The Big Question: Is Prime Video’s ‘Fallout’ Series Canon?
Prime Video’s Fallout is the newest addition to the video game-to-live-action genre. The series has adapted the beloved video game franchise, transporting us to a post-nuclear world where chances of survival are slim. Fans of the games may be wondering: Is the TV show canon within the world of Fallout?
Fallout was released in 1997 and six more games followed, the most recent being 2018’s Fallout 76. All the games are set in a world that barely exists after a nuclear war wiped out most of humanity and the animals and humans that remain are not what they once were.
The show does not follow the specific storyline of one singular game but rather thrusts viewers into the larger world of Fallout. The show, like most of the games, follows a Vault Dweller traversing the wasteland. Here, we center on Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) as she sets on a mission across greater Los Angeles to save her father. Along the way, she meets numerous friends and (mostly) foes, including The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) and Brotherhood of Steel member Maximus (Aaron Moten).
Todd Howard, executive producer of Bethesda Game Studios, the studio behind the Fallout games, confirmed that the events of the Prime Video series are canon. Howard spoke to Vanity Fair saying, “We view what’s happening in the show as canon. That’s what’s great, when someone else looks at your work and then translates it in some fashion.” He even admits to feeling a little jealous, adding, “I sort of looked at it like, ‘Ah, why didn’t we do that?“
That jealousy would be directed towards Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the husband and wife team who developed the Fallout story for television. They were behind the hit show Westworld and are back at it with Fallout. If anyone was going to take on an adaption that would leave Howard happy it was these two. “The movies [Nolan] worked on are some of my favorites. And I’d heard that he liked video games, and had an eye for that stuff,” he said, “I’d said to somebody—and I won’t say who—but I was taking a meeting with another producer, and said: ‘Before I talk to other people, I want to hear that Jonah Nolan says he’ll never do it.'”
Nolan was interested but did not simply want to recreate one of the stories in the game but create a new story altogether, which worked out just fine for Howard, “I was interested in someone telling a unique Fallout story. Treat it like a game. It gives the creators of the series their own playground to play in.”
The entire first season of Fallout is now available to watch on Amazon Prime Video.
(featured image: Prime Video)
Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com
