Fallout (2024) is an action drama series based on the role-playing video game franchise of the same name. The series is streaming on Prime Video.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary:
In 2077, America was subjected to a nuclear attack, and many bombs were dropped turning the country into a radioactive wasteland.
A company called Vault-Tec built multiple underground bunkers called Vaults, and Lucy Maclean was born and brought up around 200 years later in Vault 33.
It was part of a trio of vaults that prepared the dwellers to repopulate the surface once it was safe to do so.
When Vault 33 is attacked by surface raiders disguised as members of Vault 32, Lucy’s father, Hank, is kidnapped.
She only gets the name of their leader, Moldaver, and decides to head out to the surface and get her father back.
Maximus is part of the Brotherhood of Steel, a military organization determined to secure all pre-war technology and use it for themselves.
He is constantly bullied by the other aspirants but he does have one friend named Dane.
Dane is selected to be a squire for the armored Knights, but someone leaves a blade in their boot and they get hurt the next day.
Maximus is chosen to take their place and accompany Knight Titus in search of a scientist and his dog who have escaped from a place called the Enclave.
The scientist is said to possess significant technology that could shift the balance of power in the wasteland.
Cooper Howard was an actor popular for playing a cowboy in many westerns before the war. He somehow manages to survive the bombs and is turned into a ghoul.
A ghoul is a post-necrotic human resistant to radiation and with extended lifespans, and Cooper spends it acting as a bounty hunter to make a living.
Some men dig him up and tell him about the bounty on the Enclave scientist, and Cooper kills them all to have the job to himself.
Lucy, Maximus, and Cooper’s paths converge in the town of Philly, where Wilzig the scientist is set to be escorted to Moldaver.
Maximus fights off Cooper while Lucy gets Moldaver’s coordinates and escorts Wilzig out of there.
Maximus and Knight Titus were attacked by a mutant bear earlier and Titus is gravely hurt. After being treated harshly, Maximus lets Titus die and takes the armor for himself.
Cooper shoots Wilzig’s leg off, so he tells Lucy that he cannot make it all the way. He asks Lucy to cut off his head and take it to Moldaver because it contains what she needs.
Maximus pretends to be Titus and hopes that by bringing the head back to the Brotherhood, he will be forgiven for betraying Titus.
They send him another squire, Thaddeus, and Maximus remains in the suit and pretends to be Thaddeus.
Lucy runs into a mutant creature called a gulper that grabs the head and swims into the water. She is then captured by Cooper who decides to leave the head behind.
Cooper needs to take in vials of a certain drug to maintain his humanity but those vials are destroyed during their encounter with the gulper.
He attempts to trade Lucy to an organ trafficker in exchange for a supply of vials to stay sane.
Back in Vault 33, Lucy’s brother Norm begins to wonder how the raiders got in. He explores Vault 32 and finds the bodies of people who died much earlier.
He begins to investigate and realizes that there is something strange about Vault 31, and how only people from Vault 31 have been chosen as overseers.
The new overseer, Betty, tells everyone that Vault 32 will be restarted with half of the people from Vault 33. When Norm returns, he finds that it has been miraculously restored.
Maximus and Thaddeus run into the gulper and get Wilzig’s head out of it. They celebrate their victory and Maximus reveals his face to Thaddeus.
Thaddeus calls him a traitor and escapes with the head. Lucy fights off the people trying to traffic her and then hands some vials to an incapacitated Cooper before heading out.
Before the war, Cooper’s wife, Barb, worked for Vault-Tec and enlisted him to star in the advertisement for their vaults.
He put on the jumpsuit and became the model for Vault Boy’s “Thumbs Up”. When Cooper spots a wanted poster for Moldaver, he recognizes her.
It is revealed that Moldaver was also alive before the war, and she led a group of people who wanted to stand up against Vault-Tec and other corporations of the time.
She says that she was working on cold fusion which would produce endless energy, and then Vault-Tec bought the company she was working for.
Cold Fusion is what ultimately powered the vaults so they could run endlessly. She asks Cooper to spy on his wife and discover for himself what her goal is.
