Great performances, held together with duct tape and Luck.
By Derek, Great White Ape
Fallout Season 2 has come and gone, and I’m struck by something I wasn’t expecting: I really don’t care about this show anymore. And I say that as someone who genuinely enjoyed the first season. I know — that probably sounds weird to some people, especially hardcore fans of the game series who have been screaming “New Vegas!” into the void since April 2024.
Luckily, I’m in the lucky position of not being precious when it comes to the story of the game series. I want to be clear, however, that I completely understand and empathize with people who view this show as blasphemy. I totally get that. I’m that same way about certain aspects of Star Wars. Touch my original trilogy, and we have a problem. But there is some power in not caring too much about an I.P.’s source material. It lets you watch something for what it is, rather than what you think it should be.
And what Season 1 turned out to be a pleasant surprise. A tight, well-paced, darkly funny ride through an irradiated hellscape with three characters I actually cared about. The question is then, “What’s different about the second season?”
Well, it comes down to connective tissue. It’s one contrivance after another, after another, after another, laced with a lot of subplots that are completely meaningless to me. Season 2 takes what should be a straight road from point A to point B and turns it into a five-lane roundabout where nobody knows which exit to take.
Fair Warning: Spoilers Ahead
As a warning, I’m about to talk about spoilers. So, if you haven’t seen the show or aren’t finished with the most recent season and you don’t want anything given away, stop reading. Go watch it. Form your own opinions. Then come back and tell me I’m wrong. I’m used to it.
For everyone still here, let’s dig in.
Maximus and the Brotherhood of Going Nowhere
For starters, Maximus’ storyline, which was my favorite from the first season, is completely pointless this time around. Basically, we drive home the fact that the Brotherhood of Steel is barbaric, regardless of what faction you look at. We already figured the Brotherhood was filled with assholes from the first season, so why beat a dead horse? At this point, the horse is dust. We’re beating dust.
The internal Brotherhood politics had some promise early on. There are factions within factions, power plays, moral lines being drawn and redrawn. Maximus finds himself caught between his loyalty to the Brotherhood, his friendship with Thaddeus, and the growing realization that the people he idolized might not deserve his devotion. That’s great character tension — on paper. In practice, it fizzles out faster than a Nuka-Cola left open in the desert.
Additionally, Maximus has mixed feelings about killing Quintus (the individual who promoted him in Season 1), despite Quintus proving himself to be a conniving, dismissive, lying, and manipulative individual in very short order. Ignoring the fact that Quintus is totally fine with killing ghoul children simply because they are, in fact, ghouls, he completely berates and belittles Maximus in front of the Brotherhood leadership.
Sure, insults aren’t enough to blow someone’s head off. But that should at least tell Max that this guy could not care less about him as a human being. To Quintus, Max is a tool. That’s it. A wrench he can pick up when something needs tightening and toss in a drawer when it doesn’t.
And the fact that Max didn’t just fry the old man after Quintus emptied his pistol into the air while trying to kill him? That’s a special kind of dumb. Quintus literally just tried to murder you, Maximus. The man shot at you. The gun was pointed at your face. I understand the show wants to portray Maximus as someone who struggles with violence, but there’s a difference between moral complexity and narrative stupidity.
Eventually, Maximus does kill Harkness to prevent the slaughter of ghoul children led by Thaddeus, which is at least a morally coherent choice. But the road getting there is paved with so many detours and dead-end character moments that by the time it happens, I’m already halfway checked out.
Dogmeat: A Cute but Lazy Plot Device
But Maximus flees, and then he’s taken to the Ghoul because the dog that’s been in the show for no reason leads him there. And that’s what I’m talking about.
How a character gets from point A to point B is stupid. The first season of the show had the three main characters — Lucy, Maximus, and the Ghoul — all converging on Filly. I could understand that because it’s a main hub, and two out of the three were searching for the same guy. Fine. I accept that. But having a dog randomly show up in the wilderness as a narrative device to move the story along is just too much for me.
