In an extended flashback sequence in Fallout Season 2, episode 5, we saw Cooper going to Las Vegas with Barb in order to take a swing at House. The fake House took Cooper to the real House and, instead of killing him immediately, Cooper began listening to House’s spiel about using math to determine destiny, how his and Cooper’s fates were intertwined, and the fact that Janey’s birth was somehow linked to this whole world-ending operation. Unable to process all that, Cooper walked out of House’s chambers, got insanely drunk, and then told Barb that they needed to have a conversation about everything that she, Vault-Tec, and RobCo were doing. In the present day, Ronnie eavesdropped on a conversation between Norm and Claudia, and after learning that he was a fraud who was only pretending to be Bud’s successor, Ronnie attacked Norm and knocked him out. Meanwhile, Hank had perfected his brain-computer interface and sent the Snake Oil Salesman to Cooper to broker a deal with him where Cooper would aid in the capture of Lucy, and in exchange, he’d get to see his wife and child. As soon as Cooper accepted the offer, Lucy sent him hurtling through the window of the motel in Freeside they were staying at, causing Cooper to get impaled on a pole in the street. While he struggled to get out of that bind, Hank arrived in person to reunite with his daughter. What happened next? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Lucy Reunites With Hank
Lucy wakes up in the Vault-Tec facility that Hank is working out of. She encounters a couple of Legion soldiers as well as an office full of workers, and their amicable nature proves that the brain-computer interface is working smoothly. Lucy proceeds to the room that serves as Hank’s home, at least for the time being, and Hank welcomes her warmly. He tries to initiate a conversation about how most wars are futile and, if given the choice, humans will always resort to violence to achieve whatever definition of peace they have in their mind. That monologue is interrupted by Lucy, who holds a pair of scissors to Hank’s neck and orders him to come away with her to Vault 33 so he can be tried for all the crimes that he has committed so far. Hank surprises Lucy by pulling out a pair of handcuffs, putting them on his own hands, and surrendering himself to Lucy. Speaking of Vault 33, the feud between Reg and Betty over the water crisis and the dissolving of the Inbreeding Support Group seems to be reaching its breaking point, and it’s only a matter of time before the people who still side with Betty and those who are loyal to Reg engage in some kind of a civil war. As for Vault 32, Chet learns that he is about to get married to Steph from a poster on the notice board, not from Steph herself. So, yeah, although Lucy thinks that things back at the Vaults are normal enough for Hank to be held accountable for his crimes, it’s evident that that’s not the case at all. But since Lucy doesn’t know that yet, she continues her mission of removing Hank from that facility and beginning their journey to Vault 33. Hank’s slaves (I think that’s what we should call them) quietly protest Lucy’s actions, but Hank calms them down.
Lucy wonders how Hank got his hands on so many people. He doesn’t give her a detailed explanation, but it’s evident that after capturing the Snake Oil Salesman, he employed him to capture someone else and fitted them with the brain-computer interface. Then those two captured some more people, and then they joined Hank’s army, and so on and so forth. Lucy finds this to be disturbing, and she tells Hank’s slaves that once their “master” has left, they are free to go. The slaves don’t want to leave though, now that they have tasted this hygienic and non-violent way of living. Hank, in order to show his support for Lucy’s ideals, tells his slaves that they are free to do whatever they want: if they want to stay, they can stay; if they want to leave, they can leave. Coincidentally, that’s when the Snake Oil Salesman and another one of Hank’s slaves brings in a member of the NCR (Lucy recognizes him as Biff, which means whatever was left of NCR is gone) and a member of the Legion. Since things are changing at the facility, they want to know what should be done to these two guys. Hank suggests that they push the button to activate their brain-computer interface, but Lucy opposes that, thereby prompting the Snake Oil Salesman and his colleague to set Biff and the Legion dude free. But since the Legion member is freed from his shackles before Biff, he begins assaulting the old timer. Lucy tries to put a stop to this commotion, but eventually, she has to heed her father’s advice, push the button, and turn Biff and the guy from the Legion into his slaves. It’s pretty obvious that Hank put on this whole show to prove to Lucy that turning people into slaves is the best way to maintain peace in the world. Of course, Lucy doesn’t agree with this at all, and she shouldn’t as well, because the world entered this apocalyptic phase due to the greed of the capitalists, not because ordinary people disagreed with each other. Therefore, no matter what Hank says, Lucy is right for opposing the act of hacking into the minds of ordinary people and puppeteering them.
