ONE
Thaddeus’ ghoulification has progressed. (He was briefly Max’s Squire, remember.)
TWO
He oversees children, some ghouled, whose job seems to be to drink Sunset Sarsparilla. The bottlecaps, Wasteland currency, are collected after the bottle is opened. He’s sympathetic and kind as he cracks the whip.
Title card: Fallout.
Lucy is a captive of the Legion. Slaves are tortured. Tunic Lady, who “lost her Legionary”, has her throat violently slit. Lucy reacts in shock.
Title card: The Legion.
THREE
She’s brought before Caesar. The Legate who cut Tunic Lady’s throat takes off his helmet in a prolonged reveal. It’s Macaulay Culkin. He refers to Lucy as “Profligate”.
FOUR
She boldly steps forward to address Caesar. Legate shushes her; they’re negotiating her primae noctis. She chastises them for their ignorance about a Middle Ages tradition that had nothing to do with Roman times. Jump cut to her wrists bound as they haul her away. Legate leads her through the camp past crucifixion crosses, explaining that the Legion is at war with the Brotherhood, the New California Republic, and the Other Legion, pointing. Over a bulwark is an identical Roman camp. The original Caesar died and now two factions fight over who is the rightful heir.
(The decision to make the Legion, a brutal and terrifying gang in Fallout New Vegas, ridiculous is a questionable choice for the showrunners. Maybe they tried to soften the horror with humor, although the show hasn’t been shy in the past. I admit that the Culkin reveal made me recoil. It wasn’t a tone I expected or appreciated.)
Hard cut to Lucy, after her offer to serve as a conflict negotiator, tied to a cross. Fade to black.
Ghoul Cooper, abandoned by Lucy in the derelict hospital, crawls to a position where he can get a look at his poisoned leg. Dogmeat lies nearby, attentive. Coop says, “How ‘bout a boat that’s not a boat.” (This is the Ship of Theseus philosophy, isn’t it? Heh, nice touch for a ghoul who can carve pieces from his body and survive.) With great pain, he cuts out a piece of his thigh. While he catches his breath, Coop pets Dogmeat’s cheek. Fade to black.
Flashback to Cooper in his pre-apocalypse house. Barb, weeping, packs a Vault-Tec “Keepsakes” suitcase. She can’t fit everything she wants to save. Implied is their conflict: Barb knows the world will end and Coop hopes that will never happen. The tension between the couple simmers.
Cooper leaves to attend a veterans’ award dinner. His friend Charlie whispers with him about Robert House and his weapons system in Vegas. When Coop balks at his orders to kill House, Charlie tells him to look around the room at the other veterans. Most of them have killed someone. The room darkens for the guest speaker, Congresswoman Welch who’s an awkward, un-glib politician. She’s obviously supposed to introduce Charlie as today’s honoree, but she fumbles her notecards. Coop leaves for the bathroom.
At the urinals, the Maybe Robert House (played by Justin Theroux) waits. He calls Charlie a pinko and asks if Cooper is one, too. House goes on rather cryptically, invading Cooper’s personal space, until Cooper leaves. Fade to black.
Area 51. Max watches as the Elders sit around a table and argue with each other about whether it’s time to start a rebellion. Quitus lays out some history: before the war, Roger Maxson went to a research facility in California and saw brutal human experiments. He chose “God over government” and shot the scientists. He survived the assault and founded the Brotherhood.
Max listens, taking it all in. The choice appears to be either rebelling or giving the cold fusion relic to the Commonwealth. Max suggests he kill Xander, the Commonwealth representative. Quintus replies, “Behold, the dimness of the sword.” Max argues, “But if our cause is righteous . . .” (which is the scenario Quintus just described). Quintus kicks him out of the room.
As Max, upset, strides from the hangar, he’s stopped by Xander. This branch of the BoS, Xander says, has a lot of Clerics scurrying around like cockroaches. It’s an argument that hits home for Max after the recent disrespect from Quintus. He agrees to talk with Xander outside of the Clerics’ authority. Fade to black.
Ghoul Cooper overlooks the Legion camp and sees Lucy tied to a phone pole cross beam. He doubletakes when he notices the rival Legion camp, separated from the other by a small mound. Two caesars on two thrones.
SWITCH
Dissolve to a New California Republic compound. Coop scolds Dogmeat for giving him a look. Neither of them like Lucy, Coop says, but they’ll need her down the line. This is the place to find help. But the NCR is an empty shadow of itself. He’s surprised by Victor, a Securiton robot. (The wide-shouldered style, modeled after the same robot in New Vegas, is perfect. YAY!) They recognize each other. Coop asks where Robert House is, but Victor doesn’t know anymore. House wanted to live forever and he needed that cold fusion “doodad”. Didn’t Cooper have something to do with that, back in the day?
FIVE
Back to Area 51, where Xander takes Max out in a vertibird. Onboard is Commonwealth power armor that has more perks than Max’s armor. Xander, with cool insouciance, tries to persuade Max to avoid a shooting war by giving him the cold fusion relic. He’s interrupted by a dashboard alarm. Unauthorized automated activity nearby has been spotted. Xander’s excitement is infectious. This is what the Brotherhood does, Xander enthuses.
