There was some skepticism about the game “Fallout” being adapted for the small screen. Firstly because game adaptations often go wrong. Second, because the megalomania of this universe destroyed by nuclear war seemed improbable – it worked well as a game setting, but it was perhaps too much for a series.
However, about to reach its second season, Amazon Prime Video’s production shows that it has never been closer to the real world. Amid conflicts such as those over Ukraine and Gaza and the resumption of nuclear talks – whether in the military or energy context, given the demand for artificial intelligence – its themes have proven urgent.
“I hope people learn the obvious from the series: let’s not do something like that,” says Justin Theroux, who joins the production in the series of episodes which begins this Tuesday (16) in the role of Robert Edwin House, or Mr. House, an antagonist who rules part of the United States after the bombings.
“I don’t want to go into a political tirade, but the most terrifying thing in this post-apocalyptic world is indifference. And we are now seeing (in the real world) a kind of widespread brutalization and lack of humanity. That, to me, is worrying.”
Based on the game of the same name, “Fallout” in the first season told the story of the survival of three characters in the hostile and radioactive world left behind by a world war. The first of them, Lucy – Ella Purnell’s character – grew up in a bunker where life was like a fairy tale, but she had to leave it to go in search of her kidnapped father.
There is also Maximus, played by Aaron Moten, who was recruited as a child by a kind of cult that transforms its members into soldiers, and the Necrotic –The Ghoul– by Walton Goggins, a kind of embittered and violent undead, full of trauma from his pre-apocalypse life.
The actors were in Brazil a week ago for CCXP25, Latin America’s biggest pop culture trade show. Despite the express visit, they said they were delighted to find an audience passionate about the series.
“All we can do is put our hearts into the show and hope for the best. But being stopped at the airport, like I was when the first season came out, made me wonder if this was really happening,” said Goggins, who later starred in another popular series, “The White Lotus.”
“I’ve been in the industry for a long time and, believe me, if you can create a cultural impact, create a mass of fans in the first chapter of a story, it’s incredible. And that gives us the opportunity, in the second chapter, to bet big. This season, we wanted to go further, because the universe deserves it.”
Goggins repeatedly compares the scale of the project to that of a Hollywood film. Not only because of its blockbuster size, but also because of the cinematography behind the episodes, filmed on film and with Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan’s brother, as director and producer. “It’s a Nolan, clearly we’re trying to make cinema here.”
To expand this universe, the second season leaves Los Angeles and places the characters across a radioactive desert, heading to New Vegas, a classic gaming setting. Lucy continues to search for her father, now aware that he is not the hero she imagined, alongside Necrotic, also burdened by family trauma.
The arrival in New Vegas should pave the way for fans who haven’t played the games to better understand the Bible that governs this universe, offering more answers about the origin of nuclear devastation and the bunkers built by Vault-Tec, which hide a bloody past beneath the veneer of saving humanity.
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