Fallout: Season 1 Episode 4 – Review/ Recap

Plot Recap

The Mysteries of Vault 32 – Betty, Norman, Chet, Steph, Woody, Reg

Things post-raiders and Lucy leaving remain weird in Vault 33. What doesn’t help is Woody and Reg are running an election for who can become the next Overseer, while Betty is pushing Norman to run off his family’s name. Add in Steph taking advantage of Chet to make out, and while messing around, her water breaking, it is a very odd day.

However, for Norman, something doesn’t add up. Considering that all vault dwellers are relatively isolated from the outside world and seemingly don’t even trade beyond the interconnected vaults, how did they get inside Vault 32? Norman, after doing his new assignment and tricking someone with computer access with Jello Cake, tries to access archive information from Vault 32 for answers, but it seems vaults can’t access each other’s systems or certain files.

With his curiosity unsatiated, Norman recruits Chet, who wants to get the hell away from Steph giving birth, to explore Vault 32, and they find a lot of corpses. But the kicker is that the PipBoys (the devices on everyone’s wrist) they find pushes the idea that it has been two years since the original members of Vault 32 died. So, who or what let in the raiders? You need a PipBoy to open the vault door.

The answer: Rose MacLean, Norman and Lucy’s mother, who both thought died during a plague in 2277.

You Gotta Adapt Sooner Or Later – Cooper, Lucy

Cooper and Lucy’s relationship is contentious at best. She is trying to be kind and appeal to Cooper’s humanity, but after living over 200 years, with the potential to die or become feral if he doesn’t get a certain kind of medicine, Cooper has long hardened himself off. Plus, if Lucy is going to be out here in the Wasteland, she will have to put aside her dainty Vault Dweller ways, including starting to drink the radiated water everyone else does. She may not like it, but no alternatives like water pumps are available.

But, while Cooper seemingly was trying to harden Lucy up, the truth is that he was looking to sell her. So when she tries to run away when he is dealing with a coughing fit, he ropes her back, and she bites off his finger when he pins her down. In return, Cooper cuts off hers and still takes her to the Super Duper Market to be subject to organ harvesting.

Maybe There Are Good People Out There? – Cooper, Lucy

While down in the Super Duper Market, Lucy is lucky enough to get a new finger before a robot tries to harvest her organs. Thankfully, despite it knocking her out with a tranquilizer, she becomes lucid enough to fight back through a defibrillator and even get the upper hand on two men who seemingly run the entire operation.

Mind you, they have guns and other items, but with Lucy repurposing the robot with toxic syringes that it can fire like her tranquilizer gun, they decide it would be best to let her go and everyone else who is still human. Not satisfied by that, and despite seeing how Ghouls turn feral with Cooper earlier, Lucy demands their freedom too, and she would have paid the price for it if she hadn’t got a gun quickly to blow one away.

Yet, despite what Cooper put her through the entire day, she still gets him the vials he needs to not become a feral ghoul. Mind you, she could have easily did what Maximus did to Knight Titus and watched him turn and justify shooting him, but instead, she leaves more than enough vials in front of him and doesn’t destroy the others in the mall. Thus leaving Cooper with far more than he’ll need for a while, but before he decides to plan his next move, he discovers the former proprietors of the mall have his old movie that he was filming in episode 3, “The Man From Deadhorse” and he decides to sit and reminisce about the old days.

Review

Notable Performances or Moments

Lucy’s Journey

Don’t you love it when you see a story’s potential and it lives up to it? Lucy had to adapt to the ways of the Wasteland, from the violence to the water, and it seems while she will refuse to give up some of her morals and values, if she has to, she will shoot a ghoul, bite off a finger, and who knows what may come next? With the PipBoy still in hand, she could still go after freeing her father, maybe guns blazing, or hoping to negotiate, even without the head?

Heck, considering how Maximus was looking at her, maybe the completion of Lucy’s journey will be tricking Maximus? Maybe leaving him for dead as he did Knight Titus? If not injuring him like he did his friend back on base? It’s hard to say, but we’ll be giddy as long as this story continues to be interesting.

Highlights

The Mystery Of Vault 32

Vault-Tec is an organization that, in the games, did experiments on every vault. Some were left alone, others poisoned, others exposed to the outside world early, and they would even allow certain people in just to see what happened. It isn’t clear yet if the Vault-Tec in the games is as bad as what might have been hinted at in the show, but considering what we saw in Vault 32, it does make me wonder what Vault 31 is like since Vault 32, 33 and 31 were connected in a triangle formation.

Learning About Ghouls

Ghouls are pretty much things you kill in the games, and while some talk and even become companions, for the most part, who they are, what led them to be the way they are, it isn’t dove deeply into. At least, based on my playthroughs of Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and Fallout 4.

So, getting to know certain drugs keep them alive and from turning, and seeing that transformation from human to crazed zombie was different, and it makes me wonder what else from the games they will flesh out and bring visuals to? For a lot of the game is in conversations with random entities or reading from a computer, so there is a lot of ground the “Fallout” series could cover.

Background Information

Episode Title	The Ghouls
Release Date	April 10, 2024
Network	Prime Video
Director(s)	Daniel Gray Longino
Writer(s)	Kieran Fitzgerald
Previous Episode	Season 1/ Episode 3
Series Page	Fallout
Character Guide	Fallout (TV Series): Character Guide and Noteworthy Information

Cast Guide

Character’s Name	Actor’s Name
Betty	Leslie Uggams
Norman	Moises Arias
Chet	Dave Register
Steph aka Stephanie	Annabel O’Hagan
Woody	Zach Cherry
Reg	Rodrigo Luzzi
Cooper	Walton Goggins
Lucy	Ella Purnell

New Character Description(s)

Steph

Steph is one of Lucy’s closest friends, but with Steph getting married, now pregnant, and in a different chapter of life compared to Lucy, they are still friends but are slowly growing apart.