ONE
Battle between the two factions of the Legion. Amidst the smoke and turmoil, Macaulay Culkin’s Legate drags the skeleton of the former Caesar to his tent. He reads the mysterious note the Caesar wrote before his death, naming his heir. This is what the two factions have been fighting over, each refusing the other the chance to read. It says: It ends with me. (No heir is designated.) Legate eats the paper before anyone else can see. He takes the laurel crown from the skull and wears it himself. The soldiers cheer and hail him. His victory speech: We’ll conquer Vegas!
And then Culkin says, We’ll build a palace. Caesar’s Palace. (Groan. Honestly?)
Roll title card.
TWO
In the Lucky 38 penthouse, green-tinged Robert House on the monitor says hello to Ghoul Coop. House is cheerful, almost playful. Coop points his rifle at the diode and asks what happens if he shoots it. Other planets would feel the effect, House responds. Coop offers a deal: I won’t shoot your battery if you get me into my family’s vault. House readily agrees, providing a Pip Boy for Coop, who hesitates. He’ll wear it because he has no choice, but he really doesn’t want to. Fade to black.
THREE
Here come the deathclaws into Freeside. Max in his NCR power armor stands, ready to defend the residents. Thaddeus, still juggling his arm and the rifle, encourages everyone to get inside their houses. He follows a group into the general store.
FOUR
The special armor has weapons Max didn’t expect. He whoops as grenades launch from his pauldrons. Many deathclaws remain, though. Looking out the window, Thaddeus wishes he could help. Fade to black.
Jump cut to Welch’s pickled head. (Yikes. I startled.) Lucy looks at the wires coming from Welch’s helmet, all running to computers that power the mind-control devices. Welch’s milky eyes look at Lucy. “Kill me,” she says. Lucy prevaricates. Welch becomes more insistent and her voice becomes clearer: Kill me. Lucy brings down the tire iron and the computers grind to a halt.
Ronnie and the Bud’s Buds goons drag Norm. Claudia tries to free him, but Ronnie tosses her aside. Her head hits the elevator button, opening the doors to their floor. (Remember the radroach farm in the first floor car. Hahaha!) Looking down the empty shaft, the goons see nothing. Relief, until radroaches the size of a human torso fly out and start eating them. The goons run, Norm following. Ronnie won’t let him in the office door, though. He’s so busy denying Norm that the radroaches breach the door. It swings shut as the radroaches go to town on the goons. Fade to black.
Ghoul Coop, taking directions from House on the Pip Boy, walks through the underground utility pipes. (Classic Fallout. YAY!) House monologues, saying he didn’t know someone was behind Vault-Tec until he saw the Anchorage deathclaw.
Cut to Max in the middle of his deathclaw fight. The armor is out of ammo and the deathclaws have an advantage. In the store, Thaddeus worries for him. The residents start wagering caps on the deathclaw’s odds over Max. Waving his unattached arm to get their attention, Thaddeus bets 500 caps on Max. They scoff. Shaking his suspenders, Thaddeus loosens a storage bag under his pants, and caps pour over the ground. (Remember, at Sunset Sarsparilla he used the kids to collect bottle caps.)
Lucy strides through the sub-levels of Vault-Tec’s management building. Crosscut with Coop as House continues to talk to him. The investors in Vault-Tec were House’s invisible adversary, and they sent their acolyte here. Cut to Lucy as Hank finds her. He claims that turning humans into robots via mind control was House’s idea. Hank was just trying to add a little personality, thus Representative Welch in a jar. He admired her well-meaning, non-threatening attributes. (MacLachlan continues to be magnificent as the insane Hank.)
Cut back to Coop as House talks about the Enclave. Two hundred years ago, Coop unwittingly gave them the diode via the President. Flashback to Cooper and Barb toasting each other with champagne in the hotel lobby. She says Bakersfield looks pretty good about now, and he says he prefers Colorado.
SWITCH
Young Hank, still handcuffed to the case, rushes up and introduces them to his new wife. Surprise: it’s Steph. Barb and Cooper congratulate them.
FIVE
Walking away, Coop hears a pay phone ringing. Meanwhile, stoic-faced Ghoul Coop, remembering, continues through the utility system.
