Ella Purnell in Fallout
The Big Picture In the broadest possible sense, television has become a blockbuster medium thanks to the advantages of the streaming medium. With episodes of major television shows now costing much more than some movies, it’s clear that the future of these services is reliant on the amount of engagement that their high-profile programming receives.
While Prime Video has a stacked 2024 slate that includes the return of both The Boys and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the adaptation of the popular video game Fallout is certainly one of the most anticipated shows of the entire year. The first season set up some incredibly promising prospects for the future of the series, but Fallout would have benefited more from a weekly release rather than a binge drop. Fallout Sci-FiActionAdventureDrama In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits. Release Date April 11, 2024 Cast Moises Arias , Johnny Pemberton , Walton Goggins , Kyle MacLachlan Main Genre Sci-Fi Seasons 1 Creator Graham Wagner , Geneva Robertson-Dworet Producer Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan Streaming Service Prime Video ‘Fallout’ Needed More Time To Tease Its Twists While Fallout is based on the incredibly acclaimed video game series of the same name, co-creators Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet chose to tell an original story that is set within the same universe. Theoretically, this allows both passionate fans of the original property and non-gamers to start from a similar point in which they enter the story with no foresight about how it will end. Nonetheless, Fallout contains a lot of dense worldbuilding in order to explain its premise, characters, and environment. Early episodes spend a lot of time delivering exposition about the Great War of 2077, and how humanity came to inhabit the underground vaults developed by the Vault-Tec corporation. The first episode of Fallout effectively cuts through the exposition by introducing the engaging characters of Lucy MacLean and Maximus ; given that the two characters are on opposite sides of the surface, Fallout is able to flesh out what both the Vaults and the Wasteland look like. However, the sheer amount of exposition in Fallout may have been overwhelming for viewers who were getting adjusted to the world for the first time. It may have been harder to get emotionally invested in Lucy’s search for her father Hank for viewers who were still trying to keep the timelines straight; a weekly release may have allowed first-timers to read up on the lore so that each subsequent twist lands with more impact. Lucy and Maximus’ adventures in the Wasteland begin with a fairly traditional setup, but Fallout deviates from the mythology of the games when it reveals the secret origins of the apocalyptic nuclear conflict. The season finale, “The Beginning,” reveals that Vault-Tec initiated the “Great War” so that the corporate powerhouse would have a monopoly on the Vaults that humanity is forced to reside in. It’s a brilliant twist that sets up an exciting direction for the second season, but Fallout’s biggest reveal would have landed with more impact had it come after weeks of anticipation. The implication that Hank was in part responsible for the genocide may have been more devastating had viewers had the time to get invested in Lucy’s quest to find her father. When viewed simply at the end of a binge cycle, the major revelation feels like just another plot development. Streaming Shows Work When Conversation Is Sustained While an adaptation of Fallout has been in the works for quite some time, it's not the first instance in which executive producers Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan have succeeded in adapting a rich science fiction property with a passionate fanbase. They also served as the creators of HBO’s adaptation of Westworld, which aired on Sunday nights as part of the network’s programming slate. At its height, Westworld succeeded due to the speculation and theories that emerged each week after episodes aired. The show itself may have had its ups and downs, but discussing Westworld weekly was almost as much fun as watching it. Given that Fallout has many structural similarities to Westworld, it's unfortunate that it was not allotted the same opportunity. Fallout may be a subversive take on the post-apocalyptic genre, but it contains much of the dark comedy that Prime Video used to great success with The Boys. The Boys has benefited from a weekly episode drop that allows viewers to analyze its satirical implications. By comparing the world of superheroes to that of modern celebrities, The Boys was able to spark discussions about parallels with our reality; given how much Fallout’s discussion about nuclear conflict and corporate greed relate to current news events, it had the potential to do the same. Unfortunately, isolating the conversation to just one weekend of release meant that Fallout viewers may have been more focused on following the narrative threads and did not have the time to think about the show’s deeper implications. Weekly Drops Could've Called More Attention to ‘Fallout’s Easter Eggs Close While it certainly found a means of making the universe comprehensible for non-gamers, Fallout is still packed with Easter Eggs that pay homage to the franchise’s roots. Between the introduction of the Deathclaw predators and the new backstory given for Walton Goggins’ Ghoul, Fallout fans may have appreciated the time to notice subtle Easter eggs each week. Many of the show’s best references are hidden within the background of a scene, and are easy to overlook; it’s likely that they were passed by entirely by viewers who were hoping to complete the series early out of fear of being spoiled. Streamers need to experiment with different release models, and some shows may benefit from a binge drop; shows like Netflix’s Ripley or Max’s The Sympathizer feel like a long movie, and thus work best when viewed in one sitting. However, Fallout is a serialized adventure about the power of personal choice and would have worked better if viewers had been given time to weigh in on and discuss the story on a weekly basis.
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