Fallout Season 2 Episode 6 recap: ‘The people who set all this in motion’

Please note: major spoilers for Fallout Season 2 Episode 6!

Barb’s having a lot of meetings that could have just been emails—grim emails about how an accurate depiction of bombs hitting Los Angeles would look “too busy” on a billboard, about how 30% of the water chips will fail, and about how premium customers should have access to special freeway lanes to get to their vaults faster. Her blank horror at these corporate plans for the apocalypse is the most sympathetic Barb’s been in a while.

Young Hank’s here to take notes on Barb’s next meeting, with Mr. House. (Not the real one, of course.) “RobCo presents the automated man,” he says, presenting the mind-control device. Barb’s surprised to learn this is something Vault-Tec commissioned, in return for giving House access to cold fusion for a mysterious personal project of his own.

In Freeside, nobody looks twice at The Ghoul impaled on a pole by the side of the road. He can’t reach his vials and is starting to turn feral. After this brief reminder of the future we return to the past, where Coop finally tells his wife he knows what Vault-Tec is up to.

Lucy wakes up in Vault-Tec’s office, where her dad has left out a nice dress. That’s not creepy at all. Two Legionaries patrol the corridor outside, but when she goes to ambush them with a fire hydrant they’re disarmingly friendly. After passing through an office full of surface dwellers working together pleasantly, she finds her father in a simulated vault. He acts as if nothing’s changed, launching into a book club conversation about All Quiet on the Western Front, but quickly turns to how similar it was to the situation on the surface: “People fighting over the most petty things. Like bottlecaps.”

Sometimes Fallout’s developers act surprised when people suggest it has anti-capitalist themes, but they’re the people who made a game where post-apocalyptic society decides it can’t function without money even though they have to substitute the lids from bottles of fizzy drink for coinage. Fallout’s critique of society is and the things it clings to has always been there, even if it was included subconsciously.

Hank surrenders himself to Lucy’s custody, placing himself in handcuffs that are apparently just part of the vault package. They do think of everything at Vault-Tec.

Meanwhile, Maximus and Thaddeus ditch the power armor, since the Brotherhood puts trackers in them (it’s how they found Maximus when he ran off for his bro date with Xander). They’ve still got the cold fusion artifact, which Thaddeus wants to sell, though Max thinks they should find the right person to give it to.

Night’s fallen on Freeside, and The Ghoul is trying to hang on to his identity. Repeating his name and that of his daughter, he tries to drag himself up the pole he’s impaled on. Though he fails, he’s rescued soon after by a gigantic figure who drags him back to a lair surrounded by meat bags. It’s a super mutant played by Ron Perlman.

The mutant heals him with a lump of radiation, and suggests they have an enemy in common: “The people who set all this in motion. The Enclave.” The Ghoul’s not interested in a team-up though, and the mystery mutant knocks him out so he won’t know the location of the mutant’s hideout before dragging him away.

The latest meeting of the Inbreeding Support Group is shut down by Overseer Betty, since there’s a water shortage and all these people are eating salty snacks. Reg stands up to her, arguing that “our ancestors put themselves first, and you know what? That worked out for them.” Over in Vault 32, Chet finds out he’s getting married to Steph tomorrow via a poster on the billboard.

Back in the past, Barb and Coop’s argument comes to a head. He accuses her of being willing to kill millions of people like her to save her own daughter, and Barb suggests that he’d do the same for Janey. When Coop calls her a monster, Barb flashes back to her own encounter with true monstrosity.

We return to those grim meetings we saw at the start of the episode, after which Barb asks young Betty to bring her everything they’ve got on the cold fusion diode’s security. Before Barb can do something rash, she gets in a lift with someone we haven’t seen since Season 1. It’s Doctor Wilzig, who tells her that if she doesn’t do what she’s told she’ll die, and so will her family. The same is true of him if he doesn’t deliver this message, he says, which is that she’ll have to tell the other corporations to drop the bombs as we saw in Season 1. Seems like the Enclave was behind it all along.

Back in the present, by which I mean the past but not as much, Barb begs Coop not to do something rash. Coop heads to the Lucky 38, gets Hank drunk, brings him back to the hotel room, then drugs him. This is the kind of thing that’s generally considered rash behavior. When Coop opens the suitcase Hank’s been lugging around, instead of the cold fusion diode he finds a needle-like device.

At which point, Barb returns, sizes up the situation, and takes the device out of Coop’s hand. Then she plunges it into Hank’s head, just below the ear. It’s the same contraption Wilzig used in Season 1 to hide the diode. Now it’s in Barb and Coop’s hands.

Lucy marches Hank through the cubicle, freaking out the mind-controlled office drones. Hanks calms them down, explaining that this is all in the service of justice and “we like justice.” These people were all surface dwellers, he tells Lucy, introducing the various killers and cannibals. When Lucy tells them they’re free to leave, they say they’re happier where they are.

The snake oil salesman brings out two new inductees, a Legion soldier and one from the NCR, who’ve been bound but not had their devices activated yet. Lucy says they should be left as they are, but the Legionnaire escapes and a fight breaks out. Lucy tries to restrain him, but he grabs a stapler and starts stapling the NCR trooper’s forehead—a pretty inefficient way of killing someone, really. Hank shouts that turning on their devices is the only way to stop them murdering each other, and Lucy reluctantly agrees.

CX404 finds Maximus and Thaddeus sitting around a campfire because apparently they don’t know that’s how you get radroaches. The dog leads them to the Mojave Mission School, which is where The Ghoul’s been dumped. “Fuck,” says Maximus. “Fuck,” agrees The Ghoul.

“Hey!” waves Thaddeus.

Pip-Boy Pointers

🦴Thaddeus says he’s from the Boneyard, “Like, the shithole side of the Boneyard.” As seen in the original Fallout, the Boneyard is what becomes of Los Angeles after the war. Since Lucy finds Santa Monica Pier right outside Vault 33, maybe she and Thaddeus are neighbors?

🎹The song during the Inbreeding Support Group fantasy sequence is Uranium Fever by Elton Britt, which you can also hear on Diamond City Radio in Fallout 4.

🥷When Chet’s looking at the billboard you can also see that someone’s lost a copy of the skill book Dean’s Electronics. There are also posters for the Vault 32 Ninja Club (“Try and find us”), and for a meetup at the shooting range that says you should “bring the kids” just like your dad does in Fallout 3’s tutorial.

⚔️As seen over the credits, Bud Askins has Grognak the Barbarian comics on his desk including “Enter Maula: War Maiden of Mars.” Grognak comics are skill books that make you better at melee, but that didn’t help Bud when he got turned into a rollerbrain.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑Vault-Tec’s offices include a Clone Propagation section. Gary?