Fallout Season 2 Episode 1 opens with a flashback where massive protests against a company called RobCo Industries are going on. Its founder and CEO, Robert House, is heard talking on the television about helping the US government improve workplace efficiency, but the people listening to him at a bar aren’t all that happy about what he’s saying. To add to their aggression, a stranger at the bar, played by Justin Theroux, supports House’s words, which prompts the patrons to take him to the alley out back and rough him up. That’s when the stranger surprises them by opening the trunk of his car and offers one of them a sum of $31 million in exchange for putting a transmitter-like device, later revealed to be a brain-computer interface, on the back of his neck. The patron continues to rough up the stranger, and just when he isn’t paying enough attention to his victim, the stranger puts the transmitter on the back of the patron’s neck and activates it. That allows the stranger to puppeteer the patron and force him to kill all his friends. However, when he tries to deactivate his meat puppet, it doesn’t work, and the patron starts approaching the stranger with murderous intent. So, the stranger has no option but to overload the transmitter, causing the patron’s head to explode. Although the situation looks like a bloody mess, the stranger sees it as a sign of progress. Do we learn anything else about this mysterious man and his device? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Moldaver Tells Cooper to Kill House
In a flashback sequence, we are taken back to the moment where Cooper hears his wife, Barb, representing Vault-Tec, telling House that they will drop nuclear bombs on the world and start civilization anew, with private corporations calling the shots instead of, you know, the government or the people. Funnily enough, in real life, we have already achieved that without civilization-cleansing nuclear warfare. So, evidently, the CEOs of private companies in the real world are smarter than these fictional ones. Going back to the plot, after hearing Barb utter those words, Cooper rushes home and tells Janey to pack her bags because they are going on a little trip to Bakersfield. However, en route to their destination, they are stopped in their tracks by Vault-Tec Industries’ vans and a Civil Broadcast announcement, because the company is testing how long it’ll take for them to take people into their vaults before the nukes are dropped. Cooper hugs Janey while looking at the billboard, which has his face on it, and the realization sets in that, all this while, he has been advertising for a company that is planning to bring about the end of the world. Cooper meets Moldaver at a diner, and while Janey is busy playing Whack-A-Commie, Cooper tells Moldaver about Vault-Tec and RobCo’s plans. Moldaver isn’t surprised, because she had supposedly heard about such an initiative; Cooper has merely confirmed her worst fears. Moldaver asks Cooper what he intends to do with this information. Cooper has no idea because he is just an actor.
So, Moldaver points him in the direction of House, who is apparently building the missile system that will execute Barb’s proposal, and tells Cooper to go and kill him before he presses the button that’ll cause a nuclear apocalypse. She says that Barb is about to meet House and sell him Project Cold Fusion, which allows for the generation of endless energy, after which House will definitely bring about the end of the world. The only thing that can stand between humanity’s survival and partial annihilation is Cooper. Cooper doesn’t accept the task and decides to head home. In order to nudge Cooper to “do the right thing,” Moldaver advises him to at least try and kill House so that even if the world goes up in flames, he won’t have any regrets. As Cooper is preparing dinner, Barb shows up, but he simply greets her with a smile. Do peep the poster behind Barb for an in-universe movie titled Revenge of Brutus, about a Shakespearean character famous for “betraying” Julius Caesar to save Rome. Who is Caesar and who is Brutus in this scenario? I guess we will find out in the upcoming weeks.
Norm Outsmarts Bud
In Vault 33, Betty is seen conversing with an engineer regarding their dwindling water supplies. That’s interrupted by Reg as he wants to know about Norm. Betty tells Reg that Norm has gone to Vault 31 as a part of their Leadership Exchange Program. That upsets Reg because he thinks that everyone is getting a promotion but him. Betty knows that Reg is kind of useless, so, instead of letting him handle some kind of delicate equipment (although that’s probably something that Reg wants to do), she suggests that he start some kind of emotional support group to help people who are still processing the altercation with the raiders and parting ways with those who have shifted from Vault 33 to Vault 32. Surprisingly enough, Reg accepts that suggestion and forms his therapy club, which goes off the rails almost immediately, because his pupils expect him to change the rules of the vault and allow inbreeding. Speaking of Vault 32, Davey is seen complaining to Stephanie about the geography of the place and then advising her to commence a study on issuing proper public display signs for those who are finding it difficult to orient themselves to Vault 32. We don’t see Stephanie signing off on Davey’s request, but based on Davey’s reaction, maybe she has. Once Davey leaves the office, Chet enters with Stephanie’s son, asking for a job. Chet isn’t Stephanie’s husband or the father of her baby. He was the gatekeeper in Vault 33, and he wants his job back. Stephanie seemingly doesn’t care about all that, and she wants him to keep looking after her baby (who has been nicknamed Chet Jr. by the people of the vault) for as long as possible.
