This was a fun and overall well-done finale. Yet I feel slightly underwhelmed.
There’s a lot to like about this episode, lots of cool stuff happening. It pays off on many things built up over the course of Season Two. It’s just that there were also elements I found a bit lackluster, and more that I found repetitive of the first season’s finale.
Praise
I liked that Cooper saved Lucy from Hank, as well as his dialogue with Mr. House in his post-war supercomputer form. And the last scene between Lucy and Hank was both disturbing and poignant; great acting by Ella Purnell and Kyle MacLachlan.
Though saddened at the way their relationship is ending, Hank remains fully committed to his (or the Enclave’s) plan to Automate the Wasteland. So committed that even he’s fitted himself with the mind-control device and tried to put one on Lucy too. Maybe there’s some guilt at play in his decision to erase his own identity, but I think Hank really did it to protect the Enclave and their agenda.
Loved the bloody awesome spectacle of Maximus fighting the Deathclaws. It felt even more thrilling and meaningful than the chaotic battle between the Brotherhood of Steel and Moldaver's militia in the previous finale. The NCR army showing up on the Strip just in time to save Maximus was a beautiful moment; many fans were not happy with the NCR’s diminished role in the show, so this was pretty well-received.
Narratively, I think Season Two ends in a decent place.
Many of our players are now situated in New Vegas. With a new Caesar declared — Lacerta played by Macauley Culkin — the Legion is marching on the Strip, where they will soon begin another war with the newly returned NCR.
Lucy and Maximus are together again, and are last seen up in the Lucky 38. The implication, I think, is that Mr. House will be using them as proxies to re-establish New Vegas as the central hub of the Mojave Wasteland. Maybe even the entire Wasteland, since the Cold Fusion source now resides in the Lucky 38.
And Cooper is on his way to Colorado, as per the postcard Barb left for him in her empty cryo-pod. The cryo-pod reveal was beautifully juxtaposed with Cooper getting arrested (and blacklisted) in the past, after he and Barb thought everything was okay.
It’s putting him on what seems to be a much clearer path to finding his family again, but it also puts him on the trail of the series’ overarching bad guys, the Enclave, whose secluded base of operations appears to be tucked away in the Rocky Mountains. Since it was the Enclave who betrayed Cooper and helped Vault-Tec usher in the end of the world for the sake of some far-off capitalistic dystopian wet dream, I imagine there’s going to be a major reckoning in the wake of whatever messed up family reunion is waiting for him.
Okay, so as much as I liked this episode, there were some things about it that I thought were kind of lame.
The most obvious being that this season finale just goes through a lot of the same beats as the previous one. We have Lucy confronting her father in this big grand location, while a battle rages in the background featuring Maximus and Cooper. Cooper easily defeats Hank again. Lucy loses a parent again. Maximus once again finds himself staring at the horizon in a room containing the Cold Fusion diode. Cooper once again hits the road in search of his family. And we leave Norm and the Vault storylines on a note of uncertainty again.
Speaking of that, Steph negotiating that box away from Betty earlier only for it to contain a special Enclave pip-boy feels like it was designed purely as setup for the next season. She delivers the message to “initiate phase two,” whatever that means; I get the impression that, when it comes to the Enclave, she only knows as much as Hank told her.
The Enclave is another thing that irks me. As fitting as they are for overarching bad guys (they’re major Vault-Tec investors and one of the more overtly villainous factions in the games), it just feels like kind of a weightless twist considering that we’ve known about them since the beginning; they were the faction Wilzig (Michael Emerson) was with before running away with Dogmeat and the Cold Fusion diode. It would be even less surprising if the first season hadn’t pushed the idea that Vault-Tec was the real evil superpower behind everything. Now Vault-Tec looks more like an insanely arrogant but hilariously incompetent stooge for a cabal of generic fascists.
Lastly, it was kind of cheap how they built up to Cooper finally finding Barb and Janey only to find their cryo-pods empty. However, it’s somewhat forgivable in that I can kind of see how they’re setting things up. But only somewhat forgivable because I get the sense that what they are setting up is another repetition. Cooper’s long-awaited reunion with his family will likely mirror Lucy and Hank’s conflict, since Cooper and Lucy mirror each other quite a bit. Given how her story is turning out, I get the sense things will end in tragedy when Cooper finds his family.
