This theory might explain where his family is, but it’s not good news for Lucy or The Ghoul.

One of the things Prime Video’s Fallout series does best is showing just how big its universe really is. In Season 1, heroine Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) sets off from a Vault, wanders the Wasteland, visits small towns, gets trapped in another Vault, and even goes to the ruins of a long-destroyed Los Angeles. So finding someone in this large world feels like finding a needle in a haystack. And that’s exactly one of the quests she will embark on in Season 2, as her new companion, The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), looks for his long-lost family. Fortunately, there is a theory that may explain where his family may be — and it’s not good news for Lucy and The Ghoul.

What Happened to The Ghoul’s Family?

As weirdly funny and quirky as it may sometimes be, the Fallout universe is also filled with tragedy. It’s a post-apocalyptic scenario, after all, and a lot of death and loss has already occurred, and is still occurring all around. In the middle of all this, there’s an even sadder character, The Ghoul. His story is told throughout Season 1 of the Prime Video series, and the audience learns that he lost everything, not to death, but to something worse. He lost his family, he lost his job, he was lied to, manipulated, tortured, and left alone to rot, which is pretty dark even for Fallout.

Once, in the year 2077, the Ghoul was a man, a Hollywood movie star called Cooper Howard, and his wife, Barb (Frances Turner), was a senior executive at Vault-Tec, the company that built the Vaults that are now spread all across what used to be the USA. At first, Howard agreed to serve as an ambassador of Vault-Tec to promote their product in a nuclear age, but, as he learned more about it, he became wary of it. In the season finale, he eavesdrops on Barb during a senior executive meeting, in which Barb suggests dropping nuclear bombs to ensure Vault-Tec’s monopoly over the surviving society.

What happened after that is still a mystery, but it is known that Cooper Howard eventually got divorced and lost his job as an actor and worked children’s parties with his and Barb’s daughter, Janey (Teagan Meredith), to make ends meet. Father and daughter were actually working a birthday party when the nuclear bombs dropped in Los Angeles before they had to run away to safety. It isn’t clear, though, how Howard got separated from Janey and, later, Barb — whether he met Barb at a Vault and was himself denied entry, or whether something else happened. What is known is that he was left outside alone, and, because of the radiation, eventually became a ghoul. Not just any ghoul, The Ghoul.

Barb and Janey May Be in a Secret Vault From the Games

The Prime Video series is the first foray of the Fallout franchise into television, as most of its story develops in video games. There are elements of many of the games in the series, but the ending of the first season finale hints that the most important one right now isFallout: New Vegas. In the last scene, Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan) leaves his daughter Lucy behind at the Observatory after it has been revealed that he was responsible for the death of his wife and her mother, Rose (Elle Vertes). So Hank steals a Power Armor and runs away to a location in the middle of the Mojave Desert, the city of New Vegas.

In the New Vegas game, the player controls a character known simply as the Courier. Through the game, the Courier learns that the city of New Vegas is home to a few Vaults of its own and that one of them is permanently sealed off: Vault 21. Each Vault has the prerogative of being a social experiment, following whatever its owner wants, and Vault 21 was a place where everything was solved through gambling. Any issues, disputes, or fights, everything. One day, though, the founder of New Vegas, Robert House (Rafi Silver), decides that the people of Vault 21 must go live on the surface, and seals off with concrete a large part of Vault 21. The Courier is never allowed to see what is past the concrete, and the whole thing is explained very mysteriously. After that, the part of Vault 21 that hasn’t been sealed becomes a hotel, but that’s as far as the player is allowed to know and go.

What happened to Vault 21 is still unknown. Fallout takes place nearly two decades after the events of New Vegas, and, when Hank arrives, the city is in ruins, seemingly left empty all this time. The New Vegas game has multiple ending possibilities, but Season 2 won’t explore them, instead focusing on its own story, with New Vegas probably being related to Vault-Tec senior management. Why else would Hank MacLean, who is a junior executive, go there in the first place, if not to reconvene with his superiors to figure out what their next move is?

As a Vault-Tec Senior Executive, Barb May Be in New Vegas With Janey

The Vault-Tec senior executive meeting that takes place in the season finale introduces many important characters, like Robert House, and also reveals the intentions of other previously established ones. Barb herself, for example, and the always annoying Bud Askins (Michael Esper), who is the senior junior vice-president of the company. Askins championed the project that eventually set all Vault-Tec junior executives in cryo-pods in Vault 31, which was discovered by Norm MacLean (Moises Arias) centuries later. But this also means that if the junior executives were saved like this, then the senior executives were probably frozen, too, right?

A frame in the season finale’s end credits may actually give the hint that ties this whole theory together, showing a billboard announcing cryo-suites at the Tops Hotel and Casino. The Tops is one of the major locations in the New Vegas game, and its basement is actually connected to the lower levels of Vault 21. If Vault-Tec’s senior management was also preserved in cryo-sleep in New Vegas, it makes sense that they would be in a secret location — like, say, a sealed off Vault. The New Vegas game offers an explanation for the sealing off of Vault 21, saying that Robert House simply wanted to cut the connection between its lower levels and Tops, as well as turning the former Vault Dwellers into New Vegas citizens to keep the money flowing in its hotels and casinos. But this is too simple an explanation, and Fallout always has more secrets than obvious answers.

Since the player is never allowed past the concrete in Vault 21 and can never use its connection to the Tops Hotel, there is probably more to this Vault than is being let on. With senior management likely to be in cryo-sleep in New Vegas, this would be a perfect and secure location for them to be kept until the time comes to awaken. For The Ghoul, that’s likely where he will find Barb and Janey, but not without many, many obstacles, including the newly-introduced Death Claws, whatever Vault-Tec management still resides in New Vegas, and, of course, Hank MacLean himself.

Fallout is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.