Fallout Season One

In short: It’s weird. It’s gross. It’s brutal.

Which means it’s Fallout! Good work, team.

Fallout (2024) is the new Amazon series based on the beloved oddball-apocalyptic video game franchise of the same name. In the Fallout universe, the mid-twentieth century saw a rise in retro-futurist technology (think chrome, robot servants, and inventions that look like jukeboxes) before the Cold War got hot. Much of civilization fell immediately. Some survived on the surface, irradiated and miserable. And some… some went into the Vaults, town-sized fallout shelters scattered all across these United States…

The show starts with one such vault, Vault 33, and the Maclean family, an upbeat squad of Vault-dwellers anxiously awaiting the day they can recolonize the surface. Then, you know, some stuff happens… and they get to see the surface for themselves.

One of our other main characters is Maximus, an initiate in paramilitary group called the Brotherhood of Steel, wasteland-dwellers who horde pre-war technology to dominate what’s left of the world. Maximus, too, dreams of a noble quest.

Then there’s the undead gunslinger in black: the Ghoul.

The series is an excellent ride across the Fallout world, falling somewhere on the the spectrum between Mad Max and The Boys. And while the show delivers on pure entertainment, for people familiar with the Fallout series’ themes and patterns, it’s impressive how well it embodies those ideas while creating something new.

4.5 severed heads out of 5. Season One is streaming now. Season Two has just been confirmed.