Ever since we saw the true reality of what Shady Sands used to be before they were destroyed in Fallout “The Golden Rule,” I feel like this show has A) hit its stride and B) finally made me feel like they are twisting the knife when it comes to every new thing I find out. Fallout Season 2 Episode 4 “The Demon in the Snow” gave us another dose of how this world has changed by connecting the past to the present in a terrifying way. Because so far we’ve thought of the apocalypse as two distinct times, the before and after.
Now we know it’s infinitely more complicated than that.
MORE: Need a refresher of last week’s Fallout? Read our review for Season 2 Episode 3 here!
On the Lucy front, in the last episode review I complained about Lucy’s lack of character development. “The Demon in the Snow” tries to correct that but I’m not 100% sure that the show knows what they’re doing yet with her. But I’m just a reviewer, so only time will tell what the showrunners have planned. And then there’s Maximus. Kudos to him for not knowing what to do next on a grand scale but still following his heart and his father’s advice to leave the world a better place.
Lucy Needs to Evolve
In Fallout “The Profligate” I complained, rightfully so, that I was a little bit worried about Lucy. By Episode 1 of Season 2 we should have seen some sparks of how Season 1 affected Lucy. We didn’t. I waited until Episode 2, and we didn’t get anything there either. Then Episode 3 came around and I had to call it out for what it is, a lack of character development. Now in Episode 4, we saw Lucy’s inhibitions completely wiped off the board thanks to the medicine that was used to fix her up after Episode 3. And if I’m being honest, I’m on the fence here.
On one hand, I loved seeing Lucy cut loose. It’s like everything that had weighed on her, including her vault upbringing, just fell away and she was having fun. The fun came at the expense of ghouls that were trying to kill her. But fun nonetheless. And you could tell that she was just as shocked as we were that she was capable of such unbridled violence. Even The Ghoul was surprised and gave her a cheeky wink as she went ham on those Elvis impersonator ghouls. Basically, the drugs allowed her to experience something that she had obviously been holding back or hiding from.
On another hand, this sudden shift to Lucy destroying all those ghoul Elvises, it felt frenetic. It was jovial, yes. But it was such a sharp contrast from how Lucy has been all season long that for a second it didn’t feel like her. And now, I don’t know where we go from here. Because we haven’t seen this free version of Lucy, or a version of Lucy that was struggling with the realities of this world after Season 1, within the first three episodes. And I want to trust the show, but it took them four episodes for us to get to a point where Lucy is exploring the darkness within her.
What I’m hoping that we see next is obviously Lucy and The Ghoul surviving whatever demon that was in Las Vegas. But more importantly, I want Lucy to face who she became while on those drugs. She might say that wasn’t her and it was the drugs. But the drugs just loosened her inhibitions and allowed her to be a little bit more herself. The question is, what will she do with that freedom? Hopefully she will continue transforming into a version that isn’t Lucy from the vaults or Lucy from The Wasteland. She has experienced both places now. She needs to become someone new.
Vault Dramaaaaaa
Fallout Season 2 made the right decision in continuing to follow what’s happening in the vaults. Because for a second there in Season 1 I thought we were just going to explore the vaults that Lucy encountered while she’s on the road. Instead Fallout has made a conscious and continued effort to paint a picture of what happens in the OG 3 vaults as it unveils Vault-Tech’s plans and how loyal these residents are when it comes to the rules set by the company.
At the center of this drama is Betty and Stephanie. I’ve always thought of Stephanie as just a regular vault resident. But she’s not. She’s part of the company. But I don’t think she’s a regular Overseer like Betty. (Remember she didn’t know how to use the computer.) That begs the question, what is her role in Vault-Tech? Because I know that I’m not thinking big enough, especially after Stephanie mentioned to Betty about the experiment and then that random guy outside with Norm mentioned “phase two.”
As if that wasn’t enough drama, Woody brought his concerns about Stephanie breaking the rules with Betty to Stephanie herself. It goes to show you that the people in the vaults are raised in a way where rules come before everything. They come before personal safety, because why didn’t Woody think about Stephanie possibly killing him or retaliating after breaking a major rule? Because him being hurt or retaliated against isn’t something he’s ever been presented with within this contained experiment. Rules even come before survival, with Reg telling Betty that he’s allowed to get water according to the charter even though there is a water crisis and they could all die.
