The Ringer-Verse - ‘Fallout’ Season 2, Episode 2 Reactions | Button Mash

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

Ben and Daniel Chin patrol the Mojave and discuss the literally mind-blowing second episode of the second season of 'Fallout,' "The Golden Rule." After sharing their overall review, they assess each of the episode’s four main settings and story lines, point out the parallels between characters, and wrestle with this season’s accelerated world-building. They also consider whether becoming a ghoul is good, the Golden Rule vs. the Ghoul-den Rule, the likelihood of surviving a nuclear explosion by hiding in a fridge, aliens in 'Fallout' lore, and more. Intro (0:30) Overall review of the episode (03:32) Hank catch-up (06:20) What’s new with Norm (13:26) Lucy and the ghoul (18:30) Maximus and the Brotherhood (38:01) Fridge science, 'Fallout' lore, and more (50:00) Host: Ben Lindbergh Guest: Daniel Chin Producer: Brian H. Waters Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Danny Kelly, and it's officially fantasy football season, which means the ringer fantasy football show is back with the latest news from around the NFL and everything you need to get ready for the fantasy football season. So join us at the ringer fantasy football show on Spotify or on our new YouTube channel. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks.

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Ask your doctor about Tramphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Tramphiara.com. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable Internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business. to keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business.

So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Hello, and welcome into The Ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, senior editor at The Ringer and Elder Cleric of the World. the Brotherhood of Buttonmash. And just so you know, I am nice. With me today, emerging from the fridge where he wrote out a nuclear blast.

It's another nice guy. Ringer's staff writer, Daniel Chin. Howdy, Daniel. Hey, Ben. Good to be back. We united on the Last of Us, season two recap pods for Buttonmash. And I hope that we're happier this time around, that we have consistently nicer things to say about the second season of Fallout. I think we will.

I think so, too. I mean, what a bummer, but, you know, that was still a blast doing those week to week. Yeah, it was quite a journey that we went on. And this is a different sort of adaptation and a little less of a close mapping onto the source material. And so there's less for us to get upset about, I guess, as people who played the games. So we'll just evaluate the show on its own merits, but we will continue to touch on the game influence where it's relevant. And of course, we will not spoil anything because we haven't watched ahead. And this isn't directly adapted from any game.

So we don't know exactly what's going to happen either. The midnight boys have a bye week, but we are keeping the Ringiverse feed alive during the holidays here at Buttonmash, walking in a nuclear winter wonderland and putting this podcast under the tree on Christmas Eve. As it turns out, it is pretty difficult to get guests from the Fallout cast or creative team in late December. I tried. But that will wait for 2026. So today it's just the two of us reacting to Fallout season two. Episode two, The Golden Rule, written by Chris Brady Denton and directed by Fred Toy.

So we'll discuss what we saw. And if we work quickly and as a team, we'll receive some merit dots. So many moving parts this week. We have Hank, Norm, Maximus, the ghoul slash Lucy, all in different places, doing different things. even the ghoul and Lucy separate by the end of the episode but first and foremost, it's a Maximus episode

which was needed after his absence from the season premiere. So let's give our thoughts on the episode as a whole and then we'll check in on each of our main characters. So what's your takeaway from the Golden Rule?

I enjoyed it. I mean, I really just loved the opening which I'm sure we'll get into in more depth but I really thought that it was such an effective way to get back into Maximus

after not just the layoff of not having him last week, but between the layoff of season one and season two, to really just tell you what's at stake and who this character is at his core. You pointed it out last week with Van, and it is something that I've been thinking about, too, in terms of just, as you just outlined just now, there's so many moving parts now and so many characters to follow. Even just, we weren't with VALTA 33 this time,

but just the fact that that's even diverted. So I'm like, that's true. I forgot about poor Raj and his support group. I hope they're all doing okay. We're still waiting to see what's happening with a support group now. And the fact that it's a weekly structure. So it's going to be interesting to see as it keeps playing out. And I can feel like, I don't know if it's necessarily the strain that I'm starting to feel already.

But I can see how this can be a little bit tricky moving forward. Yeah, the fact that I forgot about Raj pretty much just didn't wonder what was going on there. I guess speaks to how essential that. is to the season. We'll see. We'll see where that goes. Obviously, we do spend some time in one of the vaults. But yeah, the snack budget may be ample, but I wonder how big the budget of screen time will be for our friends down there. Yeah, yeah. So a lot of moving parts, a lot of spinning plates. And I wanted to mention before we catch up with all of our characters here, first of all, Fallout is the rare high profile show these days that doesn't have its own official podcast? You know,

I'm accustomed to seeing the message. It's like, stay tuned for the after the episodes, feature it, and then go check out the official podcast. Less podcast competition for us, I guess, though I do enjoy listening to those shows sometimes. But there is some supplementary material and one program in particular that is designed for the season, the Gull Log. So I want to just point everyone's attention to this. It's an hour and a half long special on Prime Video and YouTube, which was released earlier this month. featuring Walton Goggins' ghoul and dog meat, who sit in front of a fireplace with a human arm crackling on the fire while listening to a radio broadcast narrated by Mr. New Vegas himself.

They got Wayne Newton, who voiced Mr. New Vegas in Fallout New Vegas to reprise that role. So if you're a Yule Log viewer and a Fallout fan, you may want to check out the Gullog this week. It could be good background. It's sort of soothing. I'm always a big fan of Ulogs and I will just put that on in the background. I'm going to be with my family later in the week. This is probably one that I can't put up on the screen with the human arm. My niece will be asking some questions about what's on the screen,

but it is a little fun around the holidays. Yeah, I can imagine that might require some explanation. What are we watching here? What is this? Who is talking to me? But if you've played New Vegas, it will bring back powerful memories of Mr. New Vegas. And that's not the only New Vegas callback we'll talk about today because there are a few more in this new episode. So let's get to the Golden Rule, or should I say the Golden Rule.

