Everything We Know About the TV Series
Amazon’s “Fallout” TV series is set to bring the warped 1950s futurism and nuclear weapons of the award-winning video games into live action.
The show is set 200 years after a nuclear apocalypse ravaged the planet. The protagonist leaves an underground bunker, encountering a blighted and dangerous world.
The series was developed by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, who produced HBO’s “Westworld.”
In the games, players create their own character as they explore the American wasteland, fighting raiders, monsters, robots, and other creatures along the way.
Here’s what we know about Amazon’s “Fallout” TV series, which adds an original story to the universe.
“Fallout” is set in an alternate history where nuclear technology is everywhere
Amazon Prime Video
One of the things that separates “Fallout” from other postapocalyptic franchises is the bizarre 1950s aesthetic of the world, mixed with futuristic weapons and technology.
Nuclear technology had been miniaturized before the apocalypse, and small reactors power homes, trucks, and even hand-held machines.
Nuclear bombs got small too — the handheld “Fat Man” catapult launches small warheads, a bit like a superpowered greande launcher.
There are computers, but chunky ones with monochrome screens. There is wearable tech — the Pip-Boy does a lot of what an Apple Watch might, but is about 10 times the size and powered by a tiny nuclear reactor.
Central, too, to the “Fallout” world are Vaults, shelters built before the apocalypse that allowed some people to escape the ravages of nuclear war.
Though they escaped the bombs, those inside were subject to cruel social experiments run by Vault Tech, the company that built the shelters. Everyone in them wears distinctive blue-and-yellow jumpsuits.
In the games, players typically play one of these Vault Dwellers as they leave for the outside world — and the TV series takes a similar approach.
Ella Purnell plays Lucy, a Vault dweller who leaves the safety of the bunker
Amazon Prime Video
“Yellowjackets” star Ella Purnell plays Lucy, a Vault Dweller who leaves the safety of Vault 73 when her family is attacked. “Twin Peaks” alumnus Kyle MacLachlan plays Lucy’s father, Hank, the Overseer of Vault 73.
Speaking to Vanity Fair about the show, creator Jonathan Nolan teased that Lucy’s worldview would be challenged by leaving, as she realizes how everything in her life will no longer be provided for her.
Amazon Prime Video
“Lucy is charming and plucky and strong…and then you see she’s confronted with the reality of, hey, maybe the supposedly virtuous things you grew up with are not necessarily that virtuous,” he said.
“It’s a luxury virtue. You have your point of view because you never ran out of food, right? You guys were able to share everything —because you had enough to share.”
According to Nolan, Lucy and other groups in the wasteland are “chasing an artifact that has the potential to radically change the power dynamic in this world.”
Lucy will meet other groups in the “Fallout” wasteland, like the Brotherhood of Steel
Amazon Prime Video
As Lucy ventures out into the world, she’ll come across the factions vying for power over the wasteland.
One is the Brotherhood of Steel, a militaristic order of knights who wear heavy suits of robot armor and have superior weaponry.
Nolan explained that the Brotherhood stepped into the vacuum left behind by the government.”It’s a little bit of the Marine Corps. It’s a little bit of the Knights Templar. It’s this kind of weird fusion,” he explained.
“In the absence of a federal government, you just had all this military hardware lying around. Who would get it, and how would they maintain control of it?”
Amazon Prime Video
Audiences will meet the Brotherhood through a squire, Maximus (Aaron Moten), who aids one of the knights in his hulking Power Armor.
The squire was raised by the Brotherhood, and he wants to work his way up to being a knight, although per Vanity Fair he has “a cynical sense of self-preservation.”
The third key figure in Lucy’s journey is a mysterious figure, known only as The Ghoul — played by Walton Goggins. As any “Fallout” player will tell you, ghouls are irradiated creatures with red-orange skin and no noses.
Most are basically zombies, with no sense of who they were before — but Goggins’ gunslinger retained his humanity and works as a ruthless bounty hunter.
Amazon Prime Video
“He becomes our guide and our protagonist in that world, even as we understand him to be the antagonist at the end of the world,” Nolan says.
The creator also noted that The Ghoul, who used to be called Cooper Howard, has been alive since the bombs first fell 200 years before the start of the series.
“There is a chasm in time and distance between who this guy was and who he’s become, which for me creates an enormous dramatic question: What happened to this guy? So we’ll walk backwards into that,” he added.
“Fallout” arrives on Amazon Prime Video in April
Amazon Prime Video/YouTube
The first trailer for “Fallout” confirmed that the show starts streaming on April 12. It didn’t confirm whether episodes will be released weekly, or if the whole season will drop at once.
The footage also gave fans a look at some of the dangerous creatures that inhabit the wasteland, like the giant radroaches and the deformed bears called yao guai.
We also get to see The Ghoul in action, as he takes on hordes of attackers. And there’s also a few shots of Vault Dwellers who have turned on each other in a bloody frenzy.
One thing’s for certain, the TV show is striving to be faithful to the games’ surreal mixture of violence and humor.