None of these people in the vaults would truly survive on the outside for a prolonged time. But maybe that’s exactly what the experiment they’re doing is all about. Survival. But also another form of control. And that’s exactly why Hank is trying to get that chip to work in his Vault-Tech experiments. Control via rules has gotten the company this far. But Hank needs something a little more powerful if he’s to control the one person who has seen him for the monster he is aka his daughter Lucy.
What is Maximus Doing?
When it comes to Maximus, I will admit that most of the time watching “The Demon in the Snow” I was like, “Wait, what are you going to do, Maximus? Why are you going to do that? You need a plan!” It’s once Maximus started talking to the Elder Cleric Quintus that I got it. He said, “I don’t have a plan. You have plans. But out there, you can’t. I don’t choose to do the things I have to do. They just keep happening.” And it made me look at everything Maximus has gone through so far with a new appreciation.
A lot of times when we’re watching TV we’re screaming at the screen about how this person should do this or that. Oftentimes, we question why they don’t think about the bigger picture too. But in reality, if we were going through these things, we would just be taking care of the problem in front of us. And that’s what Maximus is doing in this episode. He’s taking care of the problem in front of him while also following his heart and his father’s advice. Not the Quintus’, who kept calling him son. I’m talking about the man who sacrificed day in and day out to give Maximus a good life and perished protecting him alongside with Maximus’ mother.
Having Maximus contextualize his decisions in this manner, and without giving us a play-by-play in Fallout Season 2, shows that this show is not feeding me all the answers. It’s giving me time to process what I’m seeing in a way that feels satisfying when everything clicks together. And everything is clicking for me when it comes to Maximus. Because for him, even though these people took him in during his time of need after Shady Sands, he’s still that boy his parents raised. And he knew that what Xander was about to do was wrong. So he did something about it. And he continued doing something about it, his momentum keeping him going forward, even if he didn’t have a total plan.
Maximus really is unlike any other hero I’ve seen in a while on TV.
He doesn’t have much power. But when he does, he does the right thing. He chooses empathy and kindness when needed and knows how to flip the switch to protect those weaker than him. He doesn’t let The Brotherhood or whatever organization he’s part of dictate how the world should be. All of that together has allowed him the freedom to be where he is now and who he is now. And I think that this is the messy bit. Not the apocalypse, that’s already messy. Right now everything Maximus is doing is the messy bit of the story that leads to the deconstruction of this system, which is a remnant of the old world and no longer works in this new one.
Maximus is an essential component of reshaping the world not as it was but how it is. And I can’t wait to see that world take shape.
Cooper Howard and The Ghoul
So far when it comes to Fallout we have been operating in two timelines. We have Cooper Howard, a soldier and movie star who lost everything. And we have The Ghoul, the aftermath of who Cooper became when the world was destroyed. Fallout has also introduced small time jumps to the present like what happened to Shady Sands 20 years ago. But the show has still distinctly been built as pre-apocalypse and post-apocalypse. This episode completely breaks that.
When we first see this demon in Alaska, it almost feels like a dream. Cooper probably thought it was a dream himself. He was in a hunk of junk, about to be killed, and then a monster appeared. But the monster doesn’t kill him??? That right there is engineering at its finest. Why? Because I don’t believe in coincidences. Barb said that when Coop went to war she’s the one who stayed and kept things running. And you don’t just get to a point where you decide to end the world at Vault-Tech without major power and all the steps that come before that.
I think that this demon was created by Vault-Tech like all of their experiments. And this demon is a remnant of the past that was good enough to help them during the wars of the past but not essential to the post-apocalypse landscape. Too bad for Vault-Tech that this demon ended up surviving. And when Cooper sees the demon, it mashes the past with the present in a way that feels disorienting. That’s why Lucy reacted the way she did when she looked at The Ghoul. She’s never seen him scared of anything. And here he is, scared.
What comes next? My bet is that the demon is going to recognize The Ghoul again. Because whatever manufacturing the demon has there, it’s not meant to hurt Vault-Tech assets or associates. And that’s what Cooper was back then because Barb insured it. Or that’s what I think at least. And I could be wrong.
Fallout premieres new episodes every Wednesday at 12am PT/3am ET on Prime Video.
That “demon” is a deathclaw, a genetically engineered creature that the US made to serve on the battlefield. They survived the war and became the new apex predators of the wasteland.