Fallout

Our Review

Amazon’s adaptation nails the tone: the retro-futurist satire, the vault-boy grimness, the capitalism-eats-itself worldbuilding. Lucy (Ella Purnell), the vault-dweller whose idealism gets weapon-grade testing; the Ghoul (Walton Goggins, the show’s best character — a pre-war actor turned 200-year-old mutant bounty hunter, and Goggins’s best role in years); and Maximus, a Brotherhood of Steel aspirant — cross paths in the irradiated Wasteland, and the mystery (what happened to… the… the vault… the cold fusion… — the conspiracy at the season’s center) unspools with game-faithful glee.

The production design (the props, the power armor, the junktown texture) is movie-grade, the violence has the game’s slapstick-gore register, and the lore expansions (the vault experiments, the… the New Vegas… — the season 2 road to the… — feel made by people who love the games. The rare adaptation that’s a great show first and a great adaptation second.

Verdict: Watch it. War never changes, but TV adaptations finally did.