Look, I get it. Dogmeat is a fan-favorite companion from the games. The Fallout community loves that dog like it’s a real pet. And yes, it’s a cute dog. I’m not a monster. But “cute” is not a substitute for “good writing.” You can’t just have a golden retriever wander into the frame and solve your plot problem. That’s not storytelling. That’s a Hallmark movie with radiation.
Caesar’s Legion: Cosplaying Psychos With No Purpose
And then we come to the introduction of random elements, such as Caesar’s Legion.
I seriously give less than a crap about whether this exists in the games. It was shoehorned in for no other reason, it seems, than to give Macaulay Culkin something to do. Oh, and it also sets up a conflict that’s coming in the third season (assuming there is one).
Now, Culkin’s performance as Lacerta Legate — who eventually crowns himself the new Caesar — is actually kind of fun in a deranged, man-child sort of way. There’s a scene in the finale where he finds the original Caesar’s note, which essentially says there was never supposed to be a successor. Caesar wanted the Legion to die with him. So what does Culkin’s character do? He eats the note, kills the one guy who saw it, and declares himself the new boss. It’s absurd. It’s very Fallout. And I’ll admit, “Caesar’s Palace” as a punchline got a chuckle out of me.
But here’s the thing: fun moments don’t justify the existence of an entire subplot. The Legion served literally no purpose in this season’s main story. Lucy and the Ghoul could have made their way to New Vegas, completely ignoring these cosplaying psychos, and we wouldn’t have missed a thing. Lucy ends up on a cross — which is brutal and visually striking — but the whole sequence feels like the writers needed to fill runtime rather than tell a story.
If Season 3 leans heavily into the Legion as a legitimate threat, then maybe, maybe, this will feel like a worthwhile setup in hindsight. But as it stands, it’s the television equivalent of a side quest you accidentally trigger when you’re just trying to get to the main objective.
The Contrivance Problem
Ultimately, Fallout Season 2 felt like a script that didn’t have time to develop, with a writing staff forced to pump something out to meet an arbitrary deadline. And that’s a shame, because the bones of a great season are here. The themes — power, identity, the illusion of safety, the cost of loyalty — are rich and relevant. The setting of New Vegas, one of the most beloved locations in the entire Fallout franchise, should have been a slam dunk.
But connective tissue matters. How characters end up in the same room matters. Why they make the choices they make matters. You can’t just keep throwing coincidences at the screen and hope the audience doesn’t notice. We notice. We always notice. Especially when you trained us to pay attention in Season 1 with writing that actually earned its twists.
The show also made a curious choice with its weekly release format this time, dropping one episode at a time instead of the full-season binge that made the first season such a cultural event. That’s not inherently a bad call — plenty of great shows benefit from the weekly discussion model. But when your episodes are only 40-50 minutes long and your story is spread across multiple storylines that don’t always intersect in meaningful ways, the weekly format exposes the pacing problems in a way a binge watch might have papered over.
What Actually Works: Performances That Hit Hard
Now, Season 2 of Fallout isn’t all bad. Not even close. The performances were still solid across the board, and a couple of scenes emotionally gutted me in ways I did not consent to.
Let’s start with the man himself: Walton Goggins as Cooper Howard / The Ghoul. This guy is operating on a level that most actors can only dream about. Goggins has said in interviews that he was physically and emotionally depleted during filming, having just come off The White Lotus and The Righteous Gemstones back to back. Apparently, he showed up to film one of his most vulnerable scenes on about three hours of sleep, and it worked beautifully. Sometimes the best acting comes from having absolutely nothing left, and Goggins channeled that exhaustion into a performance that critics have called “award-worthy”.
His chemistry with Justin Theroux’s Robert House is off the charts. Every scene they share together crackles with tension. House is charming, ruthless, and terrifying — sometimes all in the same sentence. Theroux brings a cold magnetism to the role that makes you understand why this man survived the apocalypse while the rest of the world burned. The Cooper/House dynamic is easily the best addition to Season 2, and if the show has a future worth watching, it’ll be built on the foundation these two laid down.
All the main concluding scenes for the main characters made me tear up. I know it sounds lame. Bite me.
