In episode 7 of Fallout Season 2, we learned that Steph was a refugee from Canada who had manipulated and murdered her way into Hank’s good books and got herself a spot in the Vaults. But when she began to get a bit too tyrannical as Vault 32’s Overseer, her “husband,” Chet, did a little digging and exposed her secret to the denizens of the Vault. That caused an uprising, thereby prompting Steph to seek shelter in her office while everyone else protested outside her door. Hank gave Lucy a brief tour of the facility that he was working out of and showed her how he was making these mind-controlled slaves with the help of the latest version of the brain-computer interface. Hank presented that as a good thing, but Lucy was obviously not okay with it. Hence, she imprisoned Hank and went for the mainframe of the network that controlled all the brainwashed individuals and found the decapitated, but still sentient, head of Congresswoman Diane. Norm tried to get in touch with his dad and sister, but he was captured by the Vault 31ers, supposedly with the intention of killing him because he had ruined Reclamation Day for them and killed Bud. In Freeside, Maximus donned NCR power armor and took on the Deathclaws so that Cooper could get into the Lucky 38, deliver the cold fusion diode to House (the computer program version of him), and discover the location of the facility where Barb and Janey were being kept. During a flashback sequence, we saw Cooper, on Diane’s suggestion, handing over the cold fusion diode to the President of the USA, in the hopes that he’d use it to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. What happened next? Let’s talk about the finale to find out.
Spoiler Alert
The Radroaches Save Norm
Ronnie orders the Vault 31ers to take Norm to a place where he can be slaughtered. He even insinuates that once they are done with Norm, they are going to kill Claudia too, because she chose to side with him instead of her own people. When Claudia tries to rescue Norm, Ronnie shoves her pretty violently, and, coincidentally enough, her head hits the buttons to the lift. The doors to the elevator open to reveal the empty shaft, because the car is stuck somewhere. The Vault 31er who goes to check it out assumes that they are safe because the radroaches aren’t big enough to fly up to the top half of the building. But before she can finish that sentence, the radroaches flood the floor that the Vault 31ers are on and maul almost everyone to death. The Vaulties try to seek shelter in a room, and Ronnie doesn’t allow Norm to go in there with them because he hopes that the radroaches will kill Norm and leave the rest.
At the end of this tussle, all the Vault 31ers find themselves trapped in a room with all the radroaches, while Norm survives the onslaught by hiding under a table. I mean, that’s a pretty fitting end to the people of Vault 31. We don’t really get to learn what Ronnie’s whole plan was, what Bud wanted them to do, whether or not they were tasked with spreading the FEV, and why they got so violent with Norm. I mean, sure, Norm had committed murder and lied to them. However, why didn’t Ronnie at least try to get Norm to side with the Vault 31ers through dialogue? I don’t know if Norm would have seen eye-to-eye with Ronnie and the other Vaulties, but maybe it wouldn’t have led to that bloody outcome. Anyway, once the radroaches have gorged on human flesh and gone back to their nest to sleep, Norm goes through the room full of dead bodies and finds out that Claudia is still alive. So, he puts her on a cart and heads out to the Wasteland, probably to look for his family or answers about the FEV that he saw in that Vault-Tec computer.
The NCR Saves Maximus
Since the flimsy wall between the Strip and Freeside has been destroyed, and the Deathclaws have started to step into the township, Thaddeus orders everyone to get indoors while Maximus goes for Round 2 of his fight with those creatures. Maximus does a decent-enough job of holding his ground, but as soon as he begins to falter, the Freesiders open up a dead pool to see who can correctly predict Maximus’ death. Thaddeus finds that to be incredibly distasteful, which is why he bets in Maximus’ favor, since he is rooting for his one and only friend in the Wasteland. However, just rooting for him won’t cut it, because Maximus is fighting using very old power armor, and those Deathclaws are not just insanely strong, they’ve got the numbers advantage. Hence, Thaddeus rushes to the roof of one of the buildings, uses his foot as a monopod, and shoots down one of the Deathclaws. That gives Maximus some momentary respite, but without two functioning hands, Thaddeus is unable to reload his rifle, thereby forcing Maximus to fend for himself again. Eventually, the power armor runs out of juice, and Maximus has no choice but to exit the contraption and take on the Deathclaws, armed with nothing but a pool cue and a roulette wheel.
