‘Fallout’ Season 2 review: Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins strike a glorious gory path to truth

Fallout Season 2 finds the Amazon Prime series expanding in scale and ambition, with Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins anchoring a gory, darkly funny journey through Vault‑Tec conspiracies and wasteland chaos

After that mind-blowing (literally) opener in episode 1, Fallout settles into an easy rhythm. Based on Bethesda’s eponymous video game, Fallout is set 200 years after a nuclear holocaust following the Great War of 2077.

While some of the population lives in vaults (unaware they are sociological experiments), the surface is a wasteland with people scratching out an existence in a savage battle for survival.

Season 1 ended with an uneasy alliance between Lucy (Ella Purnell), a vault dweller who has come to the surface looking for her father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), and The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a Hollywood star in the before times.

The Ghoul, mutated by radiation poisoning and kept from going feral with chemicals, knows a lot about Vault-Tec, the evil corporation, and politicians who are responsible for the state of the world. He is looking for his wife Barbara (Frances Turner), a senior Vault-Tec executive and their daughter, Janey (Teagan Meredith).

Lucy has an ally in Maximus (Aaron Moten) of the Brotherhood of Steel, a group that eschews pre-war technology. Maximus grows increasingly disillusioned with the infighting among different branches of the Brotherhood. Matters reach a head with the appearance of Paladin Xander Harkness (Kumail Nanjiani) an uninvited envoy from the Commonwealth Brotherhood of Steel.

There is plenty happening in the vaults too, with water running out; Lucy’s friend Steph (Annabel O’Hagan) hiding a secret; and Lucy’s brother Norm (Moisés Arias) escaping from Brain‑on‑a‑Roomba (giggle), also known as Vault‑Tec senior junior vice president Bud Askins (Michael Esper), and awakening all the cryogenically frozen Vault‑Tec employees.