In 2020, an Amazon Prime TV series based on the post-apocalyptic Fallout games was first revealed. From Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, the creative team behind HBO’s Westworld, not much more was known until 2022, when tidbits of information about casting and filming started to surface. It’s a great time to compile everything we currently know about the show, which is scheduled to launch on streaming services in a few months.
All of the Fallout games have taken place in a post-apocalyptic version of North America, whether they are Interplay’s original CRPGs from the 1990s or Bethesda’s reimagining of the series as first-person RPGs. China and the United States launched nuclear weapons on October 23, 2077, starting a nuclear war that destroyed the planet. For the next 100 years, some of the humans who survived took refuge in Vaults, sizable subterranean shelters, while others established surface-dwelling sects that relied on scavenging for food.
Every game is set in a distinct setting with a different amount of years having passed since the conflict. Fallout 1 took place in Southern California in 2161, and Fallout 2 continued the story in 2241. Fallout 3 took place in Bethesda, in Washington, D.C. in 2277, and the fourth game was in Boston, in 2287. The TV show will seamlessly fit into the series’ opportunity to tell completely different stories within the same set universe.
In November 2023, Todd Howard of Bethesda stated that the television series was considered canonical with the games, which were set in the same universe but in the year 2296.
Prime’s show will open with a main character who has never left the safety of a fallout shelter, mirroring the opening of almost every video game. Lucy (Ella Purnell), the overseer’s daughter, grew up in Vault 33 and had a relatively privileged upbringing. Lucy, however, is forced to leave the shelter for reasons that are still unknown and explore the surface above, which she soon discovers is a terrible place full of enormous radroaches, mutated creatures, and surface dwellers engaged in combat.
According to Nolan, Lucy’s “collision with the hard reality of other people’s experiences and what happened to the people who, frankly, were left behind, left to die” is the show’s main focus, which is this contrast of cultures.
Lucy encounters The Ghoul, a bounty hunter, and Maximus, a member of the Brotherhood of Steel while exploring. He belongs to the zombie-like group from the games, yes, but he has a very sharp mind. The artifact that Nolan declares “has the potential to radically change the power dynamic in this world” is the series’ mcguffin, and all three are pursuing it.
The ensemble is really excellent. Ella Purnell, who excelled in Yellowjackets, plays Lucy, and Kyle MacLachlan from Twin Peaks plays her overseer father. Aaron Moten, who was excellent in The Awful Next, plays Maximus, the Brotherhood soldier who first encounters Lucy. Later, both of them run into Walton Goggins, who plays The Ghoul, a noseless character from Justified and The Shield.
Among the large cast, Moises Arias, Johnny Pemberton, Xelia Mendes-Jones, and Michael Emerson from Lost are also known to be making appearances. Chris Parnell of Saturday Night Live is portraying a Cyclops.
You could assume that Amazon Prime’s show would choose something relentlessly gritty given the seriousness of the setting and maybe considering how extremely straight-faced Westworld is. Nonetheless, Fallout’s creators have made a point of emphasizing the game’s humor.
The tone of the show appears to have been influenced by the same layers of irony that underlie The Vault Boy and the overly positive propaganda surrounding the game vaults. Howard said, “You need to weave in a little bit of a wink.” Additionally, it’s evident from the previews that the show doesn’t mind being goofy.
April 12, 2024, is when the show is currently slated to premiere on Amazon Prime. It’s unclear if Fallout will be available for binge-watching on that day or if Prime will choose to release the game on a weekly (or other) basis. In recent months, streaming networks have been experimenting with various release formats, so it’s hard to predict how they’ll handle a given show.
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