Lucy meets Maximus who is trapped in his suit. She lets him out and offers to help him get the head to the Brotherhood if she can convince them to help get her dad back from Moldaver.
Initially, Maximus lies about his name and tells Lucy that it is Titus. They follow the tracker that Lucy put into the head but they get sidetracked when they end up in Vault 4.
Vault 4 contained scientists who wanted to test out the functionality of living in a vault before the need arose. Cooper even shot a commercial for them.
Maximus and Lucy eventually catch up to Thaddeus and get the head, but Maximus tells Lucy to get it to Moldaver because he knows that the Brotherhood cannot be trusted.
Norm succeeds in sneaking into Vault 31 and is shocked at what he finds there.
Ending explained:
Building a new Brotherhood
When Maximus returns to the Brotherhood, he is accused of being a traitor and almost executed.
However, Dane stands up for him and admits that they hurt themselves because they were afraid of going out into the wilds.
Elder Cleric Quintus speaks to Maximus alone and is proud of the decisions he made. He says that the Brotherhood has deteriorated, and they need to build it anew.
Maximus says that he knows where Lucy is taking the head, and Quintus says that they can go acquire the relic, and grab the power that they deserve.
The wrong impression
When Lucy arrives at the observatory, she sees a blossoming community of humans, ghouls, and mutants together.
She finally hands the head to Moldaver and asks for her father who is locked in a cage next to them. There’s also a feral ghoul tied up in a chair nearby.
Moldaver removes the tiny device from Wilzig’s head and explains that it contains the secret to cold fusion.
She was working on it before the war to share with all of humanity, but Vault-Tec bought the technology and privatized it.
That’s why she needed Hank to activate it. She tells Lucy the truth about her father, a truth that changes her entire worldview.
The real puppet masters
Moldaver tells Lucy that Vault-Tec built several vaults before the war and had a vested interest in the war.
When Cooper chooses to spy on his wife, he listens in on a meeting between the heads of all the corporations controlling the country.
Bud Askins tells the others that they have vaults they are willing to hand over control of to the others. Once that is done, the others are free to do whatever experiments they’d like within.
When everyone else questions whether the need for the vaults will arise, Barb says that they can drop the bombs themselves.
Earlier, Bud tells Cooper that he has a program called “Bud’s Buds” for rising management executives that will be preserved over time.
That manifests in Vault 31, where Norm finds several suspended animation chambers filled with “Bud’s Buds”, one of them being Hank Maclean.
Father of the year
Hank was Barb’s assistant and Cooper even met him once at her office. Hank was one of Vault-Tec’s puppets.
When his wife noticed something strange in the vault’s water supply, she theorized that people had populated the surface again but Hank tried to keep her quiet.
She went to the surface and met Moldaver, who had helped with the establishment of Shady Sands and the New California Republic which was a thriving community.
However, Hank went after his wife because she took Lucy along, and when she refused to return, he snatched Lucy and had the company drop bombs on Shady Sands.
Lucy realizes that the ghoul sitting by the side is her mother, and is devastated to learn the truth.
A new wasteland
The Brotherhood arrives at the observatory and Moldaver mobilizes her people. A war breaks out and Maximus reaches Lucy.
He rushes to get her and Hank out, but she tells him that Hank destroyed Shady Sands, where he was originally from.
Hank commandeered the powered armor by then and knocked Maximus out. He is about to kill Lucy when Cooper shows up and stops him.
Cooper recognizes Hank and asks about his wife and daughter, but Hank gets away. He tells Lucy that if she wants to find the people pulling his strings, she can join him.
Maximus wakes up later and Moldaver walks in with the last ounce of her strength. She activates the cold fusion tech and it powers the entire city.
She is proud of what she accomplished, and in her final moments, she asks Maximus if he believes in the Brotherhood’s message.
She then breathes her last as other soldiers rush in. Dane gives Maximus the credit for killing Moldaver as they marvel at the power of cold fusion.
Hank travels across the distance until he reaches a compound in New Vegas, which presumably is the Enclave.
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