The Complete Fallout Timeline, Explained (2024)

But despite all these nifty bits of tech, the threat of nuclear war still looms large over the world of Fallout. And by April 2052, things have gotten so dire on the global scene that a new war takes hold of the world: the Resource War. With fossil fuels running on empty, the superpowers of the world start to fight over the limited reserves that they have left. Europe declares war on the Middle East in a bid to lay claim to the region's bountiful supply, while in the Western hemisphere, the US invades Mexico, annexes Canada, and has to defend its Alaskan territory from the armies of China.

This resource war naturally sets off the spark that leads to the nukes dropping, but I’m getting ever so slightly ahead of myself.

You see, before we get to the fateful day of nuclear devastation, we have to talk about Fallout’s iconic Vaults. The year is now 2054, and international tensions are sky-high. Reading the room, the US government--and a secretive organization known as the Enclave--commissions Vault Tec and RobCo to start work on a little something known as Project Safe House. This involves building 122 public vaults across America, with each Vault capable of housing 1000 US citizens from a potential nuclear cataclysm.

That's the official story anyway. The reality is far more bizarre, as each vault was the basis for a completely different social experiment. Many of these vaults opened in the years preceding the Great War of 2077--most notably Vault 76, which opens on the 300th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Across the nation, local citizens are picked as the lucky--or unlucky, depending on the vault in question--future population.

All of this eventually leads us toward the fateful date of October 23, 2077, the day when the bombs fell.

With the resource war reaching a fever pitch, the superpowers of the world started launching nukes at each other, and in the space of two short hours, pretty much destroyed the world. Naturally, the vast majority of the planet's population straight-up died. But the aftermath of the fallout brought about just as much devastation, as a never-ending storm of black rain lashed the nuclear wastelands and poisoned the world with high levels of radiation, which in turn killed scores of old species, and created a few new ones to replace them.

Before you’ve even got time to finish your morning coffee, a Vault-Tec representative turns up at your door and asks you, the player-character AKA the Sole Survivor, a few personal questions about your future. Good thing too as a few short minutes later, the first nukes start to fall on the US, and you, your spouse, and your infant son, Shaun, are whisked off to Vault 111.

And just in the knick of time as well, as a nuclear blast eviscerates the horizon as you descend into the underground vault. The Sole Survivor and his family don the iconic blue and yellow vault suits and settle in for a long, peaceful sleep in a cryogenic chamber. We'll catch up on their slumber in a good 200-odd years, but in the meantime, we're heading west to LA for even more nuclear devastation.

Happening concurrently to the blasts back in Boston is the total nuclear obliteration of Los Angeles, as seen in the prologue of the Fallout TV show.

Here we catch up with Cooper Howard, who's fallen from the heights of his Hollywood career to become a glorified children's entertainer. He's performing at a birthday party at a swanky LA villa overlooking the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles. Said skyscrapers are not long for this world though, as the horizon is inevitably lit up by the harrowing sight of mushroom clouds. With the sky falling down on the city of Angels, Coop scoops his young daughter up onto his horse in an ill-fated attempt to escape the nuclear devastation.

The first vault to open--that we know about at least--is Vault 76, which opened 25 years after the Great War on Reclamation Day, 2102.

Situated in the Appalachians of West Virginia, Vault 76 is home to the best and brightest minds that the USA has to offer. Tasked with repopulating the Wastelands of West Virginia, the clever little citizens of Vault 76 head on out into, well, a bit of a lifeless, lonely world. At least that was the case when the multiplayer game originally launched. You see, non-player characters--or NPCs--didn't start populating the game until the Wastelanders DLC launched.

The player-character is given a secret mission by the Vault Overseer: a mission to secure a metric ton of nuclear weaponry. Only there's a bit of a problem in the Appalachians. In the 25 or so years since the nuclear devastation, a plague of beasts known as the Scorched has taken control of the lands.

