The Fallout show is finally here, and it has a bigger impact on the franchise’s lore than anything we’ve seen in nearly a decade.
The most recent Fallout game was 2018’s Fallout 76, but that particular adventure took us back in time to 2102, just 25 years after the Great War ended the world. Before that we’d last left the Fallout universe in 2287 at the end of Fallout 4, and we hadn’t seen any part of the west coast wasteland since the end of Fallout: New Vegas, which is set in 2281.
The new Amazon series doesn’t count as Fallout 5, but it does make major strides forward in the timeline. It’s set in 2296 and takes us back to California, where it wastes no time in showing us what has changed since our last visit. Overall the wasteland may be the same as ever, but the devil’s in the details. Obviously, spoilers will follow.
What’s up with the Fallout ghoul serum?
This particular change isn’t necessarily tied to the show’s place in the Fallout timeline, but there appears to be some new things happening with ghouls. For one, we see that the Ghoul relies on a mysterious serum to keep himself from going feral. We know that other ghouls also use this serum, so its existence is apparently common knowledge. What we don’t know is how this serum actually works. The Ghoul asked for a 60 day supply of the drug, but when he gets the opportunity, he slurps up as many vials of the serum as possible. Is it something that needs to be rationed? Is it taken daily? We don’t really know, but I’d bet the show plays a little fast and loose with the rules here to turn the serum into a nice plot device from time to time.
The show also introduces a different new serum that transforms people into ghouls. The snake oil salesmen in the show proves that he’s not entirely a scam artist when he gives Squire Thaddeus a “foot serum” that actually regrows his lost appendage. Thaddeus goes on to find out that he’s basically invulnerable to physical damage, and he thinks he’s turning into a ghoul – though we don’t have confirmation of that fact just yet. There’s a lot we don’t know about the Fallout ghoul serum, but speculating about things like this is half the fun of watching the show anyway, so I’m not complaining.
Let’s be honest, the lore about ghouls has always been a little nebulous. Most ghouls have been affected by extreme radiation, but in the early Fallout games, Harold called himself a ghoul even though he was actually afflicted with FEV. In Fallout 4 Hancock uses a drug cocktail to transform himself into a ghoul. For the most part ghouls are immortal, but obviously we’ve been able to blow them to bits before now. They also aren’t the only immortals in Fallout‘s lore. Fallout 4 has its own “mysterious serum” made from the blood of Lorenzo Cabot that seemingly grants immortality without all the nasty side effects of ghoulification. Clearly the show is just adding complications to all this lore with its Fallout ghoul serum, as a way of laying the groundwork for a deeper exploration of ghouls in another season.
The New California Republic isn’t the same
This is bound to be the most controversial change that the show makes to the lore. When we last saw the NCR in New Vegas, they were stretched thin and struggling to fully maintain all of their territory. By 2296, the NCR has almost completely dissolved. Its former capital, Shady Sands, has been nuked by Vault-Tec, and there are indications that the government wasn’t doing that well even before the bombing.
Of course, the NCR isn’t gone completely. Some of the Shady Sands survivors have moved into Vault 4. Moldaver is also leading a fragment of the faction at the Griffith Observatory. She’s trying to set up a cold fusion reactor as a source of endless electricity, so there are presumably still NCR citizens in need of power – even though we don’t really see them. There’s also some hints that the NCR still has some remnants in the Mojave…
New Vegas is in rough shape
We get a tiny glance at New Vegas at the very end of season 1, and it doesn’t look great. The walls surrounding the city are crumbling, and the buildings look noticeably more destroyed than they did in Fallout: New Vegas. The city used to be surrounded by other settlements, but now it looks like most of the population has abandoned the area.
The finale’s closing credits give us a peek at the Vegas strip, and we see a crashed NCR vertibird among the casinos. From that, we can pretty safely imply that the fight over the Mojave continued after the end of New Vegas. Right now, the show hasn’t confirmed what the canon ending of Obsidian’s game is, but it likely will have to in season 2 if we’re going to be spending any time in New Vegas.
