Fallout Season 2 has kicked off with two of its three main characters arriving on the outskirts of New Vegas, as expected, and while there's plenty for fans of the games to feast their eyes on, not everything is exactly as they remember it. Just as in Fallout's first season, there are a lot of subtle nudges and winks to the iconic post-apocalyptic game series, but Dinky the Dinosaur is a prime example of one way the show breaks tradition.
The first season of Fallout proved to be incredibly successful, winning Best Adaptation at both The Game Awards and The Golden Joystick Awards, along with challenging J.R.R. Tolkien-inspired The Rings of Power for the top spot among Amazon Prime Video's most watched original programs in the platform's history. While only one of the eight planned episodes for Season 2 has been sent live so far, the second season has the potential to be even bigger, with Fallout Season 2 beating Season 1 on Rotten Tomatoes.
Fallout Season 2 Needs Cazadores as Much as It Does Deathclaws
Fallout season 2 will be including one of the series' most famous foes, but there's another that should also definitely appear.
How Fallout Season 2 Episode 1 Pays Homage to the Games
In Fallout: New Vegas, Dinky is one of the most iconic sights outside the strip itself. Located in the former motel-turned-town of Novac, which is named for its partially lit "No Vacancy" sign, a large tyrannosaurus statue named Dinky stands just inside the chain-like fence, taking a chomp out of a second motel sign and staring out at the wasteland. The inside of the statue is hollowed out, and one of Fallout: New Vegas' best companions, Craig Boone, makes use of the inside of Dinky's mouth as a sniper nest.
Spoilers for Fallout Season 2 Episode 1 Below
Following a long Season 1 recap, the second season of the show opens with a pre-war flashback before taking the action to Novac, where The Ghoul has been captured by Fallout: New Vegas faction The Great Khans and has a makeshift noose fastened around his neck. Fortunately, this is all a ploy set up by The Ghoul and Lucy, the latter of whom is waiting with Dogmeat inside Dinky's mouth, ready with a sniper rifle to shoot through the rope and free her traveling companion. And while this scene may bring back a lot of nostalgia from the 2010 classic RPG, it also sets off alarms in the lore purist part of my brain, since this sniper shot towards the hotel pool is only possible because Dinky is facing the wrong way. It's still a fantastic way to reintroduce the main characters, aside from Maximus, who is oddly left out of the entire hour-long episode save for the recap, and I can appreciate the attention to detail even if the inaccuracy does leave me with a little bit of a twitch.
There are plenty of other allusions to the games contained just within that scene. Obviously, the Khans are there, and while their presence in the Mojave is well documented by Fallout: New Vegas, their namesake and horn-helmeted iconography depicted in the show actually traces all the way back to the descendants of California's Vault 15 in the first Fallout game, where they kidnapped Shady Sands resident and future NCR president Tandi. The scene takes a turn after The Ghoul's hanging commences, with Lucy breaking from the plan in order to announce her presence and try to find a peaceful solution to the encounter, a callback to popular pacifist runs in Fallout games. And once the fight goes full throttle, including The Ghoul reverse-pickpocketing a grenade onto a Great Khan, one of the best songs on Radio New Vegas, Marty Robbins' Big Iron, provides the underscoring.
There are plenty of other fun game references scattered throughout the episode. In a flashback, The Ghoul's pre-war persona, Cooper Howard, has a secret meeting with Moldaver in a restaurant, while his daughter plays a Whac-A-Commie arcade game, which was first introduced in the Nuka-World DLC for Fallout 4. Additionally, a branch location of the Starlight Drive-In, one of the biggest settlement locations in Fallout 4, is visited by Lucy and The Ghoul, along with the ruins of Vault 24, a cut content location from Fallout: New Vegas. Also, Vault 33 continues its struggles with the malfunctioning water chip, which was the catalyst for the original Vault Dweller leaving Vault 13 in the first game.
Going back to the Dinky scene, there's one more possible reference that has fans scratching their heads. The Ghoul mentions that before the Khans moved in, he knew a woman named Darla who ran a store in Novac, which may be a reference to the tourist attraction's gift shop. There is no Darla in Fallout: New Vegas, but there is one minor Fallout 4 character who shares that name. Since those games take place five years apart, it's possible they could be one and the same, but considering she would have had to find a way from Nevada to Massachusetts, fans will have to wait and see if the showrunnners reveal anything more about her.
- Release Date
- April 10, 2024
- Network
- Amazon Prime Video
- Showrunner
- Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan
- Directors
- Frederick E. O. Toye, Wayne Che Yip, Stephen Williams, Liz Friedlander, Jonathan Nolan, Daniel Gray Longino, Clare Kilner
- Writers
- Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan
Cast
-
Ella PurnellLucy MacLean -
Aaron MotenMaximus
Created by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Amazon Prime Video's Fallout is based on the post-apocalyptic RPG gaming franchise that started in the 1990s. Set hundreds of years after the Great War, Lucy leaves her Vault bunker to travel the Wasteland in search of her kidnapped father.