Mind-controlled by some giant Queen Bee-like Scorch beast, the Scorched presents quite the obstacle to re-populating the wastelands. And so the bulk of Fallout 76's narrative sees the player-character tracking down a way to destroy the Scorched, and the answer, as we all know, is to nuke them.

There be treasure in them hills, or so the rumors go in the first DLC expansion for Fallout 76, called Wastelanders.

With the threat of the Scorched extinguished, people started to return to the area in dribs and drabs. Two major factions begin to emerge out of the rabble: the Settlers, and the Raiders. Rumors of a vast treasure lead the player-character to discover the existence of Vault 79, which basically houses the entire gold reserves of the US in one tiny living space.

The player chooses their allegiance to either the Settlers or the Raiders and heads off to raid Vault 79. And depending on your decision-making you can choose to spread the wealth in any number of ways, most of which will just break the delicate balance of power in the area between the two factions.

As an ever-expanding multiplayer game, the story is constantly evolving in Fallout 76. But there are a few key beats still to mention. The first is the introduction of a Fallout franchise staple: the Brotherhood of Steel. This highly militaristic faction is a post-war creation, built up out of the remnants of the U.S. army with the core goal of securing and preserving technologically advanced pre-war weaponry and kit.

They're often seen sporting the great big hulking tank-like Power Armor. They set up their base of operations in West Virginia in the old Atlas Observatory, which they re-christen Fort Atlas, as that has presumably got more of an army vibe to it. As the player-character, you can ally yourself with the Brotherhood in a bid to help keep the wastelanders of the Appalachians safe or help the Brotherhood of Steel double down on their mission to secure pre-war weaponry. And lastly, for Fallout 76 are the expeditions, which take the player-character away from West Virginia to visit the ruins of Pittsburgh--affectionately known as The Pitt--and Atlantic City.

From the wastelands of West Virginia, we travel west to the remnants of California in the year 2161 for the events of the very first Fallout game.

Here we witness the story of the Vault Dweller, a citizen of the ill-fated Vault 13, which has got a problem, a big one. An all-important microchip that controls their water processing unit has given up the ghost, and it's the Vault Dweller's job to venture out into the Wasteland to locate a new one.

This mission takes him to the ruins of the nearby Vault 15, and then onwards to Vault 12, which is located underneath a city known as Necropolis, which is populated by Ghouls--humans who've become hideously deformed by nuclear radiation. And it's here underneath this city of the walking dead that the Vault Dweller finds a replacement chip to solve Vault 13's water problem.

There's a lurking threat in the wastelands of California, a contingent of mutants that have proliferated throughout the world known as Super Mutants. The Vault Dweller traces these reports back to a quasi-religious movement called the Children of the Cathedral, which is headed up by a super mutant called the Master.

Long story short, the Vault Dweller is tasked by the Overseer of Vault 13 with eradicating the Super Mutants, which leads him to encounter a conspiracy within the Cathedral. It turns out that the Master is capturing humans and turning them into Super Mutants using something known as the Forced Evolutionary Virus--or FEV--which is contained within a series of vats that glow with an unhealthy green glow, which just screams danger.

As Fallout is a classic RPG, you can complete this mission in a handful of different ways, with the ultimate end goal of destroying the vats of green FEV goop and neutralizing the super mutant threat. And for all the Vault Dweller's effort, you’d think they’d be cheered back into Vault 13 as a hero right? Wrong.

The Overseer ultimately denies the Vault Dweller entry back into the home because he's worried that your actions will inspire future generations to leave the Vault and undermine all the hard work of keeping it going strong. And so Fallout comes to an end with the Vault Dweller exiled back into the wastelands.

All of which brings us to the year 2197, the year in which Fallout Tactics takes place. But this is where things get a bit funky, as while Tactics isn’t canon, some elements of the story are sort of canon.

The main gist of Tactics is that it vastly expands the story behind the Brotherhood of Steel, specifically one of the faction's chapters in the Midwest of America. The game sees you join the Brotherhood as an initiate and help them move across the country from Chicago down to Colorado.