Almost like the scene in Spider-Man 2, where Spidey’s mask came off after the train fight with Doc Ock and everyone realized that the dude who was trying to save their lives was just a kid, one of the Freesiders notices that the warrior who has been battling all those monsters is just a kid. Inspired by his actions, the Freesider tries to rally all the people to fight for their survival instead of letting Maximus sacrifice himself, but that doesn’t work, because the Freesiders have become too selfish to do anything for anyone. That doesn’t demotivate Maximus, though, because he stands his ground as his whole life flashes before his eyes. As he’s about to embrace death, the NCR, led by Captain Rodriguez, enters Freeside and tells Maximus to rest, because she and her crew are going to kill all the Deathclaws. I assumed that the NCR was done for and Hank had enslaved all of them. I stand corrected, because Hank evidently managed to get his hands on poor Biff alone. Maybe Rodriguez left Biff at the NCR’s dilapidated headquarters to search for the survivors, and that’s when Hank got to him? And when Rodriguez got in touch with her platoon, she followed the trail of Biff’s capture, which brought her and her team to Freeside? I mean, that sounds like a plausible explanation. If not, I guess we’ll know more about it in the next season.
Cooper Reunites With House
In the Lucky 38, House tries to explain to Cooper that he has abandoned his mortal form and become a computer program because, after “saving Vegas,” he had been attacked multiple times. Before House can go into any further detail about his transition, though, Cooper interrupts him to ask what’s going to happen if he destroys the diode. House doesn’t have a factually correct answer, but as per his calculations, the explosion would be so catastrophic that it’d not only delete Earth, but also its neighboring planets. So, technically, Cooper holds Earth and its neighbors hostage and orders House to take him to his family. Since House is a program, and he can’t physically hold Cooper’s hand while taking him to the Vault that’s meant for the management department, he asks Cooper to wear a Pip-Boy so that he can guide him. Cooper has no choice but to oblige House.
En route to the management’s Vault, which is connected to the Lucky 38 by an underground tunnel, House talks about rigging every aspect of New Vegas, including the Vault that they are about to enter, so as to protect the city from nuclear annihilation. But apparently, that’s when House figured out that there’s someone out there who’s one step ahead of him. House says that he had that epiphany when he saw the Deathclaw at the Alaskan Front. Since House states that one of the acolytes of this elusive entity that has confounded him is in that management vault—which is clearly a reference to Hank—it becomes apparent that House sees the Enclave as his greatest adversary, and the biggest reason why the world is in this sorry state. Well, he also blames Cooper for walking into their trap and delivering that cold fusion diode to the members of the Enclave: POTUS and Diane. Anyway, Cooper reaches the Vault-Tec facility, and House tells him that his family is in the cryo chambers in sub-floor seven.
Lucy Kills Diane
Lucy enters the Mainframe, and as soon as she gets close to Diane’s decapitated head, she starts begging Lucy to kill her immediately. It doesn’t take long for Lucy to understand that Diane has been suffering for a very long time, and she isn’t going to stop whining until Lucy does her bidding. Lucy has been through a lot, and she has killed a lot of people, albeit reluctantly. She doesn’t want to keep taking lives in order to “progress the plot,” but since she’s an empath as well, she is unable to power through Diane’s cries and ask her how she became a part of the Mainframe. She chooses to put Diane out of her misery with one strike to her head, which brings all the machines in the room that her head was housed in to a screeching halt. In order to process what she has just done, Lucy ventures into the innermost chambers of the Vault-Tec facility. However, that journey is interrupted by Hank—who has seemingly managed to free himself from those cuffs and locate his daughter—as he wants to talk about the purpose of the brain-computer interface. As per Hank, House is the one who wanted to turn human beings into robotic slaves. Meanwhile, Hank wanted to add a little personality to said robotic humans. Which is why he added Diane’s decapitated head to the network, and that’s what allowed all the robots to have a somewhat pleasing personality. We don’t get to learn how that living, breathing congresswoman became the behavioral unit of the brain-computer interface’s mainframe.