I don't know if I should have, but I did. So let's catch up with our leads here, starting with the McLean men, Hank and Norm. So Hank is happily puttering around Vault Tech HQ, torturing and murder. murdering mice and men. What do you think he's trying to do here? What is his goal? Whom is he trying to please? I was really looking forward to talking to you about this part because I actually have no idea what's going on. I was like, it was so hard for me to track what he was actually doing. And just the fact that he wouldn't just get a whole crate of the mice too was really bothering me. That's what I'm wondering. Would it not be more efficient for him

to grab a bunch of mice at once instead of driving back and forth and walking and going up and I guess he's hopeful in a way that the next mouse's head won't pop. Maybe he's like trying to look on the bright side or something. But you've got to learn your lesson. You save yourself a lot of travel time. Like I would think that just corporate HQ would just appreciate the efficiency of minimizing your travel time. Yeah. And that's the fact that he's cleaning the cage every single time after exploding these mice.

Otherwise it would just be completely covered in blood. So this is like the least effective way to go about this. Yeah, and he's trying to make mice climb into a tiny chair and use a tiny computer. It looks like there's like a little scale model of an office inside these things. And I'm wondering how he even gives that command. Because when we saw this in the premiere, with the first use, it seems like it's something that essentially is a mind control device. Or in theory, that's the way it's supposed to work. So how do you tell the mouse what you want it to do?

He wasn't even like doing anything with the pit boy or anything. anything like audibly. So I'm just like, is he just seeing like when their heads are going to explode? It's like very unclear. Yeah. And then unsatisfied with mass murdering mice, Hank thaws out a VaultTech Premium Elite Plus customer. Just don't get what you pay for anymore. Obviously, VaultTech subscriptions have been inshittified because this is your reward. So he is not phased by this at all. He has no scruples. He has no scruples. He has. no qualms. What he says is, I'm improving a piece of outdated technology. And by that, he doesn't mean just the mind control device, but civilization itself, that he wants complete compliance.

He appears just totally unbothered by the sight of suffering, rodent or human. Even other humans are essentially subhuman to him. But I just, I question the experimental design here. Like, what exactly, because you implant the thing in the neck and then you crank up the mind power and then the head explodes. And I guess is he trying to determine exactly where the head popping threshold is? Is he hoping that someone will prove resistant

to the head popping? Because it doesn't seem as if he's tinkering with the device in any way. Is he learning from this experiment or is he just torturing people for fun? That's really the way it seems. And it's just, again, I just have so many questions. And he just does not seem very good at this.

So I don't know. I enjoyed him yo-yoing the entire time, the very whimsical tone that this they always keep. But a lot of questions about Hank's methodology here. Yeah. No, he's having the time of his life. He's in his business attire. It's been too long that he's been stuck in the vault suit. So he's in his element here.

but I'm just, I'm unclear on if this is an iterative experiment, what exactly he is gaining from the repeated executions. Is he getting closer to his goal? We'll find out, presumably. And the other question is just, who is he doing this for and why? Because it's not seemingly that he is purely out for world domination as a solo act. We saw him on the global comms radio system last week. And there are a lot of theories out there, a lot of redditishers. speculation about whom he might be speaking to? Is he talking to China? Right? We saw the Americans being converted into communists and maybe the global comms sign suggests that he's talking to someone far away or is he speaking to someone in the enclave, the mysterious

shadowy enclave or a vault tech large language model that is sort of deep in some of the supplementary lore. The implication is that he's talking to Robert House and presuming that he's still alive, but who knows, that might be a misdirect? Yeah, I mean, it's, they really didn't give us too much by way of that from just between first episode and second episode. So it seems to me like it's still most likely, House. I am curious where it goes, but I think it is, it is a little tough when we are splitting between so many storylines right now. I thought that this one was probably the weakest out of the, all the ones that were going on in this episode. But that said, I still am curious to see where it develops

in and if it is somebody else other than house, what those motivations are. There have been twists in this series, Hank, being the bad guy, was a twist. But it hasn't seemed like a series so much that's kind of, you know, throwing up red herrings and trying to make us think something. And really, it's something else. It tends to be kind of on the level. I mean, it withholds information from us, certainly. But it's not often that I feel like it has led us astray. And so if he's talking to us and he's trying to prove his worth here by perfecting this device to further the aims of vault tech or any associated powers, I suppose that makes sense.

Again, aside from our confusion about how he is actually getting closer to that goal and whether he will manage to perfect this device before he exterminates the entire stock of cryogenically frozen creatures. Anyway, I guess it reinforces just what we saw in the first episode. Just the motivations here are just sadistic, right? And these people are insane on some level. I mean, they're fascists, their power hungry. They don't care about anyone else whom they consider different from them.

They don't even give their opinions any weight or even their personhood or their mousehood, for that matter. So this means nothing to him. He will go through as many people. We saw him just stomp on a wasteland dweller, right? Presumably because it was just more trouble to go around than to just walk directly over someone and sever them in the middle. So that's how much he cares. He's not even going to break his stride if you are in his way. Right.

