SPOILERS for Fallout Season 2 Episode 1: The Man Who Knew to follow:
The last time we saw Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), The Ghoul aka Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins), and beloved pup CX404, their situation looked dire.
Lucy had learned her father Hank (Kyle MacLachlan) was responsible for the destruction of Shady Sands, The Brotherhood of Steel was in a heated battle with the New California Republic over control of Griffith Observatory, and Cooper realized that Hank held the answers to the whereabouts of his family. While Hank slipped out in the ensuing chaos and headed to New Vegas, Lucy decided to join Cooper in his quest for answers, which led them into unknown and dangerous territory.
The first episode of Fallout Season 2, “The Man Who Knew,” opens with a brief Pre-War flashback that shows the public protesting against RobCo industries. The scene then takes us inside a bar where a mysterious stranger (Justin Theroux) manages to taunt a group of unemployed workers about how RobCo industries founder Mr. House is more powerful than the government. They then follow him outside, where he attaches a device to the back of one of their heads in return for millions of dollars. Using this device, he’s able to command the man to attack his friends with a baseball bat, but when the mind-controlled man begins to turn against the mysterious stranger, the device makes his head explode in gory fashion.
Jumping back to the present, we see that Cooper is captured in Novac by the Great Khans, one of the factions running rampant in the Mojave Wasteland. But when they’re about to execute him, Lucy reveals herself in an iconic sniper perch from Fallout: New Vegas and exposes their plan to rob the Khans of their bottlecaps. She fails a dialogue check and chaos ensues; Cooper is forced to intervene in bloody fashion, reminding audiences once again why he’s one of the best gunslingers in the Wasteland.
It’s not long after this fight that Cooper reveals that New Vegas survived The Great War, thanks to a missile system designed by Mr. House, which shot the bombs out of the sky. This includes a brief pre-war flashback in which Cooper learns of Vault-Tec and House’s plans for The Great War. He struggles to get his daughter to safety.
Checking in on the residents of Vault 33 in the present, we find Overseer Pearson (Leslie Uggams), who mentions that the vault’s water purification chip is broken. Meanwhile, in Vault 32, Stephanie Harper (Annabel O’Hagan) is adjusting to her new life as Overseer and dealing with the needs of her residents and new arrivals from Vault 33. By her side, with child in hand, is Chet (Dave Register), Lucy’s cousin, who is struggling to adjust to his new role as the stepfather of Stephanie’s baby, and dismayed at the mere suggestion that the child be named “Chet Jr.”
Finally, we cut to Vault 31, where Norm (Moises Arias), Lucy’s brother, is held captive by the robo-brain of Bud Askins, a junior vice president of Vault-Tec Industries, after discovering the vault is secretly housing the Vault-Tec executives from before The Great War.
Lucy and Cooper continue to follow the trail of dead bodies left in Hank’s wake. They come across a Starlight Drive-In that’s secretly housing Vault 24. Upon further inspection, they find the vault door has been opened and the inside is covered with overgrown vegetation.
As Lucy and Cooper head inside, we get a Pre-War flashback of Cooper reporting his Vault-Tec findings to Lee Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury), who led the NCR during the battle of Griffith Observatory. Moldaver reveals to Cooper that his wife plans to sell Cold Fusion, an infinite power source, to Mr. House. That and his anti-bomb missile system will make him one of the most powerful men in the world once the bombs drop. Knowing this can’t happen, she asks Cooper to assassinate Mr. House–an event we know now never comes to be).
Back in Vault 31, Norm is growing weaker and weaker from a lack of food and water. Bud offers him salvation in the form of going into Hank’s now-empty cryo chamber. With time running out and with few options, Norm decides to make a rash decision and wakes up all the Vault-Tec executives from their slumber. We see the massive number of chambers begin to open up.
As Lucy and Cooper explore Vault 24, they come across numerous communist corpses and find Russian propaganda playing. Lucy realizes the corpses are actually Americans who were being brainwashed to become communists, possibly as a result of one of Vault-Tec’s many sick experiments on vault-dwellers. Deeper in the vault, they find a Great Khan with a mind control device similar to the one the mysterious stranger used at the start of the episode. He delivers a message for Lucy straight from her father: “I fix everything. Go home, Sugar Bomb.” Before they can react, his head explodes into gory viscera.
Elsewhere, Hank arrives at a secret Vault-Tec facility and changes out of his stolen power armor into something a bit more business appropriate. After enjoying a damn fine cup of coffee, he begins to record a message for an unknown recipient, promising that his work will continue. In a display case is the mysterious stranger’s mind control device with what looks like smaller and smaller upgraded models alongside it, ending the episode.
Fallout returns with a bang! While we got answers about the aftermath of the battle for Griffith Observatory, the quest into the Mojave Wasteland provides even more mysteries. What’s Hank truly up to? What will happen to Norm when all of the Vault-Tec executives wake up? Why is New Vegas so important? Who is the mysterious stranger who created the mind control device? We didn’t even get an update on Maximus (Aaron Moten) and the Brotherhood of Steel. So while we rejoined our comrades in this exciting new setting, there’s still plenty more to discover as we dive deeper into Fallout Season 2.