Going by Diane’s last moments, it seems like she was forcefully put into this program. However, if she was instrumental in the destruction of mankind—because she’s the one who got Cooper to hand over the cold fusion diode to the POTUS—it’s possible that she initially volunteered for this job. When years turned into centuries, though, maybe Diane started to regret her decision, but by then it was too late. Going back to the conversation between the father and daughter, Lucy straight-up asks Hank what his endgame is. Hank says that he wants to achieve peace by jamming his miniaturized brain-computer interface devices into people’s necks. If everyone is connected to a hive mind, and their personalities are sanded down to the equivalent of a sentient blob of mass, then there’ll be no conflict. If there’s no conflict, there’ll be no wars. If there are no wars, humanity can progress. Of course, that’ll sound great to fascists and fascism-enablers, but to a sane-minded individual like Lucy, that’s preposterous, and she refuses to let one of Hank’s slaves insert that device into her neck.
Hank Erases His Own Memories
Lucy is no match for Hank’s enslaved Legionnaire, and she is subdued by the hulking guy so as to allow Hank to insert the brain-computer interface device into her neck. Luckily, Cooper finds them, kills the Legionnaire, and shoots Hank in the leg before he can turn his own daughter into one of his slaves. Cooper says that he would have loved to kill Hank right there and then for everything that he has done, but he leaves that decision up to Lucy and heads off to find his family. Lucy puts the brain-computer interface device that was meant for her on her father’s neck and walks him out of the Vault-Tec facility through Lucky 38 while holding on to the remote control. No, she hasn’t turned him into her slave, because she still believes that there’s some goodness left in Hank that’ll prompt him to see the light and be her loving father again. They have a brief chat about the past and the present, everything they have lost, and everything they wish to gain. Hank even brings up Steph, but it seems like Lucy has no idea about her father’s relationship with Steph, which is why she doesn’t question him on that topic. I mean, before Lucy can even put two and two together, Hank brings up the Legion and says that they are going to occupy New Vegas. And the only way to stop them is with the help of the enslaved human-robots. Lucy isn’t interested in a war; she still wants to know the real purpose of the brain-computer interface. Once Hank comes clean, Lucy is going to wipe his memory as punishment for lying to her throughout her life. Hank vaguely talks about the surface being the experiment to serve the people in the Vaults and that his finest R&D products are currently roaming around the Wasteland without drawing any attention to themselves.
Before Lucy can get any more information out of him, Hank activates the brain-computer interface himself and brainwashes himself. Yeah, apparently there were two remotes, the one that Hank flaunted all the time and one backup remote that Hank kept in his pocket for emergencies like this. Lucy thinks that her father has stopped being a “peace-loving” genocidal maniac and become normal again, but she realizes that, other than some basic reactions, Hank isn’t Hank anymore. It could be an act to fool Lucy, with Hank about to become a different kind of monster. For now though, it’s safe to assume that the Hank we’ve known so far is gone. As Lucy processes everything that has happened, she’s reunited with Maximus. They head over to House’s control chamber and prepare for the war against the Legion, led by the newly anointed Caesar, who used to be the Lacerta Legate. Lucy thinks that she could have prevented all of this if she would have let Hank do whatever he wanted to do, but just because that’s a price that Lucy isn’t willing to pay, there’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. Well, Maximus and Lucy have the NCR on their side. The liberated Freesiders are there as well. And then there’s House and his machinations, powered by the Cold Fusion diode, too. Therefore, if all of them can unite against the Legion, those idiots will be erased from existence within a few seconds, which is somewhat similar to one of the multiple endings of Fallout: New Vegas. Is that something that Lucy will be okay with? We’ll see in the next season.
