Prime Video’s Fallout plays a little too close to its own name in Season 2, dealing with the – excuse me – fallout of the events of the first season, but taking its sweet time to get past the hangover. There’s still some extremely fun world-building in here, darkly comic moments, and great central performances from Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins. But the video game adaptation’s second season plays to its strengths, while the faults grow wider thanks to some sections of the series that just don’t quite work.
It’s only been a year and a half since the first season of Fallout hit the streamer, a relatively tight turnaround in a time when there are two or sometimes even more years between seasons of TV. But to review anyway, after the world was ostensibly destroyed in a nuclear holocaust in a retro-future 2077, what was left of humanity survived in vaults, channeling the okey-dokey hokey feeling of the gee whiz 1950s, albeit with a bit more tech. Over two hundred years later, Lucy (Purnell) journeys outside her vault, only to discover the world is a whole lot more populated than she thought.
Her main foil? The Ghoul (Goggins), a noseless cowboy who she both grapples with and then, by the end of Season 1, ultimately agrees to team up with. Meanwhile, there are a lot more balls in the air, like what’s going on back at the vaults, an all-male army based society called the Brotherhood of Steel, and Lucy’s runaway father, played by Kyle MacLachlan. Plus, thanks to copious flashbacks, we’ve discovered that before he was The Ghoul, he was Cooper Howard, a famous actor far more tied to the end of the world than even he may know.
Based on the six episodes provided to critics, the best part of the series continues to be stand-out performances by Purnell and Goggins, to the point that one wishes the show would lean into the Lone Wolf and Cub vibe entirely instead of trying to be post-apocalyptic Game of Thrones. Some of the other sections work, but given the main philosophical thrust of the show is whether there can be hope and justice in the Wasteland, which is what Lucy believes, or every man and creature is out for themselves, which is what The Ghoul believes, is tested with them at every turn, the rest of the show can often feel like the vestigial limb hanging off a radioactive mutant.
Some of the other sections work better than others this time around. While the sections involving Maximus (Aaron Moten) and the Brotherhood often felt like they were spinning their wheels last season, with Maximus still somewhat hapless but gaining power and confidence in Season 2, there seems to be real movement in that plotline. On the other hand, Lucy’s brother Norm (Moisés Arias) does what he can with a plot that finds him stuck in a neighboring vault at the end of the first season, and continuing to be stuck for most of Season 2. That plot works as a handy metaphor for everything happening with all the Vaulties… Without Lucy around, everyone seems to be stuck.
That’s particularly apparent when the action moves towards and then to the location of New Vegas, a burnt out wreck of what used to be Las Vegas. The show takes its sweet time getting there, but once it arrives there’s plenty of gnarly Ray Harryhausen style creatures wandering around, as well as the regular array of post-apocalyptic weirdos. That’s also, not coincidentally, part of (you’re not going to believe this) Purnell and Goggins’ storyline, and seeing how they interact with the new locales is a lot more fun than the umpteenth conversation about water conservation happening at the vaults.
One other issue that grows more apparent this season is that the show works best when it remembers to be funny – and when it does, it’s very funny – but doesn’t work quite as well when it leans into deathly seriousness. Unfortunately, Fallout Season 2 takes a little while to get its groove back, and it isn’t until the stand-out third episode that it really hits the ground running thanks to strong parallel themes for the Lucy/Ghoul storyline and what’s happening at the Brotherhood of Steel, as well introducing more of the sort of off-kilter post-apocalypse ideas that Fallout excels at thanks to an anachronistic group of battling Roman soldiers. But more often than not, thanks to a pounding score and grim line readings from most of the cast, the show can feel like just another vestige of the race to create the next Game of Thrones when the winner of that particular arms race was, well, more Game of Thrones.
There are other stand-out parts of the season. Justin Theroux guest stars as a sort of deranged Walt Disney, which is arguably his calling as an actor, finally realized. Johnny Pemberton returns as Brotherhood of Steel member Thaddeus, and once he does, the Maximus storyline immediately picks up due to the duo being a classic mismatched comedy pair. And there are hints of some interesting twists in MacLachlan’s storyline towards the end of the episodes screened, though he’s mostly in the proceedings to test Lucy’s moral fiber, rather than be a character in his own right.
On the flip side, the less said about the flashback sequences set in 2077, the better. There’s not a lot of tension in finding out how the world ended given that we know it did. And while Goggins tries his best as the earnest, pre-Ghoul Cooper, the sequences also feature a hideously digitally deaged Kyle MacLachlan, slow pacing, and plotlines that don’t offer much more information than what the characters are discovering at the same time in the “present.” They’re also part of that deadly serious bent we mentioned earlier that invariably drags the show down.
Does Fallout Season 2 have the juice to keep this show going long term? Maybe, maybe not. Even with the relatively tight turnaround between seasons, television is moving in different directions than the big cast blockbuster sci-fi drama it was clearly initially pitched as. The highs are high, even if the lows are lower this time around. But as far as Amazon and Bethesda are concerned, as long as the show keeps bumping up those sales of video games, who cares? Just maybe focus more tightly on that whole Lucy/Ghoul thing in further seasons, because they’re an atomic blast. The rest of the show? That’s just fallout.
Fallout Season 2 premieres Tuesday, December 16 at 9pm ET on Prime Video, with new episodes premiering weekly thereafter, unlike the binge drop of Season 1.
Fallout Season 2 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of Fallout Season 2 premiere Wednesdays on Prime Video at 3am ET / 12am PT, with the exception of the season premiere, which debuts early on Tuesday, December 16 at 9pm ET / 6pm PT.
Here’s the full list of episodes in Fallout Season 2 with premiere dates:
- Tuesday, December 16, 2025: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 1
- Wednesday, December 24, 2025: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 2
- Wednesday, December 31, 2025: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 3
- Wednesday, January 7, 2026: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 4
- Wednesday, January 14, 2026: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 5
- Wednesday, January 21, 2026: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 6
- Wednesday, January 28, 2026: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 7
- Wednesday, February 4, 2026: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 8 *Season Finale*
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