And it was like very effective with the, just the beginning of the episode and just showing what he did to shady sands and him washing his hands. and him washing his hands of it afterwards. Yeah, going right back to the wind and the willows, you know, reading for his daughter after having just mass murdered thousands and thousands of people. However, he has preserved a son. And his son, well, I guess the question is how far from the tree does that apple fall? So we meet Norm again here. He has overpowered, poor disembodied, but stuffed him in a trash can or something.

and taken control of the vault. We saw him thaw everyone out, and here we see everyone awake. And it seems like on some level, Norm is his father's son, because he does just sort of step into this role fairly naturally. Yeah, I thought this was a really effective way to contrast those two storylines. And I'm really invested in what's going to be happening with Norm this season, just the way that he starts off by trying to tell the truth. And he sees them panic.

and he ends up just going right back to what is the Voltaic playbook of just lying and manipulating your underlings to lead and to just get their objective done. I thought that it was a really interesting way to see how quickly he adapts to Norm. Yeah, he takes to the leadership and the deception, and it seems almost second nature to him. And, you know, he has himself been manipulated, of course. and he is suspected that there's more going on than meets the eye, and he has discovered that that's the case. But he does just switch naturally into this mode where, yeah, he's manipulating Bud's Buds Buds into helping him escape the cryo chamber. He's not killing anyone.

He's not exploding any heads as of yet. But just as Hank is thawing out his test subjects, Norm thaws out Vault Tech execs and puts them to work, basically. So you have to wonder, you know, will he be constantly? kind of the monster that he is combating here, right? And so what happens next? If they escape this chamber, as seems likely, so they have emerged onto the surface. And Norm says it's beautiful. And I thought that was interesting because you can hear one of the survivors from 200 years earlier is looking at this as a wasteland as just a ruined landscape. You can hear someone say like the mall is gone or something, right? I love those just like random lines in the background.

I know, the mall's gone. I mean, it's just like today, right? You know, the decline of malls. It's not like when we were kids. But to Norm, who's never seen the sun, the real son, he says it's beautiful. So he's looking at this with a completely different mindset. And so will he now strike off on his own? Will he try to find his way back into the vault?

Will he try to seize power himself? And that's what I'm wondering. Do you think that he will challenge the true Vault 31 overseers who have? who have taken control Betty, Stephanie in 32 and 33. I think that's the direction it's heading. And I think that's just the one that makes the most sense. Because, I mean, I guess what you have in the main vault in Vault 33, you have the water crisis.

But I think compared to everything else, it's just not that compelling. Or that just can't be the end all for that. And just as they're building it up with Vault 32, I guess it is, now that they're starting to rebuild it from scratch with Vault 32 and building on this whole lie of having another Vault 31 overseer. I just think this has to be the next logical step. And I am very invested in seeing how he does it.

And just I really like the parallels that they're doing between him and his father, like them both using Reclamation Day to lie to their, not so much victim in Norm's case, but on the receiving end, just using that lie to meet their ends. Yeah, they are each using people, other lives as tools. In a much less nefarious sense in Norm's case. And, you know, he has himself been imprisoned. He's just trying to survive, of course. So it's more defensible.

It's self-defense, essentially. But he is still using some deception and some manipulation. And we'll see where that goes. Because, of course, if he does break back into the vaults somehow, you know, using the pit boy. And then there's some sort of showdown in a confrontation. Well, then the Vault 31 overseers could clue in the thought out execs and say, oh, this guy's an imposter. He has tricked you.

But then again, he'll have the original vault people on his side who didn't know about the conspiracy and didn't know that they were manipulated the entire time. So maybe it's a populist revolt of some sort. Yeah, all of this could come to a head and maybe make the vault storyline a little more essential integral. Yeah. It does feel sort of ancillary at this stage. Yeah.

I am curious just because part of it, what I've found interesting, too, is I feel like there's some reflections of like what happened in a silo on Apple TV, but it's all being contained to just this like vault storyline. And as that's happening, you have all these other things happening with the brotherhood and Lucy looking for the father. So there's, there are a lot of moving parts and to see how they're going to be able to juggle this over the course of a season or more. Very curious. This episode is brought to you by weather tech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and make it a mess. You don't need weather tech floor liners in the summer, unless you hit the beach or go camping, then you'd want a cargo liner or a road trip goes

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But it doesn't last long. It leaves a bitter aftertaste. we have the continuation of the odd couple dynamic between Lucy and the ghoul and the moral quandaries that these two have been facing since they paired up. And last week, Van and I talked about why the ghoul really wants to find his family. And is this just something he has fixated on because it's kept him alive and what his family mean to him after this long and after everything he's done, whether he'll know what to do if and when he does find them, and whether they'll recognize. I is the ghoul slash man he's morphed into. And this week, Lucy explicitly expresses that. She says, your family may very well still be out there.

I've seen enough by now to know that nearly anything's possible. But one thing I wouldn't count on is them appreciating the kind of person you've become. So we get the golden rule versus golden rule debate again when they walk by a hospital, hear someone who needs help. And we get the conflicting viewpoints presented again. Empathy is like mud. you lose your boots in that stuff, the ghoul says,

Lucy counters that she can't just walk past someone screaming. The ghoul says, folks been screaming for 200 fucking years. Lucy answers, did it ever occur to you that if you helped them, they would stop? Then the ghoul says, stopping is a waste of time.

And Lucy says, doing the right thing is never a waste of time. Are you on Team Lucy or team ghoul? I don't think that in the extremes, that either of them are necessarily right. I think there has to be a happy medium, but definitely more team ghoul right now, especially with what happened in this episode.

Yes, yes. I think for me at least, like I really like this dynamic, especially with just these are two great actors, and I really like both characters a lot. But I do find it very frustrating to see Lucy very much stuck in this same place of just being so naive, even after everything that happens her in season one. Yeah.