Maximus And Thaddeus Meet Cooper
Cooper, in the present day, is still stuck on that pole, and his only hope is Dogmeat figuring out that his master needs his inhaler and the vials in order to keep from turning into a full-fledged ghoul. As his body is trying and failing to heal the wound in his belly, his transformation is getting accelerated, and if he doesn’t take his meds, he’ll lose his mind. Dogmeat is, well, a dog. So, of course, she doesn’t understand Cooper’s instructions, takes his hat, and runs away. Elsewhere in the Wasteland, Thaddeus’ power armor dies, forcing him and Maximus to make a pit stop somewhere far away from Area 51. Thaddeus notices Maximus admiring the Cold Fusion tech over which they started a civil war amongst the various chapters of the Brotherhood of Steel, and he asks Maximus if he intends to sell it to someone and get rich. Maximus doesn’t want to sell, because he knows that anyone looking to buy it will be an evil person who’ll use it to power their nefarious plans. After taking shelter at a nearby township, Maximus says that he intends to give the Cold Fusion tech to Lucy, because he thinks she’s a nice person. Echoing the message of Parasite, Thaddeus says that the only reason Lucy seems nice is because she has lived in a Vault instead of growing up in the Wasteland. If everyone could have enjoyed the same privileges as Lucy and the other Vault dwellers did, they would all have been nice people. So, in Thaddeus’ opinion, instead of giving the Cold Fusion tech to some who come from an affluent background, they should sell the relic, get rich, and become “nice people” as well. Going back to the skewered Cooper, he tries to get off the pole but fails and loses his consciousness. That’s when a giant-looking guy, whose character design is reminiscent of the Creature from Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, arrives at the scene, snaps the pole in half, and then pulls out Cooper.
After that, the massive guy puts Cooper on a stretcher and drags him to the church where he resides. He strings up Cooper on some kind of a net and then thrusts a chunk of uranium into his belly so as to speed up his healing. As this technique begins yielding positive results, this mutant dude starts talking about his agenda. He wants ghouls like Cooper and super mutants like himself to join hands against the humans who have made them this way, the Enclave. As per the lore of the games, the ghouls were the result of radiation and the super mutants came to be because of the FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus), and the Enclave discriminated against anyone that didn’t belong to that faction, to the point that they were ready to commit genocide. So, yeah, the mutant’s stance makes sense. Even though this super mutant is being played by the one and only Ron Perlman (who has worked with del Toro quite a few times and served as the narrator of the games, by the way), I am not sure he is the Master, who is considered to be one of the primary antagonists of this franchise. Cooper doesn’t care to find out more about the super mutant’s origins and opinions, because he wants to travel the Wasteland and find his family on his own instead of fraternizing with the super mutant. The super mutant says that if that’s the case, he can’t let Cooper know where all the anti-Enclave rebels live, and he knocks out Cooper with a blow to his head and dumps in a garage. In the meantime, Dogmeat finds Thaddeus and Maximus and takes them to Cooper, whose injuries have more or less healed. Maybe the three of them, four if you count Dogmeat, will join hands to infiltrate the facility where Lucy and Hank are. I mean, Cooper didn’t get what he was promised for giving up Lucy, and Maximus is in love with Lucy. So, their team-up is highly likely. On top of that, Maximus has the Cold Fusion tech that he can use as a bargaining chip to get whatever he wants.
