New ‘Fallout’ Trailer Focuses on the Haves, the Have-Nots (Plus a New Premiere Date!)

In an age of prestige TV video game adaptations, Prime Video is delivering an exciting new addition to a field including Arcane, The Last of Us, and Twisted Metal. Fallout, the TV adaptation of the popular video game series, premieres on April 11—one day earlier than previously announced!

Watch the newly released official Fallout trailer below!

Welcome to the Wasteland

The trailer introduces us to all three central characters of this Fallout series starting with Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins), a man we first see in a television ad for Vault-Tec. Is he a Vault-Tec rep? An actor? We don’t know. All we know is that he survives over 200 years after nuclear war destroyed the world and became The Ghoul.

Next is Lucy (Ella Purnell), a determined vault-dweller leaving the safety of Vault 33 where she’s spent her entire life to go on a dangerous mission. She knows it’s dangerous, because every single person she comes across tells her the Wasteland is too dangerous for the likes of her. But she will not be deterred. Determination? Naive stupidity? Both?

And finally, there’s Maximus (Aaron Moten), a complicated squire in the Brotherhood of Steel whose loyalty to the Brotherhood is absolute, but whose morality is a little more ambiguous. In the trailer, he captures the factional nature of Fallout saying, “Everyone wants to save the world. They just disagree on how.”

However, it’s The Ghoul who verbalizes one of the larger themes of the series, saying that life in the Wasteland “looks like chaos, but there’s always someone behind the wheel.”

The “Haves” and “Have-Nots” in Fallout

The Fallout series of games have always simmered with social and political commentary. From the fascism of The Enclave, to the corporate greed of companies like Vault-Tec and Nuka-Cola, to the privilege of those well-off enough to purchase a spot in a vault, Fallout has always examined the “haves” and the “have-nots” from different angles.

At a press conference to launch the global trailer, Executive Producers Jonathan Nolan, co-showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, series stars Purnell and Moten, and Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard talked a lot about Fallout’s relevance to the world’s current sociopolitical climate.

Robertson-Dworet said that “the themes of Fallout [are] what really drove us to want to adapt this with  Jonah [Nolan], and we were really especially drawn to the  social commentary inherent to the idea of these vaults.” She mentioned that she is a dual citizen of the U.S. and New Zealand, Wagner is a Canadian citizen, and that this informed the perspective of the show:

“We often talk about how those countries are sort of celebrated as these wonderful, peaceful utopias, and ‘What if everyone was like there,’ and the reality is not everywhere is like those countries. But what would it mean if those countries were to open their borders and let everyone in, and everyone could have a better life? Well, they would change, right? They wouldn’t be the same. So, like, we saw the vaults as basically a mirror to that, right? This idea that, like, ‘What if we create a vault that is very peaceful and wonderful?’ But what does it mean that not everyone gets to live there, and people suffer on the surface?”

Geneva Robertson-Dworet

Nolan, too, saw the opportunity to use Fallout as a way to process the current political climate while also injecting it with a bit of lightness and humor:

“I think you also have a moment that we’re in right now in which the world, you know, it seems to be evermore frightening and dour. And so an opportunity for us to work on a show that gets to look that in the eye, right, and we get to talk about the end of the world, but to do it with a sense of humor. You know, I think, honestly, there’s a thread of optimism woven into the show as well, that I think for us, you know, is a bit of expiation to be able to work on this every day.” 

Jonathan Nolan

What’s hilarious is that this team is producing this show with these themes on Amazon of all streamers. Maybe Fallout is penance for other stuff?

In any case, as a huge fan of the world of Fallout (especially Fallout 4), I’m pumped for this show! Fallout drops its 8-episode first season on Prime Video April 11.

(featured image: Prime Video)