Bethesda has outright said that the game isn't a part of the larger franchise's canon, but they have included a few references to the Brotherhood's operations in the Midwest since they took over the series. All of this is further confused by another game, helpfully called Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, which launched on consoles in 2004 and is also considered totally non-canon.

In short, we can largely ignore both of these games in the grand scheme of things.

After our non-canonical detour, we're back on the West Coast in the year 2241 for the events of Fallout 2. Here we learn what became of the Vault Dweller after he was exiled in the first game. He eventually settles in a village called Arroyo, where he has a family, and 80-odd years down the line we catch up with one of his descendants, who goes by the grandiose name of the Chosen One.

Much like their ancestor, the Chosen One is tasked with saving their community--in this case Arroyo--which is suffering from the effects of a devastating drought. And so the Chosen One is sent out into the world to find something that is known as the Garden of Eden Kit--or GECK for short--a terraforming kit that is capable of creating life out of nothing. The Chosen One ventures out in search of the GECK and eventually comes across the remains of Vault 13, which has become infested with Deathclaws, vicious dinosaur-like beasts.

Upon returning home to report on their findings, the Chosen One discovers that Arroyo has been taken over by an organization called the Enclave, which is basically made up of what's left of the US government. Sitting on a cache of sophisticated technology and weaponry, the Enclave basically tries to rule the US with an iron fist, so naturally, they need to be taken down a peg or two.

And so that becomes the Chosen One’s core mission: take down the Enclave and save the poor citizens of Arroyo. They set about this by charting a course on a giant freight ship to the Enclave's base of operations: an offshore oil rig where they discover that both the residents of Arroyo and Vault 13 are being held captive. To make matters worse, the Enclave has evolved the nasty FEV from the original game into an airborne virus, which will help them maintain their control over the local populations.

The Chosen One naturally throws a spanner into the works though, saves the Arroyo and Vault 13 hostages, and kills the head of the Enclave, who's also the President of the US to boot. With this happy ending, the combined forces of Vault 13 and Arroyo create a prosperous community together with the aid of a newly found Geck. Just don’t mention those devastating deathclaws…

Next up, we're heading back east to Vault 101, the home of the Lone Wanderer from Fallout 3, whose life we see play out in the prologue of that game. Kicking off right at the very beginning of the Lone Wanderer's life, as they’re brought into the world and into the arms of their father--voiced by Liam Neeson and his wonderful Irish purr--and across the next 16 years, we see the Wanderer grow up, toddling around their playpen, having their 10th birthday, and sitting their GOAT exams as a teenager. Life seems pretty idyllic in Vault 101, as idyllic as you can get for life underground in a grim, grey vault.

Naturally, that peace doesn't last. The crap hits the fan in Vault 101 as the Lone Wanderer turns 19 in the year 2277, which kickstarts the main plot of Fallout 3.

Things go sideways for the Wanderer when they're awoken to be told that their Father has left the Vault--something that has never happened before in Vault 101--although that’ll prove to be a lie. With the Overseer and his men going a little crazy in the circ*mstances, the Lone Wanderer is forced to flee for their safety and into the surrounding Capital Wasteland, the irradiated remains of the land surrounding Washington DC.

It's a real "out of the frying pan, and into the fire" moment for our young hero. And so the Lone Wanderer ventures out into the Capital Wasteland in search of their Father, a quest that makes up the bulk of Fallout 3’s story.

On their travels through the Wasteland, the Wanderer travels to a variety of different settlements, chief among them the town of Megaton, named for an unexploded nuclear bomb buried in the foundations of the city; the remnants of Washington DC, which houses the Galaxy News radio station and it's DJ, Three Dog, and a giant battleship that has been re-christened Rivet City. While chatting with Colin Moriarty--one of the denizens of Megaton--the Lone Wanderer discovers a great deal more about their parent's history, namely that they weren’t actually born in Vault 101.

