The second season of Amazon Prime\u2019s Fallout series debuts later today, but reviews for the post-apocalyptic atom-punk show are pouring in now\u2014and the vibes seem mostly positive, aside from concerns over the story expanding in too many different directions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Picking up exactly where season one left off (with Ella Purnell\u2019s Lucy and Walton Goggins\u2019 Ghoul setting off in pursuit of Lucy\u2019s evil dad), Fallout\u2019s second season takes us to what many players believe is the setting of the best game in the franchise: New Vegas. Goggins\u2019 world-weary and cynical Ghoul and Purnell\u2019s wide-eyed and naive Lucy are a match made in Western heaven, and it seems that their dynamic still feels fresh in this new season\u2014though critics only got to see six out of the eight episodes in season two.<\/p>\n
Whereas season one spent a lot of time setting the scene and building the audience\u2019s connections to the lead characters (who also include Aaron Moten\u2019s Maximus, a rookie soldier in the Brotherhood of Steel), Fallout\u2019s latest installment focuses on the apocalyptic wastelands\u2019 competing factions and their leaders. Much like in the games, their conflicting ideologies and consistent tensions make the wasteland even trickier to navigate, but it seems the time spent on these various factions dilutes the adventures of the three leads: Lucy, the Ghoul, and Maximus.<\/p>\n
There appear to be numerous flashbacks to the pre-apocalypse in this season, focusing on Goggins\u2019 pre-Ghoul identity of Cooper Howard, who spies on his wife and her work with the Vault-Tec corporation. According to Andrew Webster at The Verge<\/a>, the show ensures that the cause of the nuclear wasteland is abundantly clear: greedy tech execs: \u201cFallout is never subtle with its social satire and that remains true here. The end of the world is brought about by a group of tech oligarchs who wield too much power, and as one character muses early on, \u2018every dollar spent is a vote cast.\u2019 Board meetings show billionaires salivating at the business opportunities that come with the apocalypse.\u201d I wonder what Amazon\u2019s Jeff Bezos thinks about that.<\/p>\n In IGN\u2019s review,<\/a> Matt Purlow writes that Fallout season two is \u201cstructured more akin to Game of Thrones,\u201d with \u201cmultiple other concurrent storylines that make Fallout feel like the story of the wasteland itself as much as it is the tale of the key characters.\u201d This results in a \u201cvery packed season\u201d with \u201cinevitable casualties,\u201d mostly notably of which are the stories of the vault dwellers, whose silliness Purlow feels is at odds with the rest of the season\u2019s tone.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what other reviewers had to say about Fallout season two, which is currently sitting at a 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> with just 28 scored reviews in:<\/p>\n I worry that Fallout\u2019s downward spiral will only continue. As Westworld soldiered on, the world got bigger, but the story got more generic. By the time HBO canceled Westworld\u2014on a major unresolved cliffhanger!\u2014it didn\u2019t seem like anyone even cared where it was all headed. Fallout risks going down the same path. The last few episodes of season 2 might correct that course (season 3 is also already greenlit, for what it\u2019s worth) but if not, Nolan may develop an unfortunate reputation for setting up exciting sci-fi TV shows that fail to pan out. \u2013 Jake Kleinman, <\/strong>Polygon\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Though all the storylines aren\u2019t as compelling as the others, the series\u2019 structure and pacing keep it moving so the audience doesn\u2019t completely lose interest. For viewers who are well-versed in the Fallout game universe, seeing Easter eggs around New Vegas and various factions coming to life on screen for the first time undoubtedly adds a level of interest and delight that may go over the heads of newcomers. \u2013 Aramide Tinubu,<\/strong> Vanity Fair<\/strong><\/p>\n Fallout remains a show that glories in high contrast visuals, emotions and characters. There is no shortage of new disgusting ways for the people of this irradiated world to get maimed and die, and no shortage of new mutant creatures for Lucy, Ghoul and Maximus to have to battle, either. Both Parnell and Moten have settled comfortably into their roles, and the latter feels distinctly more natural as buttoned-up Maximus this time around. \u2014 Kelly Lawyer, <\/strong>USA Today<\/strong><\/p>\n Bogged down with world-building, Season 2 feels as if the Amazon Prime Video executives know they\u2019ve got a hit on their hands and can\u2019t help but game out a Fallout universe<\/a> filled with spinoffs and sequels, even though they still need to develop the characters who first got viewers invested in a post-apocalyptic society that\u2019s still controlled by corporate interests. \u2014 Ben Travers, <\/strong>Indie Wire<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The comparisons to Westworld and Game of Thrones certainly have me worried, but I\u2019ll weigh in myself when I can watch Fallout season two with my own eyes\u2014you know, the same ones that actually liked the <\/a>Halo<\/a> TV series<\/a> (eesh).\u00a0<\/p>\n Fallout season two episodes air every Wednesday on Prime Video, starting today, December 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The second season of Amazon Prime\u2019s Fallout series debuts later today, but reviews for the post-apocalyptic atom-punk show…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":451478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[9127,171,37740,207313,207314,173,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-451477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-amazon-prime","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-fallout","11":"tag-fallout-tv","12":"tag-new-vegas","13":"tag-tv","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115730731781952291","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n