Hank Carried the Cold Fusion Tech in His Neck
In a flashback sequence, Barb can be seen listening to several project managers explain how America is going to be nuked, how the event should be marketed, and how they can exploit their premium customers for more money in exchange for safe passage to the Vaults. Once that’s over, Barb sits down for a conversation with House (the fake one), while Hank sits behind her to take the minutes of the meeting between the Vault-Tec and RobCo representatives. In the previous episode, the real House told Cooper that he was going to obtain the Cold Fusion tech, which he’d use to make himself immortal and protect Las Vegas from the nuclear apocalypse. Cooper and Moldaver assumed that House was giving Vault-Tec the bombs that were about to be dropped on D-Day in exchange for that tech. But that wasn’t the case at all. Yes, House was selling Vault-Tec a weapon to get his hands on the Cold Fusion tech, but, as revealed in today’s episode, that weapon was the brain-computer interface, not a bomb. Barb was under the impression that House was giving them that device to get access to not one, but multiple Vaults, but House made it clear that he had no interest in those Vaults; he just wanted the Cold Fusion tech to power his experiments in Las Vegas. Barb tried to find out what these experiments were, and House shut her down immediately; he did assure her that she would find out about it once the bombs dropped. After House leaves, Barb tells a young Betty to give her all the info about how the Cold Fusion tech is stored and all the people who have access to it. When Barb gets into the elevator, she runs into Siggi Wilzig. Yes, that’s the same Enclave guy who injected the Cold Fusion relic into his neck and then asked Lucy to sever his head and deliver it to Moldaver so that she could have that technology. He tells Barb to not do anything that’ll jeopardize this mission to bring about the end of the world. He even gives her the script that she needs to stick with, and then the plan to nuke the country is discussed. He admits that he isn’t the architect of this whole project, but just a very replaceable cog in the wheel.
The flashback sequence moves forward in time, probably a few days or weeks, and takes us to the conversation between Cooper and Barb, in Las Vegas, about the nukes she’s about to drop. A few minutes later, we see them in the middle of their argument, where Barb is defending her actions by saying that it’s all for Janey. Meanwhile, Cooper is saying that she has no right to kill billions of people to save one life. Barb asks Cooper what he would have done if he were in Barb’s position. When Cooper goes silent, Barb claims that there are people out there who are worse than her. Cooper says that nobody can be worse than Barb. It’s hard to decipher how the act of nuking the country is “for Janey.” The initial idea behind the nuking was to create a level playing field for all the capitalists who are funding this project so that, on Reclamation Day, they can rebuild the world as they see fit, instead of letting people-friendly policies set the rules. But I suppose it’s also about sacrificing the country to make it seem like an act of foreign aggression, thereby allowing the USA to attack every other nuclear superpower and emerge as the only country with nukes as well as the ability to weather a nuclear apocalypse. I mean, that’s what happened in shows like Silo and Paradise, so that might be the case here as well. Anyway, Barb tells Cooper to stop worrying about this whole affair, but Cooper doesn’t listen to her and walks out of their hotel room. He goes to the bar in Lucky 38 and spots Hank. He brings Hank to his room, and as soon as he loses consciousness after drinking the spiked liquor that Cooper had given him, Cooper hurriedly checks the contents of the briefcase chained to Hank’s arm. He finds a massive syringe in it, which confuses the hell out of him. He tries to wake up Hank and ask what it’s for, but he’s nonresponsive. Then, in the ending of Fallout Season 2 episode 6, Barb shows up and uses that syringe to pull out the Cold Fusion tech from Hank’s neck. So, yeah, before Wilzig put that thing in his neck, apparently Hank was its carrier, and he was clearly there to deliver it to House. Given how we see that Las Vegas has fallen, I am guessing House never got it. Maybe Barb and Cooper betrayed House and gave it to Wilzig, who kept it hidden until Moldaver started the revolution, and that’s when he decided to hand it over to her via Lucy. Which begs the question: Is House dead or alive? If he’s dead, who is Hank talking to? Why’s he continuing his mission? Did House actually recruit Hank after Barb and Cooper had left Lucky 38 and convince him that the future of mankind relied on perfecting the brain-computer interface? I suppose we’ll get the answers to these questions in the upcoming episodes. In the meantime, feel free to share your theories on this topic in the comments section below.