This is actually a double shock as we also discover that 101 was designed never to be opened as part of those sinister social experiments. As they continue to explore the wastes, the Wanderer eventually meets a scientist called Dr. Madison Li who worked alongside their father. While chatting to Dr. Li, we learn that James--the Wanderer's father--was once involved in something known as Project Purity, but had to take refuge in Vault 101 in the wake of his partner's death during childbirth.

On top of all these meaty revelations, the Lone Wanderer gets embroiled in the power struggle between the two heavyweight factions in the wasteland: the corrupt bureaucratic bastards at the Enclave led by President Henry Eden--who is actually an AI--and a splinter group of the Brotherhood of Steel led by the charismatic Elder Owyn Lyons.

At the center of these two warring factions is the aforementioned Project Purity, a giant water processing plant that helps feed a clean water supply to the wider DC area. While you can ally yourself with either faction--along with a whole host of other oddballs and eccentrics across the Capital Wasteland--you’re largely pushed towards joining the Brotherhood after you learn that the Lone Wanderer's father worked with them in the past.

All of this eventually leads the Lone Wanderer into taking up their father's mission, by seeking out a GECK in order to reignite Project Purity. Amidst helping out with the Project, the Wanderer actually tracks down their father to Vault 112, where they have to free him from some bizarre virtual reality nightmare.

With James and the Wanderer reunited, they team up with the good Dr. Li to resume work on the gestating project. The Enclave has different ideas though and an ambush led by Henry Eden's right-hand man, Colonel Autumn Augustus, results in James's death when he sacrifices himself to keep the project out of the bureaucrats' hands.

The Wanderer eventually hunts down a GECK in Vault 87 with the aid of the Brotherhood of Steel and a top super mutant lad called Fawke--if you choose to befriend him--but it's all for nothing as they're captured by the Enclave when they leave the Vault. And this all leads us towards the bombastic conclusion of Fallout 3.

After they break free from the shackles of the Enclave--who are about to execute their dastardly plan to pollute the water supply with a modified anti-mutation variant of the FEV no less--the Wanderer is thrown into a full-scale assault against the Enclave. Joining them in this daring attack is the Brotherhood's poster boy, a big iron giant by the name of Liberty Prime. Remember, nothing hits harder than democracy… and a giant killer robot.

This all leads to a final confrontation with Colonel Augustus, who you can either kill or convince to go away. With the Colonel out the way, the route is clearer to save Project Purity, or not, the fate of the Wasteland is in your hands and you can do whatever you please. As the control center for the Project is in the middle of a highly irradiated area, turning it on will kill whoever does so, which leads to yet more life-or-death decision-making.

Except, that is, in the Broken Steel DLC which added the option to send Sarah Lyons or your radiation-immune buddy Fawkes to switch the machine on and save the Capital Wasteland. And if you opt for this ending, the Lone Wanderer wakes up two weeks later to witness how the consequences--good or bad--play out across the wastelands.

Alongside Broken Steel, there were a total of five expansions for Fallout 3, which expanded the story in several different directions. The first took the Lone Wanderer to Anchorage, Alaska--albeit via virtual reality--for a military simulation of the pivotal moment in Fallout's history where the US took back control of their northernmost territory from China. Next up we had The Pitt, which saw the Wanderer travel to the remains of Pittsburgh, which had become overrun by raiders and slavers alike.

Then there's the meaty Broken Steel expansion, which altered the ending, raised the game's level cap to 30, and saw the Wanderer root out the remaining members of the Enclave after Liberty Prime is destroyed.

The fourth expansion, Point Lookout, takes the Wanderer to the State Park of the same name in Maryland, where they have to settle a feud between an irradiated ghoul and a giant talking brain. And if that doesn't sound weird enough, Fallout 3 is rounded out with a trip to Mothership Zeta, a UFO that actually started out life as an easter egg in both the original Fallout and Fallout 3.

And with that, we are done in the Capital Wasteland.

Fallout: New Vegas is next up on the timeline, taking us back west to the Mojave Desert and the glowing city of New Vegas, the post-apocalyptic overhaul of the city of sin.