I loved Maximus’ starry-eyed view of the Brotherhood from the first season — seeing that knight in power armor coming to his rescue after Shady Sands was destroyed. They pay homage to that in the final fight scene with Maximus and the Deathclaws, and it’s one of the best action sequences the show has ever produced. Maximus starts the fight in his NCR Power Armor, blasting Deathclaws with rockets, and ends it fighting them with a roulette wheel and a pool cue. It’s ridiculous and heroic and perfectly captures everything his character is supposed to be: the kid who wanted to be saved, becoming the one who saves others.
The sequence is made even more powerful by the juxtaposition of young Maximus being pulled from the rubble of Shady Sands with present-day Maximus standing his ground in Freeside. He becomes his own hero. He becomes the person he needed all those years ago. That’s storytelling. That’s the kind of payoff this season needed more of.
I loved Lucy’s emotional turmoil at losing her father when Hank decided to erase his own memories after she implanted a control chip in him. Ella Purnell continues to bring a wide-eyed sincerity to Lucy that grounds even the most absurd scenes. And I love the Ghoul’s rededication and hope at getting definitive evidence that his family is alive — discovering that their cryo-pods have been emptied with a trail leading to Colorado. After two seasons of watching this man endure every possible horror the Wasteland can throw at him, giving Cooper Howard a reason to hope feels earned.
Also, as a side note, it was heartbreaking to see the flashback to Shady Sands being destroyed: a young Max being pushed into a fridge by his parents as they hold one another, the two parents telling each other how strong their kid is. Makes me tear up even as I write this. If you don’t feel something during that scene, you might actually be a ghoul.
The Critics Love It (And I Get Why, Sort Of)
Here’s the thing that makes my position somewhat awkward: the critics largely love this season. Fallout Season 2 debuted with a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes before settling at a still-impressive 96% based on 122 reviews. The Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus calls it a season that “successfully expands its post-apocalyptic world to deliver everything audiences could want from a video game adaptation, including sumptuous visuals and riveting performances”. Metacritic has it rated as “Generally Favorable” based on 22 critic reviews. The Popcornmeter audience score sits at 96% from over 2,500 ratings.
So clearly, a lot of people are enjoying this. And I respect that. The production values are undeniably top-tier. The visual effects, the costuming, the set design — it all looks spectacular. There’s a cinematic quality to every frame that makes you wish you were watching it on a massive screen. And the performances, as I’ve said, are excellent.
But high production values and good acting don’t automatically equal a good season of television. A beautiful car with no engine still isn’t going anywhere.
Where Does This Leave Us?
Unfortunately, good performances and some meaningful scenes do not make a good season of television. As it stands, the only storyline I genuinely care about is the Ghoul’s. Cooper Howard’s search for his family, his slow unraveling, his complicated relationship with the truth about Vault-Tec and the apocalypse itself — that’s compelling television. That’s a story with real stakes and real emotional weight.
Unless the writers are only going to focus on that one arc, I’m not entirely sure I’m willing to dedicate more time to a show that won’t take time to flesh out its stories beyond the thinnest of narrative strands. Season 3 has plenty to work with — the Legion marching on New Vegas, the NCR’s return, the Ghoul heading to Colorado, whatever the Enclave is cooking up. But “plenty to work with” was never the problem. It’s what you do with it that counts.
In the Fallout games, there’s a stat called Luck. It determines how often things just happen to go your way — whether it’s finding extra bottle caps or landing a critical hit you had no business landing. Season 2 of Fallout relies on that stat way too heavily. Characters stumble into the right place at the right time, subplots resolve through convenience rather than consequence, and narrative threads are held together with duct tape and wishful thinking.
Season 1 felt like a character with high Intelligence and Charisma — smart, deliberate, and impossible not to like. Season 2 dumped all its points into Luck and hoped for the best. Sometimes you hit the jackpot. Sometimes you’re just wandering the Mojave, wondering what could have been.
War never changes. But apparently, the quality of its storytelling does.
Fallout Season 2 is now streaming in its entirety on Prime Video. All eight episodes are available. Watch it and disagree with me — I dare you.
