If you’ve played video games or at least have friends who do so, chances are you’ve heard about “Fallout”, the games series originally created by Interplay Productions/Entertainment, Black Isle Studios, and later by Bethesda. Set in a retro futuristic post-apocalyptic America after a devastating nuclear holocaust, “Fallout” is an RPG with a unique style known as dieselpunk.

Despite their games’ success, Interplay struggled financially for years, and eventually “Fallout” was sold to its current owners, Bethesda. Fast forward to today, and Bethesda has released multiple successful Fallout titles, which has led to the creation of Amazon’s “Fallout” series. ***Be warned, there are massive spoilers ahead.***

The show has a relaxed start as it focuses on the main character, Lucy MacClean, a young vault dweller from Vault 33 living her life. Things soon get weird when the characters start talking about how their vault is connected to two others, creating a triangle of vaults.

For those unfamiliar with the game series, vaults have never been connected and have always been spread fairly far apart, so for three to not only be close but also directly connected to each other, means something strange. 

While this is strange, one may simply chalk it up as a creative choice. This is the beginning of a pattern that slowly emerges in each episode. In the vault, most of the inhabitants are quite naive as they have no exposure to the wasteland above them. However, when raiders attack the vault and kidnap Lucy’s father, the facade develops cracks.

As the show progresses, twisted things from the past are revealed and somehow they connect straight back to Lucy’s vault in one way or another. For example, Norm ends up discovering that one of the neighboring vaults, Vault 32, has been decrepit for at least a decade, despite the leader of Vault 33 claiming otherwise.

The inhabitants are all dead, very clearly having killed each other in a crazed bloodbath, yet there’s no clear reason why this came to be. Meanwhile, Lucy while searching for her father (who was overseer until his capture) in the wasteland, ends up meeting her co-stars, the Brotherhood Squire Maximus, and the legendary ghoul bounty hunter, Cooper Howard.

Maximus and the Ghoul add perspectives that Lucy can’t. Maximus’ is that of being born in the wasteland, while the Ghoul’s is from living before the bombs dropped and seeing the world before the destruction. These two different perspectives end up changing Lucy in two important ways.

While the Ghoul’s doomer and selfish mindset ends up breaking her by showing her the most horrid side of the wasteland, Maximus’ builds her back up as she sees the hopes and dreams of someone fighting to survive in a world where many don’t.

Going back to the pattern, the show soon makes it clear that our main cast are connected to a major secret – but in ways they don’t know just yet. As Norm dives deeper into the vault’s secrets, he soon discovers the reason the three vaults are connected: the creators of the vaults are hidden away in the always closed Vault 31, where they live in cryostasis awaiting their time as the next Overseer of one of the other vaults.

This bombshell is dropped on Lucy at the same time as when she finds her father, it’s revealed that he lived before the war, much like the Ghoul, and was hidden away in Vault 31 when the bombs dropped. On top of this, it’s revealed that the creators of the vaults, Vault-Tec, let the bombs drop so they can “wipe the slate clean” and take over the new world.

This is a lot to take in, and of course that’s the twist the show ends on. However, this twist is so powerful because if you look back at the previous episodes, everything points to this in one way or another. This is evident in how each episode sticks to a specific storybeat and doesn’t go all over the place constantly like others of its kind.

Each episode tackles a different plot point like for example, the destruction of Shady Sands and how that not only led to destabilization in the area the main cast travels through, but led to Maximus’ involvement in the Brotherhood of Steel. The time it devotes to fleshing out the intricacies of the wasteland and how that affects the survivors that live in it, make the show feel like one of the games in TV form.

The characters are so outlandish, yet felt like real people, which is true to the games as well. The Ghoul acts like a tough and apathetic killer bent on living life selfishly, but in reality he’s a vengeful and disillusioned man searching for the only people he’s ever cared about. Meanwhile, Lucy slowly changes from this happy go lucky person, to someone willing to make hard choices to survive.

Then there’s Maximus who arguably changes the most. At first an incredibly loyal but bullied soldier of the Brotherhood, Maximus soon gets a chance to prove himself as he’s chosen to serve out in the field with a Knight (a Brotherhood soldier in Power Armor). His adventure out into the wasteland ends up pushing him away from the Brotherhood mentally as he finds himself connecting more with Lucy.

Harkening back to the outlandishness of the characters, the dialogue can be incredibly strange at times. This isn’t a downside of course, these moments are quite hilarious if a little uncomfortable due to the “adult” nature of the words used. This comes as no surprise as the content rating is TV-MA, so don’t watch it with your young siblings or kids.

The show also has graphically violent scenes and a few risque moments here and there, so if that pushes you away, then it’s not recommend to watching the show. Despite these scenes, the show never loses its momentum and really drives home something even the games sort of stumbled on: the overbearing and greedy world from before the bombs is put on full display.

The impact of the pre-war world never falls apart as the show shows no inclination of acting like the actions of the corrupt ruling class are in any way justified like many shows have done before. All in all, Amazon’s “Fallout” hit the mark perfectly, and hopefully season two does the same.