While the bulk of Fallout on Prime Video deals with the — you’re never going to believe this — fallout from the atomic destruction of the world, there are also copious flashbacks to the time before the world fell. And while most of Season 2 has been spent hinting at Barb Howard (Frances Turner) and Vault-tec being behind the bomb drops, in Episode 5, “The Wrangler,” we discover there’s another possibility. Spoilers past this point, but if Vault-tec isn’t behind the end of the world, and it’s not Robert House (Justin Theroux)… Then who is?
To give some background here, Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) has discovered Vault-tec’s plot to potentially pre-drop bombs in order to goose their profits. He’s also been told that Vault-tec is making a deal with Robert House, whose finger will be on the button when they drop said bombs. But when Cooper and his wife travel to Vegas, her to make a deal for cold fusion, him to find out what Robert House is up to and kill him, we find out something entirely different is going on.
As House explains, his destiny is “mathematically” entwined with Howard. Not only that, he was watching through Howard’s power armor when he encountered a Deathclaw, back during the war in Alaska years earlier. House believes that the “demon in the snow” as he calls it, is all connected to the future of America — and Howard’s wife.
What does this all mean? House continues that “I know everything,” and he works to acquire technology thanks to his mathematical prediction models. This week? Cold fusion, which will allow him to stay alive “indefinitely” in “roboticized, non-biological form” in order to protect Las Vegas from “the coming nuclear war.”
“Initiated by my wife,” Howard says.
“Hmm… Unclear,” House answers.
“By Vault-tec then,” Howard continues.
“No, I doubt that,” House says, “Despite what we both heard in that meeting, Vault-tec is a collision of bureaucrats. Your wife though? I don’t know.”
Howard muses that House said he knew everything, with House explaining that he regularly runs mathematical models to predict future events. “One spring morning,” the data told House that the world will end, and in fact the date was predicted as well: April 14, 2065, at 5:17 am. That, it turns out, is Cooper’s daughter’s birthday.
That’s pretty weird, and also weird is that Cooper, according to House’s models, was not meant to be in Vegas… Barbara was supposed to be there alone. As soon as Cooper bought a ticket to Vegas, the date the world ends jumped forward a month… Which clearly means Cooper is somehow central to the end of the world.
Cooper isn’t buying any of it, and swerves the conversation by explaining he’s been sent to kill House because it’s believed House is the one who will end the world.
“No,” House says, smiling. “Bombs will not be dropped by me, or any of the idiots at that meeting. But I believe… I believe there is another player at the table. The same unknown entity responsible for your demon in the snow.”
“Who?” asks Cooper.
“I don’t know,” House says. The House always wins, but what if “I’m not the House?”
Cooper gets fed up, and we’re left with House shouting after him, “Who ends the world, Mr. Howard? Is it you? What if it is you?”
So… That preamble out of the way: Does Cooper Howard end the world? And if not him, who?
Who Is Responsible For The End Of The World In Fallout? Meet The Enclave
Well first of all, we know exactly when the first bombs dropped: October 23, 2077, at 9:42am ET. And to be clear, House isn’t saying that the bombs were going to drop in 2065, just that the series of events leading to the end of the world began with Cooper’s daughter’s birth.
It also will be China that fires the first strike, with the United States retaliating. None of that necessarily is a question, thanks to information laid out throughout the Fallout video games.
But what House is suggesting is that some other party other than Vault-tec is manipulating things behind the scenes. Given his tease about the importance of the Deathclaws, and that we know they kill Chinese soldiers easily, it’s not China.
Let’s throw out some potential spoilers for the TV show, from the games. Deathclaws were indeed genetically engineered by the United States government in order to replace human soldiers, but their origins are shrouded somewhat in mystery. The entity who created them, and likely the manipulators House doesn’t know about? The Enclave.
They’re a faction secretly controlling things in America, were the main villains of multiple Fallout games, and you might have forgotten, have already appeared in part on the TV show… They were the organization behind Siggi Wilzig’s (Michael Emerson) experiments with cold fusion in Season 1, which kicked off the whole action of the series.
Is this fascist shadow government of the United States behind everything? Yes, almost definitely. But as for how they become embroiled with Cooper/The Ghoul in the “past” and “present” of Fallout, or why Cooper is so important to begin with? Well, we’ll have to keep watching to find out.
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*
Where To Watch Fallout
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