The year is 2281, and unlike the irradiated wastelands we've already visited, New Vegas is a thriving city complete with running water and electricity courtesy of the nearby Hoover Dam. And all of this is because of our good old mate, Mr. Robert House--the same pre-war Robert House who founded RobCo over 200 years ago. He's still knocking about as a result of his defense system shooting down most of the nukes heading for Vegas, and the judicious use of a stasis chamber located within his base of operations in the Lucky 38 Casino.

And it's from here that he’s poured his extensive resources into keeping New Vegas alive and kicking. But his dominion over the city is under threat from a whole host of different factions all vying for control of New Vegas.

For starters, there are our old friends, the New California Republic, who have expanded from their base in Shady Sands to build an empire across the West. The NCR is looking to expand into the Mojave and annex the currently independent New Vegas.

However, their resources are divided, with much of their attention put toward combating Caesar's Legion, the antithesis of the NCR and an extremist faction that has styled itself on the Ancient Roman Empire. Their end goal is basically to wipe out the NCR and enact a military dictatorship over the city of New Vegas.

And with both of these major factions vying for power, their primary target becomes the Hoover Dam, which basically controls New Vegas. While the game takes place in 2281, Caesar's Legion made an unsuccessful attempt at taking control of the Hoover Dam in 2271, a conflict that went down in the history books as the First Battle of the Hoover Dam.

Into this chaotic mix falls the Courier, the main protagonist of Fallout: New Vegas, who starts off the game with a bullet to the brain. The bullet in question is fired by the dapper gangster Benny, voiced by the late Matthew Perry in an opening sequence that sees the Courier robbed of his quarry--The Platinum Chip--and dumped in a shallow grave.

Naturally, the story doesn't end there, or else New Vegas would be a very short game. Rescued by a robot called Securiton Victor and then nursed back to health by a lovable old lad by the name of Doc Mitchell, the Courier is all patched up and unleashed on the Mojave Desert. And from here, the main quest of Fallout: New Vegas kicks in, and at its core, it's relatively simple: Locate and kill Benny, and retrieve the Platinum Chip.

While the Courier's quest for revenge against Benny might be simple on the surface, it unravels into something a lot more complicated. For starters, Benny is looking to use the Platinum Chip to take New Vegas for himself right from under the watchful eye of his boss, Mr. House. You see, the Platinum Chip--a pre-war invention--contains an all-important upgrade program that was originally designed to help protect Vegas, but in the wrong hands, could completely change the balance of power in the city.

And this is where the storytelling of Fallout: New Vegas falls into the hands of the player. As there are four different endings available depending on what factions you pledge your allegiance to. It all boils down to a great big bloody battle for the Hoover Dam, with the Courier on the attacking side as part of Caesar's Legion; on the defense with the NCR; as part of a sneaky beaky infiltration with Mr. House; or lastly by taking Benny’s mission and claiming New Vegas as an independent territory.

Depending on your actions, you get a neat little slideshow of your impacts across New Vegas and the Mojave Desert.

But the story of New Vegas doesn’t end there, as much like Fallout 3 before it, there were a healthy amount of post-release story expansions.

The story of New Vegas continues across four meaty story DLCs, which saw the Courier roped into a variety of different misadventures. The first, Dead Money, whisked the Courier off on a heist within the Sierra Madre Casino on behalf of a rogue member of the Brotherhood of Steel. The second, Honest Hearts, saw the Courier travel to Utah's Zion National Park, and get caught up in a tribal war between two different factions. The leader of one of these factions is one Joshua Graham AKA the Burned Man, who is set on fire and thrown into the Grand Canyon by Caesar due to his failure to take the Hoover Dam during the First Battle. He's now a devout post-apocalyptic Mormon.

The third expansion is titled Old World Blues and sees the Courier kidnapped and sent to the Big MT research facility to take part in a series of heinous scientific experiments by the suspended brains of a group of pre-war scientists.

