Fallout Season 2 Is Giving The Ghoulcy Fans Everything They Want
What happens in New Vegas...
The first season of Fallout may not have been a straightforward adaptation of any game in the apocalyptic series, but Season 2 is poised to deliver its take on one of the franchise’s most beloved stories, New Vegas. Trailers have already teased the arrival of a fan favorite villain, Mr. House (Justin Theroux), and his connection to an original character created for the series, the Ghoul (Walton Goggins). Like Season 1, the new season of the Prime Video series will straddle past and present. Half its story will follow the adventures of the Ghoul back when he was still the movie star known as Cooper Howard, tracing the beginnings of his relationship with Mr. House. The other half of Fallout Season 2 will reunite these characters decades after the nuclear apocalypse that turned North America into a wasteland and the Ghoul into... well, the Ghoul.
According to Theroux, Mr. House’s scenes with the Ghoul are more about words than action. “We have a couple of really incredible scenes that are just these big, heavyweight bouts of intellect,” the actor recently told Empire. “It was like doing Waiting For Godot in the middle of the whole thing.”
As exciting as it will be to see New Vegas adapted in live-action, Fallout Season 2 has another highly-anticipated development up its sleeve. The new season will double down on a very different, but no less fascinating, relationship for the Ghoul, that between the outlaw and his unlikely partner in crime, Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell).
In Fallout Season 2, Lucy is almost on “this buddy road trip” with the Ghoul.
Lucy’s dynamic with the Ghoul was one of the biggest surprises in Fallout Season 1. A sheltered girl who spent her entire life in an underground vault, Lucy gets a crash course in survival from the Ghoul — and it’s very rarely pretty. Her idealism clashes against his feral disillusion in spectacular fashion, but as their adventures continue, it’s clear there’s something drawing these characters together. For one sect of fans, that “something” is an unspoken attraction, drawing from tropes that have informed everything from the forbidden romance in The Phantom of the Opera to the doomed dyad of the Star Wars sequels, “Reylo.”
The idea of this relationship progressing into romance is still just wishful thinking, but Fallout Season 2 is rightfully interested developing this odd-couple pairing. There’s a question of whether Lucy will encourage the Ghoul to reclaim his humanity before his cynical worldview corrupts her entirely, especially now that the two characters are headed for New Vegas together. Per Purnell, Season 2 takes its sweet time exploring that push and pull.
“At times, it’s like [they] are on this buddy road trip,” the actress told Empire. “And then other times, they’re so much at arms. They’re trying to influence each other and see who’s going to rub off on whom... Is the Ghoul going to become good? Is Lucy going to become bad? Or are they going to be somewhere in the middle?”
As with everything in Fallout, it’s less about the end result and more about the journey. With these two characters stuck together, it’s clear Season 2 will be one to tune in for.