Like the second you see her going towards this hospital, you're like, all right, well, what's going to happen here? Right. Yeah. And it's a, yeah. It feels like there was a lot of growth in Lucy, right? And there was that moment where, you know, like she loses a finger, right? And then she fights back.

And the ghoul says, like, this is the first honest exchange we've had back in season one, you know, where she just kind of like lets out the inner warrior and survivor. And then the end of the season, it's the ultimate disillusionment, her own father has been lying to her all these years. She's separated from Maximus. She finds out what happened to her mother. She has to execute the ghoul her mother became like these are these are traumatic events in her life. And yet it seems like she hasn't been outwardly superficially scarred by them. I mean, you know, even the finger is is back in place. So it's like, you know, I get that there's going to be a happy medium or not entirely happy medium between original wide-eyed.

naive, innocent Lucy and the ghoul, but it does sort of seem as if she's almost reset back to being the pre-hardened wasteland Lucy a little bit. Yeah, I think that's what I find just really frustrating because it feels like her arc is just really stagnant right now. And even like in the first episode, I thought there was still some progression because like she's still trying to keep to her values and who she is, but she's still like shooting them. She's like, I really love that for a set piece where she's like shooting them in the ass and like, you know, like, shooting like the car. Like, she's still like doing something, but like not enough.

And the goal like is saying like, you know, I think you, you think you're being helpful, but you're not. Right. And it's that, that evolution makes sense to me. But for her to take him down to this place, like fight, fight the rad scorpions. And then to try to walk this woman home to wherever that may be, I'm just like, what did you think was going to happen? Yeah.

Yeah. So the ghoul says to her, want to know what I was like before the war, I was just like you, stupid. And as we've seen, he was too trusting and gullible at one point, too. He didn't believe Moldover in the pre-war timeline. And he got a rude awakening. And I assume that we'll watch his evolution in the flashbacks this season. So his arc may mirror Lucy's watching past Coupe kind of morph into the ghoul, not just physically, but in terms of his attitude. So that's another parallel, which I like. and presumably she's going to get less naive and trusting,

and the ghoul at some point will sort of see the air of his ways and unhardened his heart a little, and maybe they'll meet in the middle somewhere. And in fact, Lucy tells him the story of a Christmas carol in this episode. So tis the season, I guess they do when this one would air. But I just wonder how much mileage literally, because they're covering a lot of ground, and narratively, more importantly,

that the show can get out of this dynamic, which was a central concern of season one, also, and which Maximus is also wrestling with and knife fighting with too, just does the wasteland allow you to be a good person or does it turn you into a ghoul in one way or another? So could that debate get tiresome this season if it hasn't already, if there isn't much movement in these people's positions? Yeah, that is definitely my concern, because that's what I was already feeling in this episode. And again, I mean, it does just seem like a very like classic TV playbook to just to try to like delay the main objective of them trying to find Hank because now they're they're split up again.

So they're probably going to have to go find each other and the ghoul is going to have to go. Well, I don't know if he's going to want to save her from Caesar's Leachin. But eventually they're going to have to reunite. So I do think that it is it is interesting to have this being the core question to your point of. just like what does what the waste line is going to do to you how how are you going to be changed or how will you change the wasteland so i i am hopeful that this doesn't like delay too much but since we've already had a full season of this i feel like they do need to expedite this process a little bit so as you said lucy and the ghoul find the survivors which the ghoul calls tunics from

far west we'll find out who this faction actually is before the end of this episode but he foreshadows that reveal by saying folks in those outfits don't deserve saven. And true to his word, he then proceeds to straight up murder. The male survivor chows down on the guy is all ready to turn him into ass jerky. But he doesn't taste good because he's been wounded and poisoned by a pack of rad scorpions who attack and wound the ghoul and the quote unquote tunic. So Lucy does some triage. She uses the sole remaining stim pack on the woman.

on the grounds that the ghoul will live without it, which fair enough, I suppose. Then she leaves to escort the woman back to her people and says she'll come back for the ghoul, but, quote, give him a little time to think about the consequences of his actions, which honestly pissed me off a little bit because she got them into this predicament. It's her actions that she should be thinking about. Yeah, I mean, again, it's just, what is she doing? It's just so, so, you're, to use your last impact, too. I'm just like, you don't know what's coming.

There could be a death claw in around the corner, you know? Right. Sure. Yeah. No, this is, this is vindication of the ghoul, if anything. Right. He's like, hey, we can't get enmeshed in this stuff. Like, it's going to entrap us.

And then exactly that happens. They almost get killed. The ghoul's lying there fighting for his life. And she's like, now think about what you did. Like, what? I was almost more disappointed in the ghoul for just letting her. go down there and just following her down there. She just waiting outside with dog meat, you know?

I guess, so that's the question. Does the goal need Lucy at this point? Because in season one, arguably he did, right? But now to get to his goal, which is just tracking Hank, he's the one doing the tracking. Now, I suppose he might think that he needs

Lucy to get Hank to let them in or something, you know, or catch him by surprise or whatever it is. But it seems like he doesn't necessarily need her anymore. And so I guess there's the question of, is he in his way growing fond of her? You know, is she rubbing off on him to some extent where, yeah, when she peels off to go to the hospital, he could have just kept walking and said, you know, meet you in New Vegas, sweetheart or whatever, but he goes with her. So seemingly,

he thinks that there is value in preserving his life or that he has started to tenuously grow attached to her too. That is a really good point that I didn't think about because even at the end the season one, it was like he was going to go on this journey regardless and do you want to learn about your maker? So he was giving that option. But I do think that is a good point too with just, I think he maybe has formed some sort of attachment. And I really like all the quiet moments in episodes where maybe not so much in this one, but where they're showing that he still has a little bit of that Cooper in him. He still has a little bit of that human somewhere buried underneath 200 years of being a ghoul in the wasteland, like where he's looking at the,

Starlight drive in and seeing his name up there or seeing him on a TV screen. So it's definitely all building up to when he and if he sees his family again. And coming back to that question of whether or not his family's going to like what they see. This actually is making me think of The Last of Us now because maybe there is a little bit of Joel lost Sarah and then he has a new daughter in Ellie and he's ready to open up again and Coop has lost his daughter for a couple centuries and along comes loose. to be the adopted daughter of the ghoul. There might be a little bit of that.