The fourth expansion, Lonesome Road, concludes the story of the Courier by taking them to the extremely hostile regions surrounding the Continental Divide. Here they become embroiled in the story of Ulysses--a former Courier himself--whose decision to not ferry the Platinum Chip to Mr. House led to the events that came to be in the main campaign of New Vegas. Long story short, Ulysses has a bit of a bee in his bonnet about the Courier and lures our hero to the Divide to enact revenge on them.

This doesn’t end well for Ulysses, who despite being one of the strongest characters in the entirety of the Fallout franchise, finally gets his comeuppance, which brings the story of New Vegas and the Courier to an end.

Right, it's finally time to catch up on our old friend, the Sole Survivor, who we last saw over 2 centuries ago when they were cryogenically frozen within Vault 111.

It’s not a happy reunion for our nuclear family as at some point before the Sole Survivor is awoken from their cryogenic slumber, they witness the murder of their spouse and the abduction of their infant son Shaun to boot. And so the main quest of Fallout 4 kicks off--which in a similar vein to Fallout 3--is all about the rescue of a family member.

Couple this with the Fallout TV show, and we're starting to see something of a trope develop… Anyway, the Sole Survivor ventures off into the Commonwealth, the irradiated wastes of the city of Boston and its surroundings, and experiences something of a Fallout greatest hits mixtape all within the first hour of the game.

Befriend a new canine companion?

Check.

Meet a new faction?

Check.

Don some Power Armor and fight a Deathclaw?

Double check.

After this breathless intro, the Sole Survivor makes their way to Diamond City, a township located within the remains of Fenway Park, the old baseball stadium of the Boston Red Sox. And it's here that they start to hear whisperings of Fallout 4’s big bad--no, not the lad who kidnapped Shaun--a secretive organization that goes by the name of the Institute.

The rumors that surround the Institute talk about a terrorist group of sorts who go around the Commonwealth kidnapping ordinary folk and replacing them with Synths (basically, human-like synthetic robots). The Sole Survivor gets caught up in the machinations of the Institute when they finally locate their son's kidnapper, a lad named Conrad Kellogg.

Kellogg is a means to an end though, as he reveals that Shaun is now in the possession of the Institute, which means that the Sole Survivor will have to venture into the belly of the beast.

Only that’s easier said than done as the Sole Survivor soon finds out. They discover that the only way into the Institute is via teleportation, and in order to build a working teleporter, they have to ally themselves with one of the game's three anti-Institute factions.

For starters, there's the Minutemen--the faction that they meet in the intro--and who are styled after American Revolutionary War soldiers. Then there's the iconic Brotherhood of Steel, who have a giant airship hovering around the skies of the Commonwealth. Lastly, there's the Railroad, a group who are based on the Underground Railroad, who seek to save and rehabilitate Synths from the Institute.

Naturally, you can ally yourself with any one of them en route to entering the Institute, which all leads you to the shocking revelation of who the game's big bad is: Shaun.

Yep, your own kid is all grown up--60 to be precise--and is the big bad at the center of the Institute’s evil shenanigans, which confirms that the Sole Survivor overslept by a whopping 60 years in their cryogenic pod. Shaun--who now confusingly goes by the name Father--reveals that he was originally kidnapped so that his precious pre-war DNA could be used to experiment on with the Synths.

And so we reach that moment in a Fallout game where the story choices fall back on to the player, and this one's a bit out there. Shaun invites the Sole Survivor to become his successor after his death, and if you accept this enticing offer, your son reveals to you that he's not long for this world as he has cancer. But if you refuse Shaun's offer, things get a little bit more explosive.

The Sole Survivor hightails it back to their faction of choice to devise a plan to destroy the Institute, which eventually leads to them blowing up their son’s evil organization by detonating a nuclear reactor, which brings the main campaign of Fallout 4 to a close.

But wait, there is--of course--a whole host of story DLC still to get through in the Commonwealth.

