Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0
4
During Fallout Season 1, there was this constant question at the back of our heads: who was Steph before the vaults?
It was a question that we ignored for the longest time, knowing that there was a threat, but not a big enough one to be concerned about.
Things changed on Fallout Season 2 Episode 4, and now she has become the villain we need to keep an eye on, and not just for those in Vault 32.
It added to an intriguing episode that made up for the filler that most of Fallout Season 2 Episode 3 felt like, and now we’re ready for more.
Steph Is the Real Villain
Okay, there are a lot of questions about House, but he wasn’t seen at all on Fallout Season 2 Episode 4. The past storyline focused on the machine’s failures and the realization that not all monsters are post-apocalyptic.
The villain of this episode has been lurking in the shadows. Steph is from Vault 31, which means she knows about Bud’s plan, and she likely knows that Vault-Tec dropped the bombs.
At first, she looked a little like an incompetent Overseer, but this episode proves that she has something bigger going on.
As Betty comes to her for help for a water source, Steph shows her true colors — she’s not helping them, and the “experiment’s over.”
Was she ever interested in the experiment, or was she just someone who found a way to survive the nuclear fallout?
After watching this, part of me believes the latter, and everyone should think twice about questioning her.
I’m getting some Game of Thrones vibes when it comes to Woody questioning Steph about being outside the vault door. This was not something to do, as Steph is Cersei, and she knows that the only way to thrive is to kill.
It makes her the real villain, but it also reminds us that we need some sort of backstory.
There’s a tease of one toward the end of the vault scenes on Fallout Season 2 Episode 4, as Chet finds Steph’s old purse and ID that shows she was from Canada — an annexed part of the United States that feels a little too realistic at this point — and I have to question why she kept all that?
Maybe they all did, because Steph wants a keepsake Hank had, suggesting there’s something from the past that will help her. The plot thickens with this one, and I’m excited to see how it plays out.
Don’t Do Drugs!
As if we needed a reminder other than Euphoria about why not to do drugs, Fallout Season 2 gives us one as well.
Now, in Lucy’s defense, she didn’t mean to get hooked on drugs. It happened while recovering from the events of the previous episode.
However, The Ghoul got her to take more drugs instead of going through the withdrawals, and I get it at this point in the story. The journey that they have is already perilous, and having someone going through withdrawals is not a good idea.
At the same time, having someone who is willing to kill absolutely everyone and anyone is also not a good idea. That’s what Lucy becomes!
Seeing her shoot and kill every ghoul she finds was certainly a highlight of the episode, and watching The Ghoul’s mixed emotions as it happened was even better.
I continue to believe that The Ghoul is keeping Lucy around because he sees part of himself in her, and he wants to get back to what made him wide-eyed and full of hope in the past. That doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy her loving every minute of the kill.
In an episode that was on the heavier side with fights breaking out and the reminder of the real villains, we needed something to add humor to the story, and that’s what the Lucy-Ghoul moments did.
However, it all came back to that flashback. What the hell is that monster, and who created it?
I don’t think we’ve ever seen The Ghoul look so scared.
Maximus Still Has His Soul
The idea of Thaddius pretending to be Xander and getting away with it for so long was just absurd. There is no way that anyone would have believed that was Xander.
But they did, because that was the only way to keep the story going. After all, Maximus had to get back to Area 51.
Knowing that there would likely be a civil war due to the death of Xander, Maximus had to take matters into his own hands, and that was to kill Quintas. This would help to prevent other deaths because the leader of the clan that killed Xander was gone.
However, Maximus couldn’t go through with it, and we get to see just how good a man he is. He kills when he needs to — when he feels like he genuinely has no choice.
It doesn’t mean that he wants to kill! He was raised long enough by good parents, and there’s a part of him that wants to be praised by their memory.
At the same time, he wants to do Quintas proud. As awful as the man is, he took Maximus in when he didn’t need to, and Maximus does feel like he owes him.
We see all that play out as Maximus realizes that he can’t kill Quintas, even when he’s being shot at.
There’s also a sense of respect between Dane and Maximus again.
For the first couple of episodes of Fallout Season 2, the two weren’t on the best of terms, with Dane judging Maximus for what he needed to do.
In the end, Dane knew that Maximus had to be the one to get the cold fusion relic out of the Brotherhood’s hands, and finally, there’s a chance that we’ll see Maximus and Lucy team back up again, because their partnership was so heartwarming during the first season.
Fallout Season 2 Episode 4 makes up for the slightly filler episode that Episode 3 was, and it’s a great way to get us to the halfway point of the season.
Fallout Season 2 airs on Wednesdays on Prime Video.
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The story slows down considerably on Fallout Season 2 Episode 3 until the very end. We do get to meet Macaulay Culkin’s character, though!
As we get a little more backstory on Maximus, we see how much of a broken man he’s becoming on Fallout Season 2 Episode 2.
The Ghoul and Lucy have teamed up on Fallout Season 2 to find Hank for their own reasons. There’s more to it than that, though!
