Fallout Season 2 Episode 3 landed and honestly this episode took some wild turns specially with the Ghoul and I was just looking at IMDB scores and they are kinda bad, I really though this was a more accepted Season by fans but that doesnt seem to be the case. There are soome real frustrating ones when it comes to Maximus and I think this is no secret because I really dont like the guy, how easily he gets manipulated by anyone who throws him a bone. Episode 3 showed us how easily Maximus can be twisted around by just about anyone in power and watching it happen piss me off but you can argue at the end he will remain a good guy but at what cost??, first he wants to kill Harkness because Quintus basically bullies him into thinking that way then he falls under the charm of the very same guy he was supposed to take out all because Harkness butters him up and makes him feel important for once in his miserable life, but what really got me is when they went on that smashing robot rampage like it was nothing, you could see Maximus was having the time of his life forgetting everything else that mattered and that scene with them destroying those securitrons with the super sledge hammer was pretty fun to watch but it also showed how lost this guy is, he has no core of his own and just latches onto whoever gives him attention. Then came the child labor factory run by Thaddeus and when Harkness wanted to kill all those ghoul kids just because they were ghouls Maximus finally did something on his own, something that came from inside him not from orders or manipulation, he killed Harkness with that hammer and it was brutal but necessary because at least for one moment we saw the good person his father wanted him to be buried under all that weakness and need for approval. That decision right there might be the first real choice Maximus has made this whole season and it came at a hell of a price because now he is alone again, no mentor figure telling him what to do or think, probably started a civil war too witch is not great.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12637874/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
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The whole episode really does a number on showing you how messed up the wasteland is with its factions and power struggles going on everywhere you look, we got the Legion doing their thing with the civil war over who should be the next Caesar witch was hilarious in a very dark way because of how Macaulay Culkin plays his character. Lucy ends up on a cross because she tried to save some lady who immediately got her head chopped off the moment they arrived at the Legion camp, that whole situation was frustrating because the Ghoul warned her not to trust these people but Lucy being Lucy with her golden rule nonsense had to go and help anyway. The Legot that Macaulay Culkin plays is funny as hell though, calling Caesar Kaiser and Lucy correcting his Latin was great, she pointed out how they are cosplaying Romans but getting all the details wrong witch made them look like idiots. The whole Prima Noctis conversation was awkward and uncomfortable but in the right ways I would say, because Lucy just kept roasting them about how they dont know what they are talking about and mixing up Roman traditions with medieval ones, she even brings up the cousin stuff from season one witch made me lough, Lucy is kinda very promiscuous but also reminded me how weird her vault was with all that inbreeding going on.
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Thaddeus showing up again was a nice surprise since the actor said he was not going to be in season two, turns out he is running a bottle cap mining operation with a bunch of kids including ghoul children and treating them relatively well compared to what you would expect in the wasteland. He has them taking caps off from bottles witch is currency in Fallout, I look up the brand and its "Sunset Sarsaparilla", he is basically using child labor but in the nicest way possible if that makes any sense, he tells them they are lucky to be alive because most kids are dead by their age witch is dark but also true in this world. When Harkness and Maximus show up and destroy the securitron protecting the place things go south real quick, I honestly thought it was separate locations at first but then figure out that is how their "mining" operation has lasted for so long, Harkness wants to separate the human kids from the ghoul kids and you immediately know what he is about to do. The Brotherhood hates ghouls and does not care if they are feral or not, they see all ghouls as abominations that need to be wiped out because they represent the misuse of technology from the bombs that dropped during the great war, its nice that the show did not shy away from that even though it makes them look like monsters, then Maximus begs Harkness to stop but Harkness will not listen, he is about to execute these children in cold blood and thats when Maximus snaps and crushes his skull with the super sledge, it was a shocking moment and probably the most important thing Maximus has done this entire show because it came from his own moral compass and not from someone telling him what to do.
Cooper Howard continues to be the focus of this show with his flashbacks giving us more data dump about what happened before the bombs dropped, we see him at a veterans meeting with his buddy Charlie who fought with him in the battle of Anchorage during the war against the communists. Charlie is part of the resistance group trying to stop the corporations from destroying the world and he wants Cooper to kill Robert House because they think House is the one planning to drop the bombs, Cooper does not want to do it and keeps saying there has to be another way but you can tell he is conflicted. The scene in the bathroom where Cooper meets the real Robert House was very weird to be honest but still play out, House knows everything including the fact that Cooper and Charlie are part of the resistance and he basically tells Cooper that he is not the bad guy everyone thinks he is. House also talks about how when you back billions of people into a corner they will all try to solve the same problem at the same time with different solutions witch is exactly what is happening with the corporations and Vault Tec planning for the apocalypse and at the Vaults with others trying to figure out how to escape, the way House says it makes it sound like he is not the one who is going to press the button and maybe it will be someone else entirely like maybe Coopers wife Barbara who works for Vault Tec. That would be a hell of a twist if Cooper finds out his wife is the one who actually started the great war and not House, it would explain why he is so broken and cynical in the present day because he failed to stop the person closest to him from destroying the world.
The ending of the episode ties everything together with Cooper saving Lucy from the Legion by starting their civil war, he sets off explosives that cause both factions to start fighting each other witch gives Lucy and the NCR rangers a chance to escape, I really though he was giving up the NCR, I bet was a surprise for everyone he didnt because it just fits perfectly with his character. Cooper uses the lighter that Charlie gave him at the veterans ceremony to light the fuse witch is symbolic because Charlie told him that he got the lighter for saving a man but not for killing the three it took to do it, its about doing bad things for good reasons and Cooper is doing exactly that by sacrificing the Legion to save Lucy and the NCR even though he sold them out earlier to get Lucy freed. The whole theme of the episode is about morality and whether doing something bad to achieve something good is justified, both Cooper and Maximus make choices that will have huge consequences later on because Cooper might have made the Legion situation worse once someone wins the civil war and Maximus definitely started a war with the Commonwealth by killing Harkness. Overall I have to admit this episode was solid with some great character moments for Maximus and Cooper but also some frustrating stuff with Lucy making dumb decisions again, I give it a 7.5 out of 10 because it moved the story forward and set up some big things for later, the series is very cartoonish at times and I guess thats something people were not expecting as they though this would be an action series but it has demonstrated its a more in between comedy, drama and some action.
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