Before sending Chet off on his stepfatherly duties, Stephanie asks him if he has any idea how to work the computers, because her knowledge about the tech in the vault is rudimentary. Chet says that that’s Norm’s department, so she needs to get in touch with him for any advice. That’s easier said than done, because Inter-Vault comms have been disabled by Norm from Vault 31 so as to prevent Bud Askins from communicating with anyone. Now, since Vault 31 has no available resources—because other than the brain on a Roomba, everyone else is in a cryo pod—Norm is on the brink of dying of starvation. Bud advises Norm to get into Hank’s cryo pod and wait there until Reclamation Day arrives, which is when the people of the vault will be allowed to recolonize Earth. Norm is already being imprisoned by Bud, and he doesn’t want to get into a situation where he’ll lose autonomy of his bodily activities completely. Since Bud doesn’t need sustenance, he says that he’ll wait until Norm either dies of starvation and dehydration or becomes desperate enough to be more amenable to his suggestions. Norm realizes that other than climbing into the cryo pod for survival or dying of starvation, there’s a third option: forcing Bud’s hand by taking everyone in Vault 31 out of their cryo pods. Bud can allow Norm to die, but since it’s his duty to protect all the denizens of Vault 31 until Reclamation Day, Bud will have no option but to open the doors to Vaults 33 or 32 so that they can have access to food and water. Once Bud does that, Norm can reunite with Betty, Chet, or Stephanie and tell them how they were never meant to recolonize Earth. Whether or not Norm’s gamble will actually pay off is something that remains to be seen.
Cooper and Lucy are searching for Hank
We are reunited with Cooper and Lucy as they tackle a group called the Khans. Why did they run into this biker gang? Well, because Cooper and Lucy were starving. So, they formed a plan where Lucy would turn Cooper over to the Khans, get the bounty on his head, then free him from the clutches of the Khans, kill the Khans, escape from the gang’s lair, and use that prize money to get some food and other resources. Given how that involves way too much violence, Lucy requests Nick the Prick, the leader of the Khans, to just release Cooper from his constraints and let them pass with the bounty, thereby avoiding any kind of bloodshed. Of course, Nick doesn’t like that proposition, and tells the gang to kill both Lucy, Cooper, and their dog. Hence, Lucy has no option but to free Cooper, which allows him to go on an insane rampage and wipe out the Khans. With all that out of the way, the trio resumes the task of finding Hank as well as Cooper’s family. They come across Las Vegas, and Lucy wonders that if the city was able to protect itself from the bombs that caused the nuclear apocalypse, why wasn’t that tech available to the rest of America?
Cooper insinuates that everything that happened was a part of House’s script. Therefore, Lucy posits the theory that if House was able to mark himself safe from the apocalypse, and if Cooper’s family was with him when the bombs dropped, maybe they are alive and well. Cooper responds to that assumption by saying that House and “safety” aren’t synonymous with each other. Lucy changes the topic slightly and asks Cooper why Hank would go to Las Vegas. Cooper doesn’t give any straight answers, and simply resumes the journey to Sin City. They come across a little shop where a woman is serving only flea soup (yes, literally), and Lucy asks if she has seen Hank pass by. The shopkeeper says that Hank killed her son and robbed her. Then she points Lucy and Cooper in the direction where he’s headed. While heading there, Cooper asks Lucy what she’s going to do once they do find Hank. Cooper obviously wants to kill Hank, but Lucy wants to “bring him to justice” because she’s truly one of the nicest people in this post-apocalyptic hellscape, and her soul hasn’t yet been eroded by the horrors that walk this planet. Cooper tries to bring down her sense of optimism by a few notches but fails, because Lucy truly believes that her definition of goodness and hope can repair the world.
