Fallout has been renewed for a second season, with rave reviews from critics and audiences alike in the week since the first season dropped on Prime Video. While based on the iconic game franchise, the Fallout TV Series works to present a totally new Vault and story. Throughout the show, there are plenty of twists, turns, and questions left unanswered that we’re bound to see crop up in the continuation of Lucy, Norm, Coop, and Maximus’ stories when the next season eventually drops. Here are some of the questions we think Fallout season 2 needs to answer.
Before we get into the thick of it, here’s a big ol’ spoiler warning for the contents of the piece below. Anything beyond this is delving deep into spoiler territory for the entirety of the first season of Fallout. We’d recommend watching the whole show on Prime Video, checking out our recaps, then wandering back.
How did Moldaver live so long?
As we learned in Episode 6, Moldaver is another surface-dweller who was alive before the nukes fell – over 200 years before the events of the show. Coop is another survivor from pre-Fallout times, but given he’s a Ghoul, we have a pretty cut-and-dry explanation for why he’s still kicking. There’s, of course, the possibility that Moldaver was another cryogenically frozen survivor, much like the Vault-Tec employees (or Bud’s Buds) in Vault 31, but we don’t know this for sure. Given her strong opposition to Vault-Tec, it seems unlikely based on where we last see her in California in Coop’s flashbacks that she’d have been part of Vault 31’s plans. Did she find herself frozen by another company, extend her life by chemical means, or is she an anomaly of science? Fallout season 2 has some explaining to do, even if she’s no longer alive.
Will Norm get out of Vault 31?
The last we see of Norm in Fallout season one, he’s trapped in Vault 31 after making the discovery that just about all of Vault-Tec’s brass is cryogenically frozen in there. Bud Askins, as a brain in a jar on a roomba, tells him he can’t leave until the remainder of Vault-Tec is up and about and ready to go topside. Given that it’s going to be quite a wait, and the Vault doesn’t exactly have any amenities needed to sustain non-frozen life forms, Norm’s choices are to either starve and die or hop into his dad’s cryo tank until it’s gone time. Will Norm be able to get out of Vault 31 to tell the others what he’s found, or will he simply go missing?
What was the Enclave doing with the dogs?
We saw Dr Wilzig in the Enclave during Fallout Episode 2, where they appeared to be running some sort of experiment or program on dogs. Puppies under a certain birth weight were incinerated, and the place seemed overrun with German Shepherds as far as the eye could see. But what exactly were they doing with the dogs? Was it just a security measure? Were they breeding them for food? As a K-9 unit? Or were they for other more nefarious purposes?
Where is the Enclave?
On that note, where’s the Enclave at? We saw them briefly in that second episode, as well as hearing them mentioned by the Brotherhood in the pilot, but haven’t seen hide nor hair of them otherwise. Where are they operating out of, and will we see more of them in Fallout season two?
What’s Hank hoping to find in New Vegas?
In the final moments of the Fallout season finale, Hank escapes the Observatory in a suit of power armour. We see where he’s headed, and to the surprise of Fallout fans, it’s New Vegas. Based on the fact Robert House, ruler of New Vegas in-game and RobCo founder is seen in the show, it’s possible Hank is trying to reach one of his only remaining allies in a collision of game and show lore. If you missed House’s appearance in the show, he’s a part of the panel alongside Coop’s wife Barb with the various companies working to create the Vaults. If Hank isn’t trying to locate House, what else could be in the city that he’s after?
What will the Brotherhood of Steel do with cold fusion?
We find out in the last episode of Fallout that what makes Wilzig’s head so valuable to so many competing factions is the cold fusion inserted into his neck – a source of infinite energy that Moldaver herself initially worked on, before Vault-Tec bought up her division. While it seems like a victory for the NCR as cold fusion is activated, the Brotherhood of Steel win a decisive victory at the Observatory against the survivors. With cold fusion now in their hands, what will the faction do? What are they capable of doing?
What exactly was the fall of Shady Sands?
Based on the classroom in Vault 4, the ‘fall of Shady Sands’ occurred in 2277. While it seems like this referred to the bomb dropped on the thriving hub that saw Maximus rescued by the Brotherhood of Steel and saw Lucy and Norm taken by their father back to Vault 33, Todd Howard’s recent comments cast doubt on this. In a recent interview, Howard claimed that the ‘fall’ itself was instead a different series of events, with the bomb falling in the 2280s – keeping in with the New Vegas story remaining canon. Whether this is some creative ret-conning by Bethesda or there was actually additional circumstances that lead to the head of the New California Republic meeting its end isn’t clear just yet, but we may just find out in Fallout season two.
What’s going on in Vault 32?
Vault 32 is being re-settled by half the residents of Vault 33 at Overseer Betty’s direction, but is there more than meets the eye to this plan? Given the previous residents of the vault went out trying to escape, with phrases like “death to management” scrawled across the walls in blood, something went majorly amiss in Vault 32, and we still don’t know exactly what that was. Is there a different experiment occurring in 32, and will that continue? Or will 32 remain breeding stock for re-animated Vault-Tec staff? There’s a whole lot of unanswered questions around Lucy and Norm’s vault system still to be answered in Fallout’s second season.
What does Vault-Tec do after Coop discovers their plans?
It stands to reason that Coop’s snooping in the final episode of Fallout will be discovered, given the large earpiece he doesn’t have chance to remove before Hank approaches him in the Episode 8 flashback. We know between the last scene of this flashback and before the bombs drop, Coop and Barb have split up and he’s doing kid’s parties to make ends meet – but we don’t exactly know what Vault-Tec did, or if they even find out what he knows. What happens to Coop between the last flashback and the bombs dropping is still a mystery.
Was Hank involved in Coop becoming a Ghoul?
We see in the final episode of Fallout that Hank was in fact part of Vault-Tec, and met Coop on the fateful day he listened in to his wife Barb’s suggestion that each Vault be an experiment, and that the company itself drop the bombs. As Hank talks to Coop, asking for his autograph, the actor is still listening in on some of the most devastating revelations about the Vaults. We still don’t know exactly what happens to Coop after the bombs drop and he rides away with Janey on horseback, or how exactly he becomes a Ghoul. Could Hank have had a hand in it all?
Where is Janey?
While we don’t know what happened to Coop in the immediate aftermath of the bombs seen at the start of Fallout, we also don’t know what happened to his daughter, Janey. Based on his questions about whether his family is frozen in a Vault, it’s likely Janey ended up with Barb, although whether this is the case and whether that was willingly is another question. If Janey isn’t cryogenically frozen with her mother, where is she? How did she get to the Vaults on time? If she did enter a Vault as the bombs fell, wouldn’t she be long dead by now? We’re likely to see the answers to this in the next season of Fallout given Coop’s now travelling alongside Lucy and CX404.
Are there any other burning questions you think Fallout Season 2 needs to answer? Let us know in the comments.
Image: Prime Video, Kotaku Australia
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