Yes, the story of the Sole Survivor continued in four more story expansions, with the first one being Automatron. The Sole Survivor gets caught up in a war with the Mechanist--a supervillain who sort of looks like a kid's drawing of a robot. Next up we've got Fah Hahbah, which sees the Sole Survivor travel north to a spooky island community with a fair few secrets. They're sent there on a mission to find a missing person by the name of Kasumi, an investigation that naturally unravels into something far more sinister.

Then there’s the Vault-Tec Workshop, which saw the Sole Survivor discover Vault 88, an unfinished bunker. While the expansion predominantly offered players the chance to build their own vault, it did offer a narrative throughline of sorts, with the Sole Survivor effectively becoming the Overseer of Vault 88.

All of this finally brings us to the main events of the Fallout TV show, which takes us back to the wastes of California in the year 2296.

The Fallout TV show takes place at the further reaches of the timeline and expands on the lore and history of the California region. At the heart of the show is Vault 33, which houses a seemingly idyllic society who are waiting for their chance to head to the surface and re-civilize the planet. Little do they know that they've missed that boat by a long shot.

Vault 33 is part of a trio of neighboring Vaults--the others being Vaults 31 and 32--which work in tandem to keep their populations going.

Up on the surface, we catch up with what is left of Cooper Howard, as he's still going. This is a bit of a surprise, as he's well over 200 years old by this point. He's seen better days though, as he has been poisoned by radiation to the point of becoming what’s known in the Fallout universe as a Ghoul.

Life is imitating art in the case of Coop who now ventures around the wastelands making his living as a gunslinging bounty hunter. He gets thrust into the plot of the show due to a bounty that he’s after, namely an Enclave defector, who has a critical piece of technology on his person.

The Brotherhood of Steel is also after the Enclave scientist, and one of their young new recruits--a lad by the name of Maximus--finds himself on a mission to help secure the bounty as well.

And so the TV show falls into a plot that is largely about people hunting MacGuffins, and naturally, there is far more than that going on in the show’s deadly wastelands. As the show progresses, the worlds of the Ghoul, Lucy, and Maximus come crashing together, with all three chasing after the Enclave scientist, who by this point is just a severed head with the tech embedded in the neck. Yeah, the show leans hard into Fallout’s grim violence. As Lucy and Maximus team up, they discover the fate of Shady Sands, which was destroyed via a nuclear blast back in 2277. Maximus learned this firsthand, however, as Shady Sands was his hometown until it became a giant crater in the dust.

While looking for medical supplies, the pair stumble onto Vault 4, which they learn houses a team of scientists that have, well, they've done some pretty horrific experiments to say the least. The Vault is now home to many of the surface refugees from the Shady Sands blast zone, good honest folk just trying to live their lives peacefully.

And this all leads to the major revelation at the heart of the Fallout show: Hank Maclean is a Pre-War Vault-Tec employee, who entered Vault 33 after waking from his cryogenic slumber. It turns out that his wife discovered a clue to the truth behind the three neighboring vaults, and this led her to leave Vault 33 with Lucy and Norm. They eventually wound up at Shady Sands, and when Hank pursued them there, he was the one responsible for destroying the city when his wife refused to come home with him.

Lucy learns all of this when she finally finds her father at the New California Republic base at Griffith Observatory. After a big climactic battle between the NCR and the Brotherhood of Steel, the NCR can get their hands on the Enclave Defector’s piece of tech, which turns out to be a cold fusion device, a source of unlimited power.

It's useless without a Vault-Tec passkey though, until Hank is coerced into giving his over, which results in LA finally getting its power supply back on. The show ends with Hank escaping into the wastelands donned in power suit armor, Lucy and the Ghoul teaming up to get revenge on Vault-Tec, and Maximus seemingly getting a hefty promotion.

In its final shot, we see Hank coming across the city of New Vegas, which has seemingly now fallen into ruins. I guess we’ll just have to wait for the second season to find out what exactly has happened canonically to Mr. House’s vibrant city…

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