Cooper Heads to Colorado
During a flashback sequence, we see Cooper and Barb celebrating their supposed success at defeating Vault-Tec and RobCo at their own game by handing the cold fusion diode over to POTUS. Barb says that they should move from Los Angeles to Bakersfield, but Cooper suggests going to Colorado. Their conversation is interrupted by Hank and Steph, who have seemingly fallen in love with each other over the course of the last 12 hours, with Hank hoping that Bud will have a job for Steph so that they can be professional as well as romantic partners. Barb assures them that Vault-Tec will certainly be able to accommodate the former housemaid. On that note, the couples part ways, but as Barb and Cooper start making their way to their plane back to LA, they notice all the payphones in the airport eerily ringing at the same time. Cooper picks up to find House on the other end, giving him some vague warnings about what’s about to happen. Cooper understands that the POTUS, who is an Enclave agent, has betrayed him, and he has ordered the arrest of whoever stole the cold fusion diode from Hank. Cooper takes the fall for that theft, and is arrested by the Secret Service so that Barb and Janey can be in Vault-Tec or the Enclave’s good books. In the present day, in Vault 32, as the denizens become more and more enraged, Steph breaks out Hank’s keepsake box, puts on the Pip-Boy, and speaks into it. She addresses herself as Hank MacLean’s wife, thereby fueling that popular online theory that Steph might just be Lucy and Norm’s mother (in a sense), and tells whoever is listening to her to initiate Phase 2.
This is when the episode cuts to the Enclave’s research facility, which is situated in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. A series of audio clips from Steph, Hank, and Norm show that the Enclave has in fact been listening to everything these characters have been talking about. They are tapped into every electronic device out there. As for Phase 2, I think it has something to do with the FEV or the brain-computer interface, which’ll turn the Vaulties into monsters or slaves. Speaking of Colorado, when House opens Barb and Janey’s cryochambers, Cooper notices they are empty and there’s only a postcard from that state in there. Cooper remembers his last conversation with Barb, leaves House’s Pip-Boy on the ground, and heads to Colorado with Dogmeat. So, if the Enclave’s research facility is in Colorado, this could mean that Barb and Janey stayed with that demonic organization to survive the nuclear apocalypse. This kind of contradicts the opening of Season 1 of Fallout, because there we saw Cooper and Janey escaping the blast on horseback. That scene might be a misdirect, and it’s possible that Cooper didn’t reunite with Janey and Barb after he was arrested. If he did, he might’ve known about that research colony. He only knew about the Lucky 38 and had some flaky idea of the management’s Vault. Either way, now Cooper knows that his family is in Colorado, and he feels motivated to trek out there and reunite with his wife and child. Since the Enclave isn’t a very mutant-friendly company, I am scared for Cooper, because it’s possible that they will try to kill him using one of their advanced machines as soon as they spot him. Additionally, we don’t know if Barb and Janey are being protected by the Enclave, or if they are their prisoners, and being experimented upon.
The Post-Credits Scene Reveals The Liberty Prime Alpha
In the ending of Fallout Season 2, episode 8, we are taken to Area 51, where the Brotherhood civil war is still in full swing. Dane walks through the makeshift infirmary and reaches Quintus’ chambers with a blueprint of a device called the Liberty Prime Alpha. Quintus announces that he isn’t the unifier anymore, and he is going to be the destroyer. At first glance, it seems like just another power armor. But, as per the games, the Liberty Prime is actually a giant robot. And by “giant,” I mean as tall as a three or four-story building. It’s basically a jaeger from Pacific Rim. Of course, it was developed by the Americans to fight against the Chinese, but after everything went downhill, it was abandoned and left to rot somewhere in the Pentagon. Then the Capital Wasteland chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel discovered it, but they weren’t exactly able to get it up and running.
Eventually, a certain Dr. Madison Li managed to make it functional during the war against the Enclave. After that, it was supposedly sent to the Commonwealth—FYI, the Commonwealth in the games is a lot different from the one in the show—and used during the war against the Institute. When the Knights of San Fernando, led by Quintus, got their hands on it, they upgraded Liberty Prime to Liberty Prime Alpha. So, we know that this thing is going to be humongous, but we don’t know what it’s capable of yet. It’s possible that Quintus will wield it just to threaten everyone, and he won’t do any actual damage. Or maybe he’s going to go full berserk and wipe out everyone who is willing to go against him. Quintus’ enemy number one is Maximus, though, and it’s possible that once he’s done with the Brotherhood, he’s going to head to New Vegas to kill him. Of course, Dane won’t allow it, and maybe they’ll kill Quintus before he can kill Maximus. If Dane times all of this correctly, Maximus can use the Liberty Prime Alpha against the Legion and tilt the scale in his and his friends’ favor. Anyway, this is just speculation, and we have to wait until Season 3 arrives to know what’s actually going to happen. What are your thoughts on the ending, though? Let me know in the comments section below.
