Ella Purnell’s time on Yellowjackets may be over, but she’s ready to set the world on fire in a new series for Amazon. Purnell joins Walton Goggins and Aaron Moten as the stars of a new show based on the long-running Fallout video-game franchise. Set in a dieselpunk post-nuclear wasteland, the Fallout games explore issues of morality, strategy, and how much Mad Max can inspire a work before you have to give out an associate-producer credit.
Bethesda director Todd Howard said on the Lex Fridman podcast that the show won’t directly adapt any of the games, but instead will go off-map. “For this, it was ‘Let’s do something that exists in the world of Fallout.’ It’s not retelling a game’s story. It’s basically an area of the map and like, Let’s tell a story here that fits in the world we built and doesn’t break any of the rules,†he said. “It can reference things in the games, but isn’t a retelling of the games. It exists in the same world, but it’s its own unique thing, so it adds to it.†Variety says that Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan will executive produce, fresh from Westworld getting sent to the Valley Beyond by HBO.
When/where will the Fallout series take place?
Various Fallout games have taken place in the irradiated ruins of California, West Virginia, Las Vegas, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Prime Video released a tweet showing people in jumpsuits for Vault 33, which has been identified as part of Los Angeles. Within the games, LA is known as the Boneyard. By 2296 (when the series takes place), the Boneyard has been “civilized†under the New Californian Republic’s flag for years. The Fallout series takes place after all the games, whose timelines give Jeremy Bearimy a run for its money (Fallout Shelter is Tuesdays, and also July, and sometimes never).
Who’s in the Fallout cast?
Per Variety, Purnell will be playing an “upbeat and uncannily direct†woman, with all-American gumption and a dangerous twinkle in her eye. That describes almost every female NPC in the games. Empire reports that Purnell will be a vault-dweller leaving her safe shelter for the first time ever. Aaron Moten will be playing Maximus, a member of the Brotherhood of Steel (like…techno-monks?). According to Deadline, Goggins is playing a ghoul — humans whose flesh has melted off owing to nuclear radiation. But an upside? They’re essentially immortal. At the show’s March 6 press conference, the crew revealed Goggins’s ghoul is known only as the Ghoul. “The Ghoul is, in some ways, the poet Virgil in Dante’s Inferno. He’s the guide, if you will, through this irradiated hellscape that we find ourselves in in this post-apocalyptic world,†Goggins said. Pre-Great War, the Ghoul was known as Cooper Howard, and he acted as spokesman for Vault-Tec, the shady corporation that built the series’s iconic vaults.
All three will be searching for the same MacGuffin. “We talked a lot about The Good, The Bad And The Ugly,†co-creator Graham Wagner told Empire. “That’s three characters in search of a box of gold, so we asked ourselves, ‘What’s the gold in this world?’†Chris Parnell, Michael Emerson, Zach Cherry, Kyle MacLachlan and Xelia Mendes-Jones have also been cast as series regulars.
Is this show gonna bum me out like The Last of Us?
Hopefully not. The crew made a point at the March 6 press conference to talk about how cathartic it is working on an apocalyptic show with a sense of humor. “I think you also have a moment that we’re in right now in which the world, you know, it seems to be evermore frightening and dour,†said executive producer and director Jonathan Nolan. “And so an opportunity for us to work on a show that gets to look that in the eye, right, and we get to talk about the end of the world, but to do it with a sense of humor. There’s a thread of optimism woven into the show.â€
Is there a trailer?
Funny you should ask. Not only is there a trailer, there are two trailers.
When does it start streaming?
Fallout comes to Prime Video a few days earlier than anticipated. On Monday, they announced the show will be streaming all eight episodes on April 10, 2024.
This story has been updated throughout.