Episode 6 of Fallout Season 2 is one of those times where stuff is building up for the finale but there is not really those big flashy moments that make you feel the dopamine rush of a good episode, its more like the quiet before everything explodes and you know its coming but you still have to sit through all the setup. The whole reveal of the Enclave being the other player was probably the biggest thing here and look I will admit I was not as familiar with them as I have never play any of the games so for me this was actually a surprise even though everyone online was calling it episodes ago because it was just obvious but this is the thing adaptations that brings in a new audience although sometimes doesnt match the game fans and the story splits from the lore. Turns out Enclave is this big bad organization that has been pulling strings from behind the scenes and now we get Ron Perlman showing up as a super mutant who talks about them like they are the real villains in all this mess. The ghoul surviving been implate from last episode was wild I mean the dude got completely run through and just laid there for what looks like a full day on some random sidewalk with nobody bothering to help, classic wasteland stuff really, people just walking by him like he is a piece of trash on the street witch shows how messed up everyones sense of humanity has become in this world, you can tell he did try his hardes to get out of that situation when he just pulls himself up trying to think of why he has done all this but its just too much for his strengh and gave up, ready to stay there fro who knows how long or just die.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12637874/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
[Source](https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/0KBDY8OBBE3Y0RV5FOQH96H3N6)
Him getting saved by a super mutant who apparently has some intelligence and talks about the war was interesting, I did not know super mutants could be like that because all we have seen are the very violent ones but seems they can have full conversations and even have there own agendas tied to the Enclave witch is cool to see, the super mutant heals him with what looks like some radioactive rock probably uranium I would guess and it sounds crazy although wouldnt be strange thats just how things work in the Fallout universe and he even mentions how the Enclave created super mutants and drove them to extinction, so theres this whole backstory about these experiments that went wrong and now the mutants are trying to fight back against the people who made them into monsters in the first place. The real meat of this episode though is Lucy and Hank because watching Lucy wrestle with this moral question about free will versus safety is exactly where her character needed to go after everything she has been through this season, she spent so long believing in one version of the world and now that is all falling apart on her, so when she sees her dad putting control chips in people to make them civilized and good she wants to reject it at first but then reality hits her in the face. She opens those doors tells people they can leave but nobody wants to go because they are happy being controlled, they have food and shelter and peace even if it means giving up there freedom, then when those two Legion guys who have not been processed yet start fighting each other with a damn stapler Lucy caves and pushes the button to save them both.
That moment where they reset and decide to help each other instead of killing each other is when you see Lucy questioning everything, like maybe her dad is not completly wrong about this aproach even if it feels so wrong, the show is doing a great job making you question what is right or wrong in this world because nothing is black and white here, its all shades of gray and Lucy is right in the middle trying to figure out where she stands on all of it, after all she had to press the button. I think the philosophical side of Fallout has always been interesting but seeing it play out with actual characters you care about makes it feel different, Lucy has always been the moral center of the show but now even she is starting to see that maybe survival requires some ugly choices, what the Ghoul has been trying to explain her all this time but probably not in the best way, Hank explains to her that people in the wasteland just want to kill each other over nothing, they fight over bottlecaps and scraps of food and they will never stop unless someone makes them stop, his solution is to take away there ability to choose violence by programming them to be good, witch sounds like something out of a dystopian nightmare but when you look at the alternative of endless bloodshed you start to see his point even if you dont want to admit it. The show makes reference to that book All Quiet on the Western Front witch Lucy was reading, Hank asks her what she thought about it and she says the most troubling part was that everyone seemed to be fighting over nothing, witch is exactly what Hank sees happening in the wasteland every single day, factions killing each other for petty reasons while the world burns around them.
Source
Hank surrendering to her and admitting he should face justice for Shady Sands was a huge moment too but I cannot tell if that is for real or if he is just playing her to get her on his side, I mean the obvious is that he is playing the fool but its like he is actually trying to teach her and make her go through that process herself and giving up is basically forcing her to take action, either way it seems to be working because Lucy looked conflicted as hell about the whole thing, she puts him in handcuffs and tells him they are going back to Vault 33 so he can stand trial but then he asks her to just let him explain what he has been doing here and calls it redemptive, Lucy does not want to hear it but you can tell part of her is curious about whether her dad can actually be redeemed after everything he has done. The flashback scenes with Barb were probably the most important part of the episode for understanding how we got to this point, we see her at VaultTec watching highlight reels of bomb blasts and talking about marketing strategies for there vaults, the whole meeting is disgusting because they are discussing premium freeway lanes for people trying to escape the bombs and talking about how there water chips will fail in a third of the vaults like its no big deal, these people are literal savages and Barb is sitting there trying to keep it together while her coworkers just casually plan the end of the world, but probably the most important data dump is that she did not come up with the idea to drop the bombs herself, someone from the Enclave told her to plant that idea in the board meeting so she was being used as a puppet by an even bigger organization that we still dont know much about yet, this makes her slightly more sympathetic because she was being threatened and forced into doing these things to protect her family but it does not excuse the fact that she went along with it.
The episode ends with the Ghoul getting dropped off by the super mutant after getting healed and he runs into Maximus and his buddy Thaddeus, so now we got some of the crew coming back together witch means Lucy is probably next and that reunion with Maximus is going to be something because for the most part I find Maximus annoying AF but it would be also interesting how Lucy is going to react since they hit it off the last time. Maximus still has the cold fusion thing that everyone is after and Thaddeus is trying to convince him to just sell it for caps instead of trying to find a good person to give it to but thats the Ghoul talking probably. There is this whole debate between them about whether good people even exist in the wasteland or if thats just something rich vault dwellers can afford to be because they grew up with food and safety. Thaddeus makes a good point when he says he would be a good person too if he grew up on a mountain of supplies in some protected vault but instead he grew up in the boneyard on the hole side witch sounds terrible the way he tries to explain it, meanwhile Maximus keeps insisting that he saw good people in Shady Sands before it got nuked so he knows its possible for people to be decent even in the wasteland, this whole conversation goes along the themes about morality and whether humans are naturally violent or if there environment makes them that way. Overall this was a solid episode even if it was not my favorite, everything it is doing is setting up what I think is going to be an insane finale, the pacing felt a bit slow compared to last week but I understand they need to move pieces into place for the endgame, plus we got a ton of data dump about the Enclave and super mutants and Barbs role in everything witch makes me exited to see how it all comes together in the last two episodes.
#skiptvads, #inleo, #hive, #fallout, #recap, #season, #episode, #lucy, #hank, #ghoul, #enclave, #wasteland, #vault, #maximus, #barb, #control, #survival, #mutant, #vegas, #choices, #morality, #violence, #humanity, #future, #television, #gaming, #adaptation, #finale