Lucy wants to know Hank’s end game. From his pocket, wrapped in a handkerchief, is a miniaturized mind control device. (It’s about the size of a pinkie nail.) Once inserted, a controlled person will only have a small scar on the back of the neck. No one will be able to tell who is and isn’t under its influence. “You’ll be my little girl again,” Hank says. One of the reformed Legionnaires grabs Lucy while she fights back.
Meanwhile, Ghoul Coop has reached the doors to the corporate sub-level structure. It’s massive. House directs him to the proper floor for his family.
The deathclaws are winning. Max’s power armor sparks. A gunshot sends a deathclaw backwards. Max turns to look; Thaddeus on a rooftop, the rifle barrel propped between his toes, waves at him. The deathclaw is only stunned, though. It mauls Max, chewing on his helmet. Fade to black.
The Legionnaire holds Lucy, the back of her neck exposed, while Hank comes at her with the miniature device. Bam. The Legionnaire drops. It’s Ghoul Coop, shooting. Hank falls down in pain. Coop kicks his little knuckleduster gun to Lucy; Hank’s fate is up to her. Flicking his hat brim at her, Coop walks away. Lucy glances at the mind control device. It’s ready for injection.
Max is down. The power armor twitches helplessly. He remembers Young Max hugging his dad, who tells him he’s a good boy before securing him in the milk fridge. “One day you will be a good man,” Memory Dad says. Grimacing, Max rolls the power armor so he can crawl out of it. Unprotected, he takes a roulette wheel for a shield and a pool cue for a staff. The general store gamblers look out the window in horror. He’s younger than they expected. Will they help? One man grabs his shotgun.
SIX
In the street, facing the deathclaw like a Western duel, Max remembers his rescue from the milk fridge. The Memory Knight in power armor looks mystical in the bright sunlight. Hyping himself, Max yells at the deathclaw to attack. It charges.
SEVEN
A gunshot drops it. Max looks to Thaddeus on the roof, but he’s still trying to reload with one hand. In closeup, Max turns to look behind him. An NCR soldier in full kit shoots in slow motion.
(Yes, I had chills, and so did everyone else watching.)
From behind the lone soldier, an entire brigade of the NCR marches out in formation, their standard flying. “We’ve got it from here,” says Rodriguez (our friend from Episode 3). Fade to black.
EIGHT
Fade in. Hank walks with a limp. He and Lucy are outside the Lucky 38. The back of his neck has an incision, and Lucy holds the control dial. He reminisces about the vault and the people he knew there. He wants to help Lucy stop the Legion by using mind control. “The surface is the experiment,” Hank says, “not the vaults.” He’s sent people with invisible devices out into the Wasteland already. “What have you done,” Lucy asks, demanding an answer. Looking at Lucy with a priceless face, Hank says, “I love you, Sugarbomb.” He presses the button on his own remote control dial, wiping his memory.
Lucy hugs him, sobbing. After a beat, Hank’s brain resets and he looks with surprise at the stranger holding him. He’s kind and gentle toward her, but he’s no longer Hank. (Purnell and MacLachlan kill this scene, breaking every heart.)
As Lucy stands in the center of the ruined Strip, she seems to have no purpose any longer. Max, coming from Freeside, recognizes her and calls out. (Moten’s face breaks whatever heart is left intact.) They go to each other and hug. Fade to black.
Fade in on Steph’s terrifyingly fierce face. Outside the Overseer’s door, the vaulties chant for her to open up. She unlocks Hank’s Keepsakes box. Inside is a special Pip Boy with Enclave insignia. Powering it up, Steph sends a message: Initiate Phase 2. In the Enclave headquarters (we recognize it from Wilzig’s scenes there with Dogmeat in Season One) the request is received. They also listen to Hank’s initial message when he began work on the mind control devices. Even Norm’s message to his father is received. The militant complex in Alaska fades out.
Norm crawls from his hiding place under a desk. In the closed office, Bud’s Buds are all dead except for Claudia. Norm helps her up. Outside the Vault-Tec highrise, he pulls her on a wagon. Fade to black.
Ghoul Coop reaches the Cryogenic Repository. Crosscut with Cooper Howard answering the pay phone. Through the receiver, House tells him, “It wasn’t me.” Looking around, Cooper sees black hats everywhere in the lobby. He remembers handing the diode to the President. Barb, seeing his face, steps closer.
