Fallout Season 2 Already Improves Over Season 1 in One Key Way

Okay, moron! This article contains spoilers until “Fallout” season 2, episode 2.

Of all the possible directions to take “Fallout,” the show’s creative team that turned the second season into a road trip comedy has to be one of the most inspired. Unlike recent video game adaptations like “The Last of Us” or “Five Nights at Freddy’s” (we’ll just pretend “Borderlands” never happened, thank you very much), “Fallout” made a critical decision early on in development to not just rely on the structure and plot of the original games. Even Season 2, which was billed as a sort of companion piece to 2010’s “New Vegas,” succeeds primarily by capturing the feel to play the game – instead of literally following every narrative beat.

This is exactly why the Prime Video series continues to improve, even though it’s a completely original dynamic that we already loved from its first season. The collision between the insufferable optimism of Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) and the world-weary cynicism of The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) easily stood out as one of the highlights of Season 1… even if it was only explored in brief, tantalizing spurts. The finale wisely pivoted to establish their reluctant alliance as they cross the desert on a mission to find the unmasked Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan) and bring him to justice.

Two episodes later, and it’s already paying off. Seasons 1 and 2 took full advantage of the pair’s spiky chemistry (which was steamy enough to inspire some seriously passionate “Ghoulcy” shippers). By forcing our two main characters closer together and throwing all sorts of dystopian scenarios at them, “Fallout” is well-positioned to make this its best season yet.

Relationships can get pretty complicated when you cut off your captive’s finger just to prove a point, right before trying to sell her to an organ harvester. Who knew! Lucy MacLean and The Ghoul didn’t exactly get off on the right foot in “Fallout” Season 1, as the two found themselves in direct conflict over their shared goal: finding Siggi Wilzig (Michael Emerson) before any other bounty hunter. Naturally, what they intended to do with him couldn’t have been more different. Lucy had to deliver him to Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury) in order to free her father Hank, while The Ghoul simply wanted to collect that bounty for himself — and, unbeknownst to viewers at the time, get revenge on Hank for his family’s disappearance. However, once their paths crossed, The Ghoul quickly turned Lucy into his captive and never gave her much reason for their dynamic to evolve much beyond that.

While necessary to get from point A to point B, it was a much simpler approach compared to what Season 2 seems to be doing. Of course, Season 1 showed glimpses of a more powerful and equal relationship between the two. Over the course of their shared history, Lucy’s eyes slowly opened to the horrors of the surface world around them. Between learning about the hellish (and thankfully short) lives of other ghouls and figuring out how to balance her ideals with the practical realities of this radioactive apocalypse, one could even argue that The Ghoul had a positive influence on her. But it wasn’t until the Season 1 finale that the show finally hinted at this odd couple’s true potential.

Look, some genre tropes stand the test of time for a reason, and one of those reasons is the fact that they Never He gets old to watch a wide-eyed innocent crash against the pessimism of a veteran who’s been there and done that. For showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner and their team of writers, forcing Lucy and The Ghoul into a main storyline where they literally can’t escape was always going to be an obvious choice. Not only do Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins have incredible chemistry (no, not just the romantic kind), but their characters might as well have been tailor-made to irritate each other. From the opening shootout of the Season 2 premiere gone spectacularly wrong to the duo bickering over a water container at the start of Episode 2, it’s clear that this second season has every intention of putting these characters to the test.

And just when we thought their opposing worldviews couldn’t lead to more conflict between them, their arc in Episode 2 (aptly titled “The Golden Rule”) only takes them even further. After explaining the fundamentals of “A Christmas Carol,” Lucy hears someone screaming for help in an abandoned hospital and realizes they have no choice but to intervene. The subsequent attack by radioactive scorpions leaves Lucy with the moral dilemma of saving an innocent or the Ghoul, and she makes her hardest choice of the season to save the woman instead – while promising to come back for the Ghoul, whom she leaves behind to consider the “consequences of your actions”.

Is Lucy already more like The Ghoul than she’d like to think? We can’t wait to find out. New episodes of “Fallout” air on Prime Video every Wednesday.