Maybe a little bit. Yeah. And then having learned no lessons from this close call, she gets herself right back into trouble as the woman leads her back to her people. And the tunics turn out to be Caesar's Legion. And Lucy is surrounded. So this again, if you've played New Vegas,

this will be very recognizable to you. If not, then more will be revealed. but, you know, this is a faction of fanatics, fascists, etc., who model themselves on Roman legionaries. And we even see here that their leader is wearing like a wolf headdress kind of thing. And there is a character called Volpice in Fallout New Vegas, who wears the same sort of get-up, just one of Caesar's lieutenants. And again, this is 15 years after the game. So I don't know exactly what state Caesar's Legion will be. at this stage, but again, we're deepening our connection to New Vegas and broadening this world

by introducing another group of folks whose motivations at this point are unclear and presumably will be revealed. Yeah, I'm excited to see how big of a role they have in this too, because, I mean, we saw in the first episode with like the great cons. That was, it felt like really just like an Easter egg, especially with them being set in Novak. Also, by the way, I am playing New Vegas for the. first time as I've been watching this?

Yes. Yeah. It really comes in handy because it's 15 years old and I've been playing it as I've been watching this too. And there are a ton of connections. So I do recommend if you have any interest in that game and you have not played it or you haven't played it in 15 years, they do make a really nice pairing actually to play these simultaneously and watch the show.

Yeah, there are a lot of satisfying Easter eggs. And even just between the time and which the, like the trailer came out for season two and like I started playing this game. Like I'm catching all sorts of things. I'm just constantly like the Leo meme where I'm just like snapping at the TV. Like, oh, I see that. And it's a lot of fun.

And really just, it's never too much in your face. You guys were talking about this a little bit last week. I do wonder a little bit with Caesar's Legion, the way they kind of built it up at the end of it. If they're starting to get into that territory a little bit with in terms of like the fan servicing, I am curious to see how much they're able to just build this on this own and how much they're just like,

ooh, you should recognize what this is the second we show this symbol. Right. But I think they've done a really good job of just balancing the fan service and being good to just new viewers. I think it's too. Yeah. Yeah, they've stayed away from just the sort of member berries key jangling, Leo pointing meme, just putting it there for fan services sake. So I assume that there will be a part for Caesar's Legion to play.

play here. And, you know, in the game, they're kind of out to take over the New California Republic, which is more of a going concern at that stage. So what part they play here, I don't know. You know, Caesar in the game is just kind of a totalitarian dictator, just an interesting character. So we'll see how closely these things map on. And if it is more of a just here's another challenge to overcome and for fans to recognize or whether it really does play an essential part in developing this world. I do have a question for you. So in the wasteland,

would you want to be a ghoul? Because we've seen the upsides and the downsides to the ghoul life in this series. And we know that our boy Thaddeus is getting ghulified as we speak. And we see here that the ghoul, formerly Kup, survives a stabbing by a rad scorpion and will make a recovery at some point.

So I keep thinking, in this world, this lawless society, would it be so bad to be a ghoul? I think it's a great question. And for the most part, it seems like definitely advantageous. But I do think there was one really good counterpoint in just season one when he completely goes off course of their mission and tracking down the head to because Lucy's broken the vials that he has remaining of what even is that? Like, yeah. It's, This is a show creation. So it's injectable vials that stops ghouls from becoming feral seemingly.

Right, right. But like that moment, that scene they have of seeing that feral ghoul turned feral because he hasn't had any dosages of that mystery vial, radiation vial. They made it very scary. It's just like you're losing your mind, like as Lucy's trying to free these feral ghouls from that situation too and in season one episode it's like you're slowly

losing your mind and you're just repeating your name to yourself to try to keep your sanity trying to remember who you are right so I think they were really smart about having something that early on because otherwise just like yeah totally would want to be the cool over anybody else right now

I guess I should say inhalable instead of injectable but same difference and yeah in fiction when there is some form of immortality there's often a catch to it, of course. So you're usually, I think, as the reader or the viewer, supposed to come to the conclusion that the price of living forever is too high. You know, you lose all your loved ones,

or you lose your love for life, or there's some physical cost to that transformation. And maybe that's supposed to reassure us that as mortal beings that we actually have it better off. But usually I watch or I read those things, and I still say, you know what, worth it. Because, I mean, I don't want to die. I'll make some sacrifices.

Like, take vampires, perhaps the most famous example of this. In my mind, being a vampire just mostly seems great and not just because they tend to be hot and heart throbs and are super strong and fast and can fly. Those things are nice. But none of the vampire downsides are deal breakers for me. I mean, you have to sleep during the day and be awake at night already nocturnal, done and then, you know, as it is, I have to get blackout curtains. and a sleep mask.

A coffin would be perfect for me. Love sleeping in a dark, cool, quiet place. Get burned by the sun. Already do. You've seen my complexion. I can't go out there as it is. And, you know, everyone else ages while you stay young. Just make them vampires too.