Cut back to the cryopods. Ghoul Coop finds Barb’s and Janey’s nameplates. Barb’s vessel opens, icy steam obscuring the inside. When it clears, we and Coop see an empty chair. Janey’s, too.
Crosscut to Barb and Cooper as he walks away from the phone receiver. The black hats step forward and cuff Coop, arresting him. Barb cries.
Ghoul Coop falls on his knees before Barb’s cryopod. He notices a postcard under the chair: Greetings from Colorado. Handwritten on the back: Colorado was a good idea. Coop flashes back to the moment before his arrest. He tells Barb to let him take all the blame. For Janey’s sake.
Leaving House’s Pip Boy behind, Ghoul Coop walks out. For the first time in 200 years, he knows his family is alive. House’s green-tinged face rails that they’re not done. (He sounds a lot like Bud’s robobrain, bossy and helpless.)
NINE
The Legion marches toward the outskirts of Vegas. Lucy and Max enter the penthouse; the monitor display says: Signal Lost. Out the panoramic window they can see the Legion approaching. Lucy blames herself, and Max takes her hand. Unseen behind them, the display flickers with House’s head.
Ghoul Coop looks across a desert plain to high snowy mountains. He walks forward. Fade to black.
Roll credits.
After credits: Dane walks through a Brotherhood triage room. Explosions boom outside the bunker. In Quintus’ office, Dane delivers the blueprints he requested. It’s the design for Liberty Prime.
End Season Two.
CRITICAL NOTES
Liberty Prime is a massive robot, about four stories high. In Fallout 3 the Brotherhood uses it in the Alaska battle. In Fallout 4, if you side with the BoS, you help rebuild and march Liberty Prime into the Institute. You’re pretty much guaranteed to win whatever war you’re in when you have Liberty Prime. I’m not sure who Quintus wants to fight, but introducing Liberty Prime is pure fan service. (I just wish they hadn’t introduced it in a post-credit sequence. I missed it on my first watch. Can we please stop this too-precious habit?)
The Story Enneagram for this episode could lay out in many ways, depending on how important certain beats should be. Also, because this is the season finale, some beats for this episode will overlap with beats for the entire arc.
However, the Eight must include Coop because the Two does. He’s the last possible event for the Eight and the first possible event for the Two. Coop is the bookend for this episode, so his position is clear. It’s all the others who slide about in the story order. The resolution of Hank and Lucy, which certainly will be a season-completing Eight, also seems to belong in this episode’s Eight. It’s an incredibly powerful, climactic scene.
The Three and Six were difficult to determine. Nothing completely mirrors. The beats I’ve chosen are very interesting to me, though. Max and the power armor represent heroism and sacrifice, at least in Max’s mind. At the Three he doesn’t hesitate to protect the townspeople, even though he’s massively outnumbered by deathclaws. At the Six he uses his own childhood memory of what the Brotherhood means to him for motivation. He’s wearing BoS fatigues, carrying a literal roulette wheel as a shield (what a brilliant image), while facing the most fearsome creatures in the Wasteland. This is heroism, and I’ll take it as a Mirror and continuation of his bravery at the Three.
From there, the Seven becomes the NCR army returning to fight. We don’t see their offscreen decision to march. Perhaps Rodriguez persuaded them. In this episode’s Seven we only see the consequence of their choice. That’s fine.
It’s the Switch that’s baffling me. Where is it? Nothing raises its hand and waves. The insertion of Steph as Hank’s wife is the Switch, but it has no consequence for this episode. How their marriage affects the post-war vault is unexplored in this season. (He’s awakened from cryo sleep before she is and marries someone else in Vault 33. Steph, after thawing, shows no sign that she knows Hank, who is now a generation older than she is.) This Switch provides no delineation between the Four and Five; usually a change in the team dynamics will happen. It’s a shame, because this episode could’ve used structural shaping. Right now it feels like: this happens, then this happens. The plot is a blob.
I do feel that an Enneagram review of a season’s finale is always incomplete. I look forward to examining the entire season’s breakdown, which will put the episode in perspective. I’ll have that ready for next time.
One last thing: Credit to this fabulous YouTube drop from the Expert Reacts channel for identifying the different firearms, real and imagined, used in Season Two. Coop’s knuckleduster is an actual gun, which was fun to discover.