‘Fallout’ Season 2 Ending Explained: Dissecting the Biggest Moments From the Finale

Fallout season 2 is now over, but the show has a lot more fuel in the tank. Amazon renewed the hit video game adaptation for a third season ahead of the premiere of the finale episode, which dropped on Prime Video this evening, leaving a bunch of narrative breadcrumbs to speculate over.

The eighth and final episode closed the loop on the major storylines of the season with Maximus (Aaron Moten), Lucy (Ella Purnell) and The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) all finding what they’ve been searching for this entire time. But, as I will get to below, not every outcome was all sunshine and rainbows.

Radroaches and Death Claws were out in full force in this episode, reminding viewers that this place ain’t called The Wasteland for nothing. But, as with many things, the real threat lies in the people vying for control. Let’s get into the biggest moments in the Fallout season 2 finale. 

Before you continue, let this be your warning: there are major story spoilers below.

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Maximus

Season 2 of Fallout found Maximus straying from the Brotherhood of Steel as the heavily armored faction’s version of justice didn’t sit right with him. Instead, he focused on finding Lucy, whom he had been separated from in the season 1 finale. 

Maximus stepped into his power this season. This isn’t the same Maximus who was introduced in the first season. He’s become battle-tested, and that characteristic was on full display during his brawl with the Death Claws in New Vegas. Ultimately, among all the storylines tied up in this episode, Maximus’s feels the most hopeful — his was a mission of honor and love. And he accomplished both.

Lucy

For over half the season, Lucy made the trek to New Vegas with the Ghoul. Both of them shared the same mission: to find Lucy’s dad, Hank, and stop him from hurting people. However, Lucy found Hank before the Ghoul did, and, leading up to this episode, she discovered firsthand the twisted experiments he was performing on people. More on that in a bit.

Like Maximus, the Wasteland changed Lucy. She was no longer an easy mark to believe any and every lie Hank threw her way. His drive to complete this work and reprogram the variety of violent people found roaming the desert didn’t sit right with Lucy. In the end, she didn’t get the resolution she was looking for. Instead, her final moment with her dad foreshadowed a bigger play he had up his sleeve this entire time: war. 

Hank

As dastardly as Hank’s actions have been, I’ve steadily found Kyle MacLachlan’s performance thoroughly compelling. Is Hank a villain? I suppose so. But the character has consistently rooted all his decisions in the love he has for his daughter and in the so-called idea of the greater good. 

Hank’s work in miniaturizing the tech that turns people into compliant vegetables is a small part of a bigger picture that Fallout has yet to fully reveal. The Enclave had been spoken of multiple times throughout these episodes, but it wasn’t until the finale episode that we got a glimpse of the compound.

The Ghoul

Watching Walton Goggins swagger through the Wasteland as the Ghoul is something I’ll never tire of. However, one of the season’s more compelling aspects has been the espionage-laden backstory of his pre-mutant character, Hollywood actor and Vault-Tec spokesperson Cooper Howard. 

We all know the world suffers a nuclear apocalypse. Still, the stakes of these flashbacks were surprisingly high, offering deeper insight into why it all happened in the first place. It’s a disturbing thing to type, but the idea here is that a group of wealthy investors and shadowy figures put a plan into motion to build Vaults for them to reside in while they blow up the world in order to reshape it to match their twisted utopian vision.

That group of oligarchs and government power players is also known as The Enclave. Episode 7 found Howard handing over that little vial of cold fusion to the president (Clancy Brown), as he had no one else he could trust, only for the realization to hit him in the finale that he handed that weapon/source of power directly to the aforementioned shadow government agency.

Cooper ends up taking the fall, and he’s taken away in handcuffs. I kept wondering exactly where in the timeline we are, since we already know that when the bomb drops, he’ll be at his daughter’s birthday party. I suppose more answers will arrive next season.

Back to the Ghoul. His journey this season brought him to New Vegas, not to confront Hank, but to find his wife and daughter. He had been operating on the idea that they’d been alive and safe in the Vault that was allocated specifically to management. However, when he finally arrived, he found their cryochambers empty and a postcard from Colorado on the floor.

With renewed hope, he ventured back out into the desert with his dog to continue his mission to find his family. 

What’s the deal with Stephanie?

Stephanie Harper has confused me as a character. It turns out that, like the Ghoul, she, too, is over 200 years old. She appears in Cooper’s flashbacks and ends up marrying Hank, but her whole deal is still shrouded in mystery. But, it does seem that she’s in cahoots with the Enclave, as her final moment in the episode finds her speaking into a Pip-Boy to initiate Phase 2.

The question is, what is this a second phase of, anyway?

About that post-credit scene

I mentioned earlier that war was coming. The final moments of the episode find Maximus and Lucy looking out at a horde of Legion soldiers making their way to New Vegas. I wasn’t a fan of the Legion storyline, to be honest, but ending the episode with a war on the horizon opens up all sorts of story possibilities for season 3.

This brings me to the post-credit scene. In it, Dane rushes the remnants to Elder Cleric Quintus, the leader of the Brotherhood of Steel, the faction Maximus once belonged to. Sounds of battle surround their compound, and we find Quintus bloody and beaten. 

“Out of the virtue in my heart, I tried to unify the Brotherhood,” Quintus tells Dane. “Now look where it got me. No matter. Quintus, the Unifier, is dead. Quintus, the Destroyer, is born.”

The remnants are revealed to be a schematic for Liberty Prime Alpha, a giant and powerful combat robot that was used by the government before the bomb was dropped. This tease alludes to a key plot point in the video game Fallout 3, in which the Brotherhood of Steel uses this weapon in its war against the Commonwealth.

Fallout season 2 is streaming in full on Prime Video.