Like I said, it’s implied that the Enclave is headquartered in the same area Barb has apparently ventured to. While we know she has a conscience, the point is made that everything Barb and Cooper did was to protect their daughter. It could be Janey is still a little girl, but it’s just as likely she and Barb also could have exited those pods, like, fifty years ago. An obvious twist would be that Barb joined the Enclave to protect Janey, with Janey being raised within the faction and rising in their ranks, becoming a villain who values the mission more than her family, like Hank.
It’d certainly be a dark twist for Cooper (and an obvious copy of the twist in Fallout 4), but it would also give him an excuse to embrace Lucy as his new daughter figure. And perhaps his lingering humanity too.
* Learning that Steph is (or was) Hank’s pre-war wife was another fun twist. Not only is Steph a false friend to Lucy, but she turns out to be a wicked stepmother as well.
* Chet realizing that history seems to be repeating itself when the Vault 32 residents start chanting “Death to Management” was a great little acting moment.
* It’s a shame the NCR power armor got wrecked. Maybe Maximus can repair it and keep using it.
* I wasn’t sold on the de-aging effect for Young Hank, but Kyle MacLachlan can certainly still play it like his boyish younger self earlier in his career. I hope he stays on the show. It’d be interesting to have Hank around and slowly build a new identity for himself, maybe even one that’s better than the man he used to be.
* That said, I was disappointed that Maximus just kind of ignores Hank when he finds Lucy. Maybe he’ll try to seek revenge for Shady Sands next season, or try to forgive Hank since he’s obviously not the same person anymore and Lucy still cares about him.
* Mr. House claimed that if the Cold Fusion diode were broken and all of its energy released at once “the damage would likely extend to other planets.” Usually, we just have to worry about the state of America in Fallout. Now potentially the entire solar system is at risk.
* The post-credits scene returns to Elder Quintus and Dane at Area 51. Now caught in a civil war that he pretty much set the stage for, Quintus unveils the blueprint for a secret weapon: Liberty Prime (Alpha). It likely won’t mean much to those who only watch the show, yet, but anyone who has played Fallout 3 or 4 will likely feel the hype like I did.
* Music: “It’s a Good Day” by Perry Como; “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” by Frank Sinatra; “This is Worth Fighting For” by The Ink Spots.
Quotes:
Lacerta: “Together, we will reclaim the holy land that they call Vegas. There, we will build a palace worthy of our empire. Caesar’s Palace. Now, to Vegas!”
Mr. House: “Well… I will say this much, it’s good to be alive again. Over the years, my body became something of a target for wandering travelers with something to prove. I have been poisoned, shot, bludgeoned with a crowbar...”
Mr. House: “Like it or not, Mr. Howard… everyone works for me eventually.”
While I think they might have leaned on this character and the New Vegas material a little too much, I can’t deny that I enjoyed every second of live-action Mr. House.
Maximus: “Weapons activated? Hot dog.”
Thaddeus: “Count it, losers. I used to make money for a living.”
Hank: “Robert House wanted to turn human beings into machines. Erase their memories. Make them suggestible enough to follow his orders. You know, Robert, he was a bit of a robot himself. And who wants to live in a world full of robots?”
Me. I did.
Lucy: “You’re insane.”
Hank: “… You don’t mean that. And if you do, very soon, you won’t.”
Hank: “You think this is the real world. The surface is the experiment. Not the Vaults.”
Lucy: “What experiment?”
Hank: “I’ve already sent my R&D out into the Wasteland. Their boxes are the latest models, too. So you can’t even see them. Unbeknownst to everyone, they’re following orders written for them centuries ago.”
Lucy: “Orders to do what? What did you do?”
Hank: “I love you, Sugar Bomb.”
Lucy: “I could have prevented this. There’s gonna be a war and it’s… it’s all my fault.”
Maximus: “Yeah, well… Welcome to the Wasteland.”
While there are some glaring redundancies, this was still written, shot and performed well enough that I can’t be too upset with its flaws. Overall, another pulpy and engrossing chapter in the Fallout television series. Three out of five empty cryo-pods.
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