Now that Amazon’s hit Fallout TV show has been approved for a season 2, fans have been speculating about what kinds of stories and twists we are likely to see. One of the bigger revelations the first season delivered was that Vault-Tec was making active plans to drop the first bomb themselves, effectively kicking off the nuclear devastation that transformed the world into a wasteland.
Fallout Season 2
Presumably, the second season of the show will pick up this plot thread, but veteran fans of the video games have already proven that this potential plot twist is just a red herring (or red mirelurk) and that Vault-Tec isn’t responsible.
The creators of the Fallout show likely wanted this Vault-Tec mystery to be a going concern as we head into season two.
We see Barb ominously propose dropping the bomb, effectively kickstarting the kind of apocalyptic scenario that the Vaults were designed to withstand.
Her husband Cooper Howard discovers this while spying on his wife and learning how evil the corporation really is, and we are certainly meant to go into the second season curious as to whether Barb or another Vault-Tec employee ultimately pulls the trigger.
What Fallout Fans Are Thinking
Why, then, are Fallout fans so convinced that season 2 will reveal that Vault-Tec isn’t at fault? For one thing, the co-creator of the Fallout games, Tim Cain, has stated outright that China launched the first bombs in retaliation for America’s development of the Forced Evolution Virus.
While the Fallout television show has engaged in some gentle retcons here and there, it has generally remained very faithful to the canon of the games; therefore, if we already know who dropped the bombs in the game series, we know who dropped them in the show.
Mr. House And Fallout
If that’s not enough, a bit of dialogue from the fan-favorite game Fallout: New Vegas further underscores why season 2 won’t show Vault-Tec dropping the bomb.
In that game, you interact with Mr. House (glimpsed briefly in the first season of the show), a survivor of the Great War who has stayed alive all these years thanks to technology he helped pioneer through his company, RobCo.
Vault-Tec’s Plans
He says in the game that he miscalculated when the bombs would drop by 20 hours; since we see House in the same meeting where Barb proposes dropping the bomb, he would very likely know all of Vault-Tec’s plans ahead of time.
The simple fact that the bombs didn’t drop when House thought they would is reason enough to believe that Vault-Tec did not successfully go through with their plan.
Engineering The Apocalypse
With all of this in mind, how is Fallout likely to resolve this unexpected plot point in season 2?
The most likely thing that will happen is that Vault-Tec will make plans to drop the nukes only for China to beat them to the punch.
Not only would this be perfectly in line with the canon of the games, but it would fit the dark humor of the series: the most powerful corporation in the world goes out of its way to engineer the apocalypse only for the humans they sought to control to beat them to the punch.
More Exciting Fallout Planned
It’s always possible that Fallout will do some more extreme retcons in season 2 and reveal that Vault-Tec is behind it all, but that’s not really likely.
Showrunner Graham Wagner nearly said as much in an interview with GQ Magazine, stating that “what occurs between then and the actual bombs falling… there’s more exciting stuff planned between that moment and the last moment.”
No matter what twists the show takes, it has earned our trust like a faithful squire of the Brotherhood of Steel (not you, Maximus).
The next season is sure to be more than “okie-dokie,” and until it comes out of its Vault, I’ll be busy enjoying my new favorite pastime: discovering how many fans are problematically thirsty for The Ghoul.
