Spend any amount of time on the internet discussing video games and you’ll quickly find out how difficult Fallout fans are to please—which is why, despite my glowing review of the first season, I was kind of shocked at just how popular that first season of Fallout on Prime Video became. Video games are typically hard to adapt successfully when the story coming to streaming is linear (looking at you, The Last of Us Season 2), and harder still for a game like Fallout, where each individual player truly writes their own story, resulting in hundreds of possible endings and thousands of ways to get there.
So when I heard that Season 2 would be taking viewers to the Mojave Desert and its shining jewel, New Vegas, I was worried. After all, the show is set after the game, which would seemingly necessitate making one of Fallout: New Vegas’ endings canon and disregarding the rest. This may not seem like a big deal to those of you who don’t play video games, but to Fallout diehards, it’s everything. Players tend to get attached to their endings and want their faction’s victory to be canonical.
The show handles this deftly, and longtime players will be delighted to know that the writers left space for any of the endings to be canon. After all, victory at the Battle of Hoover Dam doesn’t necessarily mean your chosen faction wouldn’t have faced bumps down the road.
I was also struck by the scale of the world this season, with iconic locations like the Strip, Freeside, and Novac faithfully recreated on a jaw-dropping scale. As a fan of New Vegas myself, it was particularly cool to see the Strip and the Lucky 38 in all of their pre-War glory.
The Lucky 38 and its creator, Mr. House, loom large over the entire season, and although no one can quite replace René Auberjonois, Justin Theroux comes about as close as one could hope to get. His performance is masterful, as are those of the rest of the cast, with Ella Purnell and Moisés Arias being major standouts. Ella does a phenomenal job portraying Lucy’s character growth as the season progresses, and Moisés tops his unbelievable Season One performance.
They’re helped by a plot that just keeps on giving—every episode tops the last, and with only eight episodes in the entire season, there really isn’t any filler. Even the callbacks to Season One’s bit characters feel worthwhile and push the plot forward in meaningful ways.
Fallout Season Two is not to be missed. Stream it on Prime Video.