You have a whole vampire crew. Can't eat garlic. I was going to say garlic. You know, that's kind of tough. I mean, I'll live forever, in fact. So ideally, I would work out a, an interview with the vampire style substitute for having to prey on people for blood, because unlike Hank McLean, I would feel bad about that.

But everything else, the vampire lifestyle suits me perfectly. So I'm just saying, like, yeah, granted, the ghouls have to have the vials, and those seem to be in pretty short supply. But a lot of stuff is in short supply in the wasteland, like non-irradiated food and water, shelter, indoor plumbing, you know, like, what's one more bodily need? especially since you're invulnerable to almost everything except turning feral. So, you know, there are a lot of pluses here. And cannibalism, honestly, does not look as bad when it's flea soup is what's on the table otherwise.

I mean, yeah, consider the alternatives. It's true. Yeah. And, you know, like, I'm in the camp of defending cannibalism in extreme circumstances, to be clear. I'm not like casually endorsing cannibalism. I'm just saying, you know, if it's life or death. and your plane goes down and you're stuck in the pass and the Andes. And, you know, it's a choice between starvation and feeding on the flesh of a friend.

You know, if I were that friend, I would gladly give of my body to sustain you, Daniel. It's a little bit different, I guess, if you're the ghoul and you're actually slitting someone's throat. So you can eat them. That was harsh. You know, it's, I mean, it's hard to come back from that, which makes me think that they are probably going to paint Caesar's Legion as pretty nasty people. Because like, if you want to have a ghoul redemption arc at some point, having seen him just slash the throat of an innocent survivor who was not doing anything, you know, it's tough to come back from that, I guess. So having to become a cannibal

is is not a feature. That is more of a bug, I'd say. But, you know, and yeah, you might not be pretty, but to each their own. Like, there's a quest in Fallout Out New Vegas. I don't know whether you've gotten to this where you meet a kind of cult of ghouls. Oh, yeah. I just did that, actually. Yeah, and they do have romantic relationships. There's a reference to fine-looking ghoulettes. Right.

And, you know, so the ghouls are getting down. And, you know, when you become a ghoul, maybe other ghoul seems sexy to you. Like, suddenly having a nose is as a turn off. So it just comes down to taste and sometimes taste for human flesh. And those ghouls in particular in that New Vegas. the quest line. You know, they're a little quirky, but they're just trying to mind their own business.

Yeah. They're tired of being oppressed in this. Exactly. All the smooth skin, as they call them. Anti-gool discrimination. Yeah. They just want to be left alone in peace. So something to think about.

That's all I'm saying. I mean, look, look how long Kup has survived. He's outlived everyone else. And that's because he is a ghoul. Okay. Let's get to Maximus, who has come a long way since the start of season one. Though there's some question about whether he has changed

for the better. So we meet the new Maximus here, mildly new Maximus. He's more confident, he's more empowered, but possibly still not his authentic self. I don't know how you felt about the character of Maximus in season one or Aaron Moten's portrayal. I thought it was really interesting just because I couldn't quite pin down who this character was or even what Aaron Moten was going for in portraying him. And I found that pretty fascinating, actually. Jonathan Nolan, I found an interview where he was talking to and about Aaron Moten and his portrayal of Maximus last year. And he said, quote, Aaron had this incredible quality of both being very emotionally knowable to the audience, that amazing gift to be able to transmit emotion to you, but also this unknowable quality to you. It is very hard to have both these things happening at the same time.

There's a technical dexterity there that is really, really challenging. And I felt that too. I had a hard time pinning down who he was. Sometimes he's ambitious and callous and sometimes he's a softy. And I think that's appropriate because he's trying to figure out who he is and how he fits into this world and this brotherhood. And he's thrust into dramatically different roles. And sometimes he seizes those roles. And nobody has even given him the birds and the bees talk, you know, in this religious brotherhood.

So in his own way, he's more naive than Lucy. Right. And emotionally, he's stunted. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say in terms of him being naive. I really thought that it was effective with having him and Lucy being together for a while in the first season because you see how naive they are, but in their own ways, with Lucy having no idea the way the actual Wiesland works. She's much more sex positive. That's very true.

But yeah, it is a really good point because that's exactly how I felt about him in the first season too. Because especially for most of the season, you think that he's done this thing to Dane too with injuring his close. his friend. And then it's either the finale or the penulton episode where you feel, where you realize that Dane actually did this to himself because they were afraid of going out there. So there still is this moral compass that he has. And again, that's why I thought it was, it was really powerful and important to have that reminder of like where he came from in terms of that shady Sands experience, the portrayal of his parents, especially like how much his father was, how important he was to that community and just

how much they're trying to instill good values in him. And how, he's still trying to live by that, but he might have just gone in with the wrong crowd in terms of the brotherhood, which is interesting. Yeah, and then, yeah, right, there's the related question of what the brotherhood will do with this unlimited power of Cold Fusion. And in the season one finale,

a dying Moldaver asks Maximus, what do you suppose your brotherhood would do with infinite power? And in this episode, a squire asks Dane, What do you think we'll do with it? And Dane answers nothing good. So sort of echoing that question. And in the flashback, which I do want to talk about more, we do briefly meet Maximus's parents. And it seems like a loving, happy family that Hank casually destroyed. And so now Maximus has a new family. Yes, a found family drink when you hear a ring reverse host say found family. But is this family good for him?

