How Do You Even Begin to Rank ‘Fallout’ Episodes When They’re All Brilliant?
We're gonna try!
Fallout, my favorite post-apocalyptic game series, came to life this month with a live-action adaption on Prime Video. It was everything I’d dreamed of and more, so I found ranking the episodes every bit as hard as I found ranking the Fallout: New Vegas companions.
Sometimes you just can’t bear to assign something as the “worst,” ya know? So when I say “worst” rest assured I mean “still good!” Yes, I’m an easy to please person, just like our Vault Dweller heroine Lucy MacLean.
Okey-dokey! (As Lucy would say.) Let’s get down to it!
Spoilers for Prime Video’s Fallout throughout!
8. “The Target” (episode 2)
This episode is ranked last because it opens with puppy murder—a cartoonishly evil move from the Enclave—and then later our resident Dogmeat CX404 gets stabbed by the Ghoul. So it might be a bit of a painful ride for anyone who really likes dogs. (And if you’re a Fallout fan in the first place, you probably do, right?)
This episode also has a bit of a disappointing ending if you wanted Dr. Wilzig (Michael Emerson) to stick around. By the end of it he’s taken himself out with a Vault-Tec cyanide pill, banana flavor. I’m probably not alone in wishing we had a little more of him, right?
7. “The Past” (episode 5)
“The Past” doesn’t feature everyone’s favorite Ghoul, Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) and frankly it’s a bit less of a wild wasteland without him around. But we do follow Lucy (Ella Purnell) and Maximus (Aaron Moten) as they continue the quest to find the head of Dr Wilzig, the thing that will allow them to get back Lucy’s kidnapped father.
Meanwhile, back in Vault 33, we catch up with Norman (Moisés Arias), Lucy’s brother, who is tantalizingly close to uncovering the conspiracy that links all the Vaults. Betty (Leslie Uggams) seems particularly suspicious of him. But we haven’t reached the end of that lonesome road yet …
6. “The Head” (episode 3)
Poor Lucy goes through the wringer in this episode, which is hard to watch if you love that little woobie as much as I do. The Ghoul ends up using her as bait for a Gulper (a horrific water-dwelling creature with a mouth full of fingers, ICK.) Maximus too suffers a lot in this episode, first enduring the pain of having to sell teeth and then being brutally beaten for his Power Armor. If this was the game he could just shoot himself full of stimpaks, but no luck.
One slightly puzzling thing happens in this episode: A worker in Vault 33 informs the others that their water chip is broken and soon all their water will be gone, but this doesn’t come up again for the whole rest of the season.
5. “The Radio” (episode 7)
The calm (sort of) before the storm of the season finale. Lucy and Maximus find themselves at the mercy of the wasteland once more, Thaddeus leaves poor CX404 to die in a Nuka-Cola crate (more dog cruelty!), the Ghoul does some casual murder, and we learn more about Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury) in the past.
This is a bit of a slow episode, but it has some great moments. Fred Armisen makes a cameo appearance, for a start. And when Lucy and Maximus finally get their big damn kiss, it’s unexpectedly hilarious.
4. “The Trap” (episode 6)
“The Trap” introduced some of my favorite characters in the whole show: the mutated citizens of Vault 4. These guys are weird. And are they hiding something? Lucy sure thinks they are, and that leads to some moments of outright body horror as she ventures into the depths of the vault.
If you’re a fan of the flashback scenes, this episode has a lot of them. If you weren’t already impressed by Goggins’ dual performance as the Ghoul and his pre-war self Cooper Howard, you will be by the end of this.
3. “The Beginning” (episode 8)
The season finale! Poor Lucy, naive no longer, comes to realize that nothing about her world is what she thought it was. Even her own past is part of the mystery of Vault-Tec. And Norman is about to find out a similar thing as he ventures into Vault 31.
The final shot of the episode, and indeed the season, sets up a very exciting place for the show to go next: New Vegas! The exact way New Vegas will appear in the show is a matter of some controversy, but hey, we’ll just have to wait and see.
2. “The End” (episode 1)
The first episode shows us everything Fallout has to offer, and how. We first meet an actor, Cooper Howard, who’s past his prime and performing at birthday parties with his young daughter. Then, suddenly, to Howard’s horror, bombs start to drop. The world will never be the same again.
The post-apocalypse is a lot of fun, though. After the explosive intro, we’re introduced to Lucy, a woman who’s lived underground in a Vault all her life, and Maximus, a bullied member of the hard-bitten Brotherhood of Steel on the surface. And then we meet someone called only “The Ghoul.” That’s Howard again. What’s the apocalypse done to him?
1. “The Ghouls” (episode 4)
This episode introduces us to some of the Ghouls out there who aren’t Cooper Howard. Turns out that without a steady supply of drugs, the Ghoul will become a mindless zombie (a feral ghoul, for you gameplayers), and he’s keen to stop that from happening. So keen that he sells Lucy to an organ-harvesting operation in exchange for drugs.
Lucy is able to take care of herself, however. After learning the truth about what Ghouls can become, she breaks free of her captors (and their robot, voiced by Matt Berry!) and marches outside. There, she sees the Ghoul suffering on the ground… and hands him the drugs he needs. “Golden rule, motherfucker,” she says before marching off. That one scene neatly sums up so much of what Fallout is about.
(featured image: Prime Video)
Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com