Ghoul Cooper and Dogmeat walk through the desert. They find the last, ragtag duo of the NCR.
Title card: The NCR
These two, one of whom is borderline crazy, are boxed in by the Legion and blocked from rejoining their main battalion. The leader, Rodriguez, offers Cooper vials in exchange for his help. With a noncommittal response, Cooper pockets the drugs.
Wearing their power armor, Xander and Max burst into the suspicious building. Max has the traditional assault rifle and Xander carries a super sledgehammer. They’ve found a Securiton, this one displaying a tough guy face on its screen. It shoots at them. Jacked, Xander wields the power-boosted sledge and attacks. Max joins in, smashing a fist through the robot’s face. A noise somewhere in the building alerts them. Xander offers the sledge to Max to try. Fade to black.
Lucy on the phone-pole cross in the afternoon sun looks parched and sunburnt. A crow lands on the crucified man beside her and starts to eat his eyes. Cooper walks past her on his way to meet with Caesar.
SIX
He negotiates with Legate Culkin: the location of the last holdout of the NCR for . .
SEVEN.
Cut to Cooper at the Veterans’ award dinner. Charlie at the podium tells his war story: He was stuck in the glitchy T-45 power armor, dragging an injured grunt who turned out to be Cooper, whose first question was not “How do I look?”, but “How are the others?”
. . . Lucy, who falls to the ground as her rope bindings are released. Crosscut the rest of Charlie’s speech with Ghoul Cooper supporting Lucy as they leave the camp while the Legion prepares to go to war. In the current time, Coop notices a stack of dynamite barrels in the Legion camp. In the past, Charlie rationalizes the soldier’s dilemma: “At the end of the day, we just gotta hope that we bet on the right side. The side that protects the people you love. Because if it did, I guess that’s worth doing pretty much anything. Even something bad.” In the audience, Cooper listens intently. Charlie accepts his award, a commemorative lighter. He gives the lighter to Coop.
EIGHT
Cut to Ghoul Cooper flicking the same lighter. In the distance, the dynamite barrels in the Legion camp explode. The two different Legion factions begin fighting each other while Coop and Lucy walk away. Fade to black.
Max and Xander in power armor enter the Sunset Sarsparilla factory. Xander spots a hiding child who is a ghoul. Opening his face plate, Xander says hello and calls him an abomination. Closeup of Max behind his faceplate. He looks uneasy. The rest of the children come out of hiding. Xander splits the group: smooth skins stand over there, wrinkles stay here. He points his gun at the ghoul group and tells the other kids to close their eyes. Seeing it coming, Max tries to stop him. Thaddeus comes out from under the table and tries to stop him. Closing his face plate, Xander says, “The Codex is clear on this.” We see Xander’s gauntlet begin to pull the trigger. From behind, the super sledge comes down on Xander’s head and crushes his power armor helmet until it’s embedded in his skull. Thaddeus looks up at the remaining Knight, and Max opens his face plate. They recognize each other in this very awkward moment.
NINE
“Hey, man,” Thaddeus says. “What you been up to?”
“I think I just started a war,” Max replies.
Roll credits.
CRITICAL NOTES
Structurally, this episode gets a hat tip. The Two/Eight connections for the dual storylines are well done. Both characters, Max and Ghoul Cooper, start a war. That parallel occurrence doesn’t feel as on-the-nose as it sounds, mostly because Max’s Eight is so emotionally charged. I did not see his solution, kill Xander, coming. What a treat! The editing focuses on Max’s face and his reaction to Xander’s threat. We forget the sledge, leading to a shocking climax. I’m a big fan.
I’ve chosen Macaulay as the Three/Six. Culkin in/Culkin out. His famous face, which seems like an overall detriment, works as a Mirror for these beats.
The Switch, like many good Switches, can feel like a moment out of time. An interlude. How does Cooper know Victor? How does Victor know about pre-apocalypse Coop? How many times over the last two hundred years have they run into each other? These questions don’t need to be answered. They lend mystery to this scene, and they remind us that Robert House lurks behind every beat in this season’s plot.
The Seven is the kicker here. Cooper’s decision to negotiate with the Legion for Lucy’s release is a predictable writing choice. However, Charlie’s speech is much more subtle. He’s speaking of war and fighting as a soldier, but his argument resonates in other moral decisions. Is this — we fight to protect the people we love — why Coop chooses Lucy over the NCR? And then, inspired by the dynamite, also chooses to save the two poor leftovers of the NCR? Whatever is going to happen with Cooper and House in the pre-apocalypse time, whatever Victor the robot meant about the cold fusion doodad — is this a choice Cooper made in order to protect his family? And most consequential of all, what does this moral argument say about Barb’s choice to nuke the world as long as her family has a space in a good vault? As Charlie speaks, questions echo outwards. We’ll see where the season takes this idea.