So Quintus last season said, together we will take power. You know, again, kind of an imperial message here, Darth Vader-esque, together we will take power. And with it, we will start a new brotherhood with me as its head and you as its sword, your entire life you've been looking for a home, build one with me. And when Maximus retrieves the artifact in this episode to unlock Area 51, Quintus calls it the key to our new home. But Maximus doesn't seem to fully feel at home here, or even in his own skin as opposed to his power armor, because he's still sort of wearing a facade of sorts. He's like playing the part of the triumphant conqueror who killed Moldaver, which he didn't do. So he's not having to pretend to be Knight Titus anymore, but he is kind of pretending to be the Knight Maximus that he's expected to be. He's quoting the Codex unironically trying to sound like a true believer.

But are his goals and Quintus is completely aligned here? Yeah. I mean, I do think that his arc has been so compelling to watch because now he is fully bought into it. He's sipping the Kool-Aid. He's drinking the Kool-Aid. But even Quintas now, he's still lying to him. Like he tells, as Dane keeps pointing out too, where it's just like their, Quintas' intentions are not exactly as they seem. he tells Maximus that they're trying to unify all the different divisions of the brotherhood,

but they very much leave out the Commonwealth. And it's something that Dane points out, and it's something that Maximus is starting to see over the course of this episode, too. Yeah, and now that we've seen the family he lost and what was taken from him, we know what he's trying to regain and that hole in his heart that he's trying to fill. And Quintus calls him my son and says, together we will fulfill our promise to make better this fallen world. So again, like Lucy, Maximus seems to have good aims and goals. And Quintus seems to be a father figure,

but is he a benevolent father figure? Or is he using Maximus? You know, again, we come back to Hank and Norm and manipulating people. Is that what's happening here? Because if he just sees Maximus as a sword, well, that doesn't sound like a son. Exactly. It sounds like a tool. Definitely. I mean, even as he's, Maximus is having that duel at the end, he keeps on looking over at him and like waiting for him to step in or something. He's just like, call me off. Yeah. Just looking at him, like, side-eyeing him. Like, I just like finish the fight. So yeah, he clearly, it's, he is looking at him as a tool. And it's another, they're doing a really good job of just like having that that parallel across different characters right now and just showing different ways that people are manipulating others in this world. Yeah. And he's getting negative reinforcement really from, Quintus, who is just sort of sicking his attack dog on this rival faction, essentially. And Maxis is trying to put Lucy out of his mind to be a leader and a pragmatist. And he says, it can be tough out there. But as long as we leave it a little bit better than we found it, we did okay. And he tells Dane, I've seen what it's like out there. The brotherhood's as good as it gets. I'm just trying to make it better. So he's sort of saying, yeah, it's not perfect. But what is in this world? I'm resigned to it. Maybe I can affect positive change from within or. something. And, you know, and he says in order to make a big problem, something you can handle, you got to make it small. So we start by bettering ourselves, you know, showering or at least

cleaning under the armpits or something, right? Don't stink up the joint for everyone. But Dane seems concerned that instead of bettering himself, Maximus is worsening himself. He's encouraged to kill in a bare-knuckle brawl knife fight. And in the flashback, Maximus's dad tells him, you are a good boy and one day you will be a good man. And I guess the question is, is he or can he become one? And is he getting warmer or colder when it comes to that goal? Yeah, again, that's why it is such an effective opening because you're just seeing how much he is still trying to live by what his father taught him. But now he's had to live in this world and he's had to live with the brotherhood for this long. And he's looking for up to somebody like Quintas. So,

How do you feel about the big Brotherhood of Steel lore dump we got in this episode? We get some exposition from Quintus. The Brotherhood has become broken, scattered into dozens of rival chapters. But now we have the strength to unify them under one banner here with the mightiest arsenal in history at our disposal. We meet Quintus's counterparts with the other Brotherhood factions, Grand Canyon, Yosemone, Coronado. and then quickly Quintus consolidates control by handing out fusion cores like party favors and saying there are more where these came from. And then we just hear a hearty round of fuck the Commonwealth. And meanwhile, I imagine most show watchers are wondering, what's the Commonwealth and where is the Commonwealth?

Because like prior to this episode, the Commonwealth was mentioned in one line way back in the series premiere. I had to look this up. our mission comes from the highest clerics in the Commonwealth. That's it. I didn't even remember that. Yeah. Why would you? It was a long time ago.

So the show has not laid out much more than that. And if you've played the games, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, you've heard much more about the Commonwealth, which is an eastern power. It's essentially Massachusetts, and it's centered in Boston.

And this is the same canon and continuity. It's later in the timeline. but even so the relationship between the Commonwealth and the Brotherhood is far from clear. And in the games, the Brotherhood sort of expanded East and maybe kind of took control of the Commonwealth. But this is a faraway power and transportation, communication aren't what they were. So you can see why it would be tough to keep a continent spanning entity together. And I assume we'll learn more about the backstory. But how much do you want to know? Yeah, I mean, I think that it is definitely tough.

And I think this goes back to what we were talking about earlier too, which is there being so many moving parts. And I think this is another case of where you're starting to see early signs of that strain happening because they did the classic like telling and not showing with the Commonwealth. Like I would love to see a little bit more of like what that actually is and what that looks like. Now that's very hard to do, I'm sure, because that's the other side of the country. And that would be a whole other part. But a whole other thing to get into.

But to be told about this and to be brought, into this after a season, a mid-season break, or rather a break between the seasons and for not having Maximus be there the last episode. This is just a lot to get back into with the exposition dump. And it could be another case where, again, they've been really good about not relying too much on the game lore, but it seems like this could be a way where it could be a little bit of a crutch. Because for somebody like me that played a lot of fallout for immediately, I'm like, ooh, that's cool. Now the Commonwealth is going to be a bigger part of this.

