familiar and my brain feels old. Max manages to free himself and chop off the Deathclaws head right as we head for the end of the episode.
Heading Towards The Finish Line
It’s a three-way story finale this week. I found all three of them immensely satisfying as they delightfully played off one another. Lucy makes it to the mainframe as Coop hands off the Cold Fusion in the past.
The Ghoul is entering Rober House’s destroyed office, and the music is going nucking futz. It’s some crazy Italian-sounding song and it put my teeth on edge in a good way.
We end as Lucy finds in the mainframe… the congresswoman’s head in a jar with wires going out to the computers! We see this as past Coop hands the Cold Fusion over, us knowing it isn’t going to turn out well.
Finally, we end with the Ghoul using the Cold Fusion relic to power Robert House’s digitized self to life. A beautiful, green representation of the man appears on screen and welcomes us kindly to the end of the episode.
What a great freaking show, what a great flipping season so far. Episode 7 was well paced, full of answers, and just enough new intrigue that I don’t know exactly where the hell anything is going as things end.
Next week may see all hell break loose. There’s a lot of trailer shots left, with characters we haven’t seen in a while. I hope the NCR teases turn into something tangible, with the never-ending threat of the Legion being pounded into our domes. No matter what, I’m sure it will be one hell of a ride for sure there bud.
Fallout Season 2 Reviews
Fallout S02E07
Played on
Amazon Prime Video
PROS
- Answers
- Intriguing new questions
- Pacing
- Finale is well set up
CONS
- Short Vault 31 storyline beats
