Fallout season 2 review: a goofy apocalypse gets serious

The most impressive thing about To fallThe first season of was how well it set the tone. The games are a mix of the grim and the wacky, a post-apocalyptic story in a dark world that’s also full of crude jokes and ridiculous characters. It’s a difficult balance to strike – too serious and it’s a miserable place to be; too silly and it makes the whole thing meaningless – but the Amazon Prime Video series got the balance right. It was even accessible to viewers who had never played the games. Once the scene is set, the second season of the series attempts to expand. To fallof the world and tackle more heady subjects. But in doing so, it loses some of the playfulness that set the series apart from the many other dystopias you can stream.

To fall once again focuses primarily on three main characters: Lucy, Maximus and the Ghoul, the desert’s version of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. This time around, Vault dweller Lucy (Ella Purnell) travels alongside the Ghoul (Walton Goggins) to the relative glitz and glamor of New Vegas. Lucy follows her father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), in hopes of bringing him to justice for destroying an entire town. The ghoul is Also after Lucy’s father because he thinks it will lead him to his own missing family. Meanwhile, Maximus (Aaron Moten) has returned to the Brotherhood of Steel as a hero because his comrades all wrongly believe he killed the leader of their rival, the New California Republic. (If you are lost right now, To fall offers very useful recaps before each episode to bring you up to speed, this despite the recent AI fiasco.)

That’s a lot to keep track of, but it’s also only a fraction of what Season 2 covers. For one thing, unrest continues in the wasteland. It seems that each group is fighting not only against each other, but also among themselves. The Brotherhood is on the verge of civil war as they argue over an ancient artifact, and Lucy’s old home, Vault 33, is in dire straits due to a water crisis and a rebel faction that begins as an inbred support group. There are even newly introduced factions, like the Legion, a group that imitates ancient Roman traditions without understanding them. Also new this season: pre-war technology capable of completely controlling a human being, which would potentially make the desert a much less violent place. But the technology isn’t quite there: it continues to make the user’s head explode.

On top of all that, season 2 also becomes more explicit about the origins of the nuclear war that created the desert in the first place. This requires numerous flashbacks, which mostly follow the Ghoul’s pre-war life as he spies on his wife, Barb (Frances Turner), a high-ranking executive at the powerful Vault-Tec corporation. (Easiest way to know what period you’re watching: Does Goggins look like a zombie?) To fall is never subtle with its social satire and that remains true here. The end of the world is brought about by a group of tech oligarchs who wield too much power, and as one of the characters thinks early on, “every dollar spent is a vote cast.” Board meetings show billionaires salivating over the business opportunities that come with the apocalypse. A bit like with BreakupThere’s a hidden tension in seeing this kind of cultural commentary on a platform owned by the exact type of oligarch the series is criticizing, however To fall don’t question that.

Most of this isn’t explicitly bad – there’s just too much going on. Season 2 constantly jumps between plots, characters, and time periods, which doesn’t leave much room for much else. And what’s left out is a lot of the levity. We are not talking about a Last of Us level of sadness here – there are some good gags, particularly when it comes to the juxtaposition of Lucy’s continued unconsciousness with the harsh realities of a post-apocalyptic world – but these jokes stand out because they are much rarer now.

The downside here is that I haven’t watched the whole season. Amazon has shared six of the eight episodes with critics, so I don’t know how things end, or if that balance between dour and funny changes towards the end. What I saw is still unmistakably To fall – but a little less fun.

_{Season 2 from Fallout begins streaming on Amazon Prime Video on December 16 at 9 p.m. ET, with new episodes every week.}