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Fallout TV Show: Release Date, Trailer, & More

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Emily Spindler
Fallout TV Show: Release Date, Trailer, & More

The Fallout TV show by Amazon Prime, based on the post-apocalyptic games of the same name, was originally announced in 2020, and after four long years of waiting for the series, the Vault door is finally open today. Coming from the creative team behind HBO’s Westworld, Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, fans sat through two years of near radio silence before casting and filming information for the show began to trickle through in 2022. With the Fallout TV Show hitting Prime Video today, let’s take a look at everything we know so far.

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Latest Fallout TV show news

Fallout TV Show: Episode Recaps

fallout
Image: Prime Video

We’ve got you covered with episode recaps for the Fallout TV series, just in case you missed any of the action or need a refresher between episodes. You can check out the recaps here when they go live.

Fallout: Review

Our review of the Fallout TV show is live now, with David Smith calling it “better than it has any right to be.” In his review, David said:

“All things considered, I think Fallout came together much better than we could have hoped for. I am no superfan — I’ve grown to dislike Fallout 4 more and more as the years have worn on. After reviewing it at launch, you’ll never catch me playing Fallout 76 again as long as I live. But I see what the show is trying to do, and I applaud the effort. It’s trying to replicate the vibe of a franchise that, whether at Interplay or Bethesda, has always captured the imagination. That it’s an honest success is all the more surprising.”

When and were is the Fallout TV show set?

Fallout Tv Show
Image: Prime Video

The Fallout games, whether Interplay’s original CRPGs from the 1990s or Bethesda’s reinvention of the series as first-person RPGs, have all been set in a post-apocalyptic North America. In this (hopefully) alternate future, China and the U.S launched nuclear weapons on October 23, 2077, leading to a nuclear fallout that all but destroyed the world. Some surviving humans retreated to Vaults, large underground shelters, for the next 100 years, while others formed sects on the surface, scavenging to survive.

Each Fallout game takes place in a particular part of America, a varying number of years since the war. Fallout 1 was set in Southern California in 2161, while its sequel picked up the plot in 2241. Bethesda’s Fallout 3 took place in 2277’s Washington D.C., and the fourth game in Boston, 2287. It affords the Fallout TV series the chance to tell entirely different stories within the same fixed universe, and the TV show is going to slot right in with that.

Bethesda’s Todd Howard told Vanity Fair in November 2023 that the show was canonical with the games, set in the same universe, this time taking place in 2296.

What is Fallout TV show about?

Matching the opening of pretty much every game, Prime’s Fallout TV series will begin with a main character who has never left the confines of a fallout shelter. Lucy (Ella Purnell) has grown up in Vault 33, the daughter of the shelter’s overseer, having lived a life of relative privilege. However, Lucy must leave the shelter and explore the surface above—a place she quickly learns is hellish, populated by vast radroaches, mutated creatures, and the warring surface dwellers. Based on the Prime Video description included in the trailer, the world of the series is “an incredibly complex, gleefully weird and highly violent universe.”

Nolan has described Fallout as being focused on this contrast of cultures, 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.” As she explores, Lucy meets Maximus, a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, along with a bounty hunter called The Ghoul. And yes, he’s a member of the zombie-like group from the games, but one with a keenly working mind. All three are chasing the series’ Mcguffin, an artifact that—according to Nolan—”has the potential to radically change the power dynamic in this world.”

Which actors feature in the Fallout cast?

Fallout Tv Show
Image: Prime Video

The Fallout TV series cast lineup is pretty stacked, with a number of familiar faces set to grace the small screen on release. Lucy is played by thriller drama series Yellowjackets‘ Ella Purnell, while her overseer father is Twin Peaks’ Kyle MacLachlan. Aaron Moten, who was brilliant in the dreadful Next, plays Maximus—the Brotherhood soldier who meets Lucy on the surface, who both then encounter The Ghoul, played by Justified and The Shield’s Walton Goggins.

Other actors set to appear in the series include Moises Arias (who has featured in plenty of shows and movies but perhaps most notably in Hannah Montana), Johnny Pemberton, Xelia Mendes-Jones and Lost’s Michael Emerson, among a vast cast. Oh, and SNL’s Chris Parnell is playing a cyclops.

What’s the tone of the Fallout TV show?

Given the severity of the setting, and perhaps thinking about the extremely straight-faced nature of Westworld, you could assume Amazon Prime’s show would opt for something unrelentingly gritty. However, the creators have been keen to stress that there’s a lot of humour in the Fallout TV series.

The same layers of irony that lie behind The Vault Boy and the inappropriately positive propaganda of the games’ vaults seems to have informed the tone of the program, with Howard telling Vanity Fair, “you need to weave in a little bit of a wink.” It’s also clear from the clips we’ve seen so far that the show isn’t afraid to be silly.

Fallout TV Show trailer

There’s multiple Fallout TV series trailers out in the wild now, with the first containing a bamboozling volley of moments from the show. A second trailer dropped in early March, showing more of the world we’ll get to see in the show. You can check them both out here:

Fallout TV Series release date and streaming platforms

The show releases on Amazon Prime on 11 April in Australia, after the release date was brought forward by a day. All eight episodes of the Fallout TV series are available immediately, as opposed to a weekly release schedule as they’ve done in the past for other large releases. You can strap in and binge-watch right from the get go, if you’re keen.

Image: Prime Video

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