Cooper and Lucy Find Vault 24
The trio arrives at the Starlight Drive-In Theater, which turns out to be the entry point to Vault 24. Lucy spots the footprints of the power armor that Hank used to escape from Moldaver’s hideout, which confirms that he is probably in the vault. That said, after entering the vault, Cooper observes that he is not in there anymore, and must have left right before their arrival. Which begs the question of why Hank had come there at all if he didn’t intend to stay. Upon further inspection of the basement, Lucy and Cooper come across a bunch of people who died whilst being hooked up to all kinds of devices and being experimented upon with that mind-control device that the stranger was testing on the streets. Lucy naively assumes that Vault 24 was turning Americans into Communists, because that’s what they’ve been taught to think, but based on the propaganda-ish documentary playing in there, it seems like the people in charge were manufacturing a conflict so as to justify the nuking. As in, they were puppeteering ordinary people to act like anarchists so that the government could claim that it was the Communists who destroyed the world, not the government and private American corporations. Maybe we’ll learn about that later, because when Lucy tries to access the information in the computers in the basement of Vault 24, she sees that the drives have been removed by Hank. That said, it seems like, before flying the coop, Hank has ensured that Lucy will get the message, via a mind-controlled puppet, to abandon her mission to find him, return to Vault 33, and leave it up to him to “fix everything.”
Before Lucy can ask any more questions, the puppet explodes. Cooper picks up the transmitter and asks Lucy if she has ever seen her father use something like it before. Lucy admits that she hasn’t. Cooper inquires if Hank’s message has gotten to Lucy and if she intends to do what Hank wants her to. Lucy states that she has no intention of heeding her father’s advice, because a veil has lifted off her eyes and she knows that Hank isn’t a hero. She is aware of the fact that Hank won’t stop hurting people, and hence she needs to put an end to him before he does something catastrophic. Speaking of Hank, in the ending of Fallout Season 2, Episode 1, we are reunited with him as he supposedly reaches the Vault-Tec headquarters in Las Vegas. After making sure that all the services in the building are still functional, Hank sheds his power armor, gets into a proper suit, goes to the global communications room, and sends a message to House, I think. He says that nobody from Vault-Tec knows where he is and that the people of Vault-Tec are pretty ignorant about the company’s true plans as well. He intends to continue the work that House had started, which is perfecting the brain-computer interface, which is the actual name for the mind-controlling device. Apparently, House and his team made great strides in terms of making the device so small that it can be injected into a person’s body, thereby making it invisible to the naked eye. The issue is the mind-controlling part, which is still inconsistent and usually ends with the subject exploding into a million pieces. Hank is confident that he can fix that issue, and he is sure that that will compel House to promote him and let him play a more direct role in the company’s recolonization plan.
The Brain-Computer Interface’s Nefarious Purpose
Okay, now, I think I should address two things here. Firstly, who is the real Robert House? And secondly, what’s the brain-computer interface for? Based on my cursory knowledge about Fallout, House is a very prominent character, but the producers and showrunners weren’t able to get someone as recognizable as Ella Purnell, Walton Goggins, or Kyle MacLachlan for the role. Rafi Silver was good enough, so they got him to play House for Season 1. Once they secured Theroux, they expanded his role for Season 2. However, instead of just ignoring the fact that the face of a character has changed, the show is treating Silver’s House as the double and Theroux’s House as the original. Silver’s House deals with the official negotiations, while Theroux’s House conducts the wacky experiments. Given how everyone assumes Silver’s House is the actual House, if anyone tries to go for the kill, they’ll go for him and not Theroux’s House. Going by the mid-credits scene, Cooper did manage to see through this charade, and yet, he didn’t do anything about it, which allowed House to keep working on his brain-computer interface. That brings us to the probable purpose of this device.
People like House and Hank are fascists, and one of the only ways fascists know how to rule over people is through fear. When Reclamation Day arrives, Vault-Tec and RobCo will need a boogeyman to inject fear into the hearts of the people so that they always rely on their capitalist overlords to save them and stay subservient. Said bogeymen can be created by injecting that transmitter into the heads of random people and making them do “un-American” things. When people see random individuals acting like “Communists,” they’ll stop trusting each other and only believe in Vault-Tec and RobCo; hence, allowing these fascists to create a utopia where true freedom is a distant dream. However, there’s a massive chasm between perfecting that brain-computer interface and actually putting it in the bodies of the vault dwellers. Therefore, technically, Hank not only has to make the transmitter non-explosive, but he also has to find a way to inject the transmitter into random vault dwellers before they go out to “reclaim the planet.” That’s just my theory, though, and we’ll get the actual answer in the upcoming episodes. Based on that mid-credits teaser, we’ll also see what Maximus has been up to, learn about an impending civil war, meet more Ghouls, follow Norm as he leads the denizens of Vault 31 out into the open world, and finally encounter some monsters. I am excited for this season of the show. What about you? Let me know in the comments section below.
