Fallout TV Show Review: What To Expect From A New Series Based on Legendary Game?

Video game TV adaptation is now a trendy way for movie directors who search for well-beloved sci-fi franchises, like Dune or Halo or are finally adults who can make their teenage dreams come true. Like it or not, we’re getting one more TV show based on the well-known post-apocalyptic role-playing video game Fallout.

Whether you are familiar with the game or not, here’s what you should know about the Fallout TV show premiering on Amazon TV (spoiler-free review).

What Fallout Season 1 is about?

If you’ve never heard about this media franchise, let us try to explain the plot shortly.

The primary setting of the Fallout TV show is based in Los Angeles, California. The events start in “a wonderful place”, Vault 33 — one of the bunkers built by the Vault-Tec company to save people from nuclear threats. In this alternative universe, set two centuries after a nuclear war, we explore the story from three different characters: Lucy, her father Hank and a soldier, Maximus.

Main Characters & Cast

Lucy (played by Ella Purnell) is forced to leave the safest place in the doomed world and explore the surface when her father goes missing. Raised in a reserved zone and without knowledge of what’s going on outside, she has to adapt to a cruel and ‘kill-or-die’ world. Her good manners and naiveness are weird and only provoke jokes at first. But perhaps that’s just a part of a good arc for one of the main characters.

Lucy’s mirror character is Maximus (Aaron Moten) — a soldier in the Brotherhood of Steel. Orphaned as a child, he was raised by the ‘medieval knights’, but he obviously doesn’t suit the fraction. Together, they create an interesting-to-watch tandem that is trying to survive.

There’s one more character who grabs attention from the very first sight — Walton Goggins’s Ghoul. He’s a creepy and predictable ‘bad guy’. Due to radiation and mutation, a former celebrity of old Hollywood is now 250 years old.

The rest of the cast includes Kyle MacLachlan, Sarita Choudhury, Michael Emerson, and Zach Cherry.

Who are the creators of the Fallout TV show?

The show is produced by Jonathan Nolan (brother of Christopher Nolan) and Lisa Joy. Previously, they also worked together on the Westworld show, so there are a lot of expectations from Fallout.

Fallout is set canonically within the world, and continuity of the games, but its eight-episode first season isn’t directly connected to anything you may have played.

“This isn’t a direct adaptation, this is an interpretation of the game,” star Walton Goggins told Polygon in a recent interview. 

But don’t think the new Amazon series is made solely for the game fans. The creators made a stand-alone story so no prior experience is necessary.

“The people that play the video games that are real fans are both excited and somewhat hesitant, I think, because they’ve been burned before. But as we’ve been progressively getting into more press about it, as more of the teasers have come out, I find that the tone is shifting from one of ‘Oh, I hope I don’t mess it up’ to one of ‘Oh, I’m so excited. I think this looks pretty great,’” MacLachlan, who plays Hank McLean, told Variety.

How and When to Watch the Fallout Series?

The Fallout TV show was announced on 23rd October — known to Fallout fans as “Fallout Day” — the in-game date that marks the beginning of the Great War that resulted in an apocalyptic setting for a game. This little detail was a good sign, meaning the creators of the show were ready to follow the rules and be in context. But it’s too soon to make such conclusions.

The eight-episode series starts streaming on 10th April on Amazon Prime Video. All eight episodes will premiere at once, so don’t make any plans this weekend.