Summary
Fallout Season 2 really comes together in “The Wrangler”, with various subplots reaching crucial turning points at the same time.
Who’s being wrangled in “The Wrangler”? It’s more a case of what’s being wrangled, honestly, and the answer is pretty much every knotty plot thread that Fallout has been untangling in Season 2. Episode 5 ping-pongs between perspectives and timelines, using the flashbacks to inform the present-day scenes while fleshing out the backstory of the Wasteland and taking Lucy and the Ghoul further along their contrasting arcs of moral decay (in her case) and burgeoning humanity (in his). It’s a bit scattered, but it’s also pretty good.
It’s also much more Robert House than we’ve been treated to thus far, and let me just say here at the top that Justin Theroux is really great in this. People have been moaning a lot about the show’s depiction of this character, since he’s cribbed directly from the games, but putting aside any notions of one-to-one “accuracy” it’s a really good take.
Anyway…
Time For A Beer
Picking up from last week’s Deathclaw cliffhanger, Lucy and the Ghoul are able to get away from the three(!) of them and make their way to Freeside in the hopes of turning up a solution to the new “Vegas is surrounded by Deathclaws” problem. This is also a good excuse for various contemplative Ghoul flashbacks. More on those in a minute.
In the meantime, the Ghoul gives Lucy a brief rundown of how his long search for his family has taken him to various Vaults that were intended to preserve upper Vault-Tec’s upper management; one in California, one in Oregon, but not, crucially, one in Vegas. The others were empty, so the Ghoul is hoping to hit the jackpot this time, if only he can find the Vault.
In the meantime, he drowns his sorrows in a bar, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror that kick-starts a recollection of travelling to the technological summit that was supposed to decide the fate of the world – and where he was supposed to kill Robert House.
Lucky 38
The summit is taking place at House’s Lucky 38 Resort and Casino. Cooper and Barb are met by a young Hank, and Cooper is reassured by Moldaver over the phone that he’s doing the right thing. But he isn’t willing to assassinate House with the red vial of poison that she has lost in the phone booth’s coin return. He thinks he can get the cold fusion and complete the mission without having to murder anyone.
There are multiple flashbacks in this episode, but I’m going to consolidate all of them into this section for ease. Almost immediately after arriving, Cooper is informed by House’s body double that House himself would like to see him, in a suite at the top of the Lucky 38, where Victor – the robot from Episode 3 – is House’s personal assistant and House himself is sitting in front of a huge bank of computer monitors. He knows that Cooper is there to kill him. He knows, it turns out, quite a lot of things, but not some of the crucial details, such as how Cooper himself fits into the coming events that his mathematical paradigms have predicted. One of those events is, alarmingly, the end of the world.
House wants the cold fusion from Barb and Vault-Tec so that he can preserve his consciousness indefinitely in robot form, to help protect Vegas from the coming events. He doesn’t think Vault-Tec launches the bombs, and isn’t sure that Barb does either; they certainly won’t be dropped by him. There’s a mysterious, shadowy player involved, the same entity responsible for Cooper’s encounter with the Deathclaw in the Arctic, which House is privy to thanks to having access to the technology powering his suit. He saw what he saw, and he thinks it’s all connected, but he doesn’t yet know how.
Either way, Cooper’s unplanned involvement – Barb was supposed to come to Vegas alone, and Cooper coming with her has pushed the end of the world forward by a month – is an unknown variable that House can’t account for. Cooper thinks he’s nuts and leaves in a bit of a fluster, getting increasingly drunk until he’s tossed from the back of a mechanical rodeo shaped like a rocket and nursed back to something resembling sobriety by Barb. He tells her they need to talk, which is a bit of an understatement.
The Snake Oil Salesman
Jon Daly’s Snake Oil Salesman returns in Fallout Season 2, Episode 5, initially in a funny little montage of him skipping his way to Vegas while unflappably dealing with the various perils of the Wasteland. While he’s seducing a robot – needs must, I suppose – Hank thwacks him over the head with a crowbar and takes him to Vault-Tec’s HQ, where he becomes the latest guinea pig in the brain-computer interface trials.
Somewhat improbably, the device doesn’t blow up the Snake Oil Salesman’s head, even when it’s cranked up, so he becomes the first of Hank’s mind-controlled stooges. How fitting. We’ll see him again later.
Side note: We see quite clearly here that Barbara and Janey Howard have been frozen in Vault-Tec’s Cryogenic Biorepository, though it’s deliberately a little unclear if they’re still in there. Remember this, as it’ll underpin a key moment later.
Forced Evolutionary Virus
Blessedly, there’s less Vault stuff in “The Wrangler”. Primarily, we check in with Norm, who, along with the rest of the Vault 31 escapees, has been led by Ronnie to Vault-Tec’s offices. In a surprising turn of events, Ma June and Barv turn up to complain about their squat being invaded. Ma June even talks to Norm specifically about her encounter with Lucy, but her outlook seems pretty bleak. They eventually allow the escapees the run of the place, just so long as they leave the “roach farm” alone – understandable, since it sounds like they’re growing Godzilla back there.
So, Norm goes investigating, looking for evidence about what Vault-Tec had planned for the Vaults. Claudia recalls an executive named Barbara Howard being in charge of proposals, so the two find her office and start looking through her computer. Claudia has figured out that Norm isn’t really Bud’s successor, but it can be their little secret – except it can’t, since Ronnie is listening from the hall.
When Norm searches up the “F.E.V.” acronym, it turns up a result not for Future Enterprise Ventures but instead, worryingly, for “Forced Evolutionary Virus”. But before he can investigate further, he’s attacked and knocked out by Ronnie.
Lucy Is No Longer a Drug Addict
While the Ghoul drowns his sorrows, he sends Lucy to Sonny’s Sundries to pick up some Addictol, which will purge her body of the drugs she’s now addicted to. Unfortunately, inflation has made the stuff much more expensive than the meagre number of caps the Ghoul gave her, so she has to improvise by breaking in and stealing the stuff, along with a Powerfist. She doesn’t manage to sneak back out, though. Instead, she gets into a disagreement with “Sonny” – who’s not really Sonny – that turns fatal.
This stuff feels pitched firmly at game fans, and it’s pretty fun how Addictol has factored into a plot point. Lucy huffs the stuff and, in a funny beat, projectile vomits in the middle of the street for an absurd length of time. But it works. She’s no longer addicted to drugs. Still a bit nauseous, she returns to the Ghoul with the good news, but he counters it with some new developments that Lucy won’t be happy about. The Snake Oil Salesman is there, now officially an emissary of Hank, and he has offered the Ghoul a deal. If he returns Lucy to the safety of her Vault so she can avoid what’s coming, he’ll keep the Ghoul’s frozen family safe. If not, he’ll forcibly wake them, a process that they probably won’t survive. And the Ghoul has agreed.
The Ghoul regretfully shoots a furious Lucy with a tranquilizer, which takes longer to work than he expects. When he thinks she’s out, he lowers his guard, and she punches him out of the hotel window with the Powerfist, leaving him skewered on a pole. Lucy eventually succumbs to the tranquilizer, collapsing on the floor of the room. Hank arrives and kneels over her as she slips into unconsciousness.
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