Fallout Episode 1 Mostly Spoiler Free Review

Fallout Episode 1 Mostly Spoiler Free Review

The recent Fallout series has been a hit right off the bat, with both critics and audiences really enjoying the series. The show is based on the Fallout series of games by Bethesda which are about trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.

Fallout implies what it sounds like, a world consumed by nuclear radiation. The series starts with a vault dweller, Lucy MacLean, played by Ella Purnell. Vaults are places meant for people to live underground in a radiation-free environment. The idea is that they are an enclosed society where everyone is conditioned for an eventual reclamation day that will rebuild society once it is safe to live on the surface again.

Life inside the vault is fairly friendly, almost like a very sanitized version of earth, where people get along and live in a kind of harmony. Events change and Lucy needs to go to the surface to find her missing father. She quickly finds out that those that live on the surface are quite a bit different and potentially more dangerous and awful than what she is accustomed to.

The violence is meant to be comical but also realistic as a way to entertain the viewer while also informing them that this is very much the wild west on the surface. The tech is very 1950s-style, meaning if we stopped developing in the 50s like never inventing a computer transistor, then everything would be running on older technologies like vacuum tubes.

We are also introduced to the brotherhood of Steel and their Knight like mech armor wearing acolytes with a religious bent. Squire Maximus played by Aaron Moten is used and abused by his Knight played by Michael Rappaport. The appeal of eventually moving up the ranks and being able to don a suit of power armor is what keeps Maximus going, although you can see this starting to wear thin with him.

At the end of the episode, we are given a really neat element of Fallout, Ghouls. They are living beings who have been mutated by the constant exposure to radiation. Walton Goggins chews up the scenery as a cowboy-style outlaw gunslinging Ghoul out for himself and is a highlight of an incredible start to this new series.