But for people that have no idea what that is, to your point, like they haven't said this since season one. And again, I didn't even remember that they said it at all. Yeah, right. I want to know more about the Brotherhood faction that fucks robots. That I would like to hear a bit more about. But yeah,

it's a little overload. It's like sort of zero to 60 on the lore here. And generally, I welcome world building, but I do worry about this world building. bit because we're, we're fleshing out the landscape, we're learning about various factions, that's, that's interesting, you know, maybe it makes the wasteland feel more lived in to know who actually resides there and who holds the power, but then does it distract from the

central relationships or the destination, whatever that may be? Do these characters even have the same sort of goal the way that they did in season one? And does it become kind of a Westworld's post-season one issue where everything is complicated and confusing and fractured? And we're not there yet to be correct. I would be heartbroken. Yeah. I enjoyed this episode also, but it's something to monitor, I think. Yeah.

So a concern that I have in the back of my mind, but edging closer toward the front. So a couple other things. Let's talk about the fridge in the flashback. So we saw last season that Maximus survived Shady Sands by hiding in a fridge, but now we know how it happened. and we see this idyllic pre-explosion shady sands with its rad-free water supply. And Maximus' dad says, no one will ever have to worry about rationing again, which is true in a way, because everyone's about to be dead. Then the bomb arrives.

Maximus's dad tries to diffuse it. Seems very handy. He just goes right from filtering water to diffusing a nuke. Seems to know his way around it. But he activates the failsafe. Hank has planned for that. and then he has three minutes until detonation. Now, in fiction, fridging can refer to the trope of essentially sidlining and endangering a female character to provide motivation for a male character.

But that's not the kind of fridging that we're talking about here. Here we're talking about fridging as an evidently far more effective alternative to ducking and covering during a nuclear event, which reminds me of an infamous scene in Indiana Jones. the kingdom of the crystal skull, which I would rather not be reminded of, where Indy survives a nuclear explosion by hiding in a fridge and basically being blown to safety and then just opening the door and emerging mostly unscathed. And this created quite a controversy, as you might imagine, and nuke the fridge became the new shorthand for jumping the shark, essentially. So maybe there's a winking aspect to the recurrence of the fridge.

in fallout, and maybe it's intended to be a bit far-fetched. There's also, maybe you remember, there's a quest in Fallout 4 called Kid in the Fridge, where you come across a child ghoul who has been trapped in a fridge for 200 years. Oh, I do remember that, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Doesn't seem any worse for the wear. Again, good to be a ghoul. But Crystal Skull came out in 2008, and I just, I want to read you a brief excerpt from a New York Times

magazine profile of George Lucas from 2012. By that point, given the blowback, so to speak, to the fridge incident, Stephen Spielberg had taken the blame, had said that the fridge was his fault. But, and now I'm quoting, when I told Lucas that Spielberg had accepted the blame for nuking the fridge, he looked stunned. It's not true, he said. He's trying to protect me. In fact, it was Spielberg who didn't believe the scene. In response to Spielberg's fears, Lucas put together a whole nukeing the fridge dossier. It was about six inches thick, he indicated with his hands. Thicker than a fridge. You could survive a nuclear blast with the George Lucas dossier about hiding in a fridge. Lucas said that if the refrigerator were leadlined and if Indy didn't break his neck when the

fridge crashed to Earth and if he were able to get the door open, that's a lot of the lot of ifs. He could in fact survive. The odds of surviving that refrigerator from a lot of scientists are about 50-50, Lucas said. Do you find that persuasive? You haven't seen the dossier, but do you buy it? I haven't seen the dossier, but absolutely not, especially just re-watching that scene where he's just hurled across like the whole town and he just gets out. I mean, come on. But I do love the trope, honestly. Yes. It's so, it's so. It's. so funny to me. But my question was like, why doesn't everybody just have these fridges then?

This is the most valuable commodity. Why do we need vaults? Why does Voltax need to build vaults? They can just build fridges. I mean, I guess it's less lucrative maybe to sell someone a fridge than a vault, but it seems about equally effective. And I have a lot of love for George Lucas, but it is a conflicted relationship that he and I have.

He does not know that we have any relationship. but from my perspective, I owe him a lot, but also resent him for certain things. This is not his greatest sin. But yeah, I'm going to take the under on the 50-50. And based on the cursory research I did, that is not exactly the scientific consensus. Maybe he spoke to a lot of scientists. Maybe they told him what he wanted to hear. They were probably happy to be talking to Georgia.

Yes, maybe so. Maybe they were star-struck. I found, or Star Wars struck, I found one study that conceded that, assuming you have a lead-lined 1950s fridge, and I guess we can maybe assume that fallout fridges are like that, then, quote, a nuclear blast is survivable in this fridge, provided the fridge is 4.23, very, very precise out to two decimal places, 4.23 kilometers away from the blast. To survive the temperature effect of the blast, the fridge needs to be a mere two kilometers away. unsurprisingly, the radiation exposure from a nuclear weapon is the principal concern.

So, yeah, once you emerge from the fridge into the fallout landscape, then maybe you take some doses of rads. But obviously, the scientist didn't exactly test that with a real fridge and a real nuclear bomb. But still, if we're talking, okay, maybe if you have the perfect fridge four kilometers away or even two kilometers away, this was not anywhere near. that far from Ground Zero, right? Because he has three minutes. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. He got there, he got there really quick, with enough time to even like, impart some more wisdom before. Yeah, have a heartfelt party. Right, right. So he must have been like a minute away. Like, just, maybe there have been some advances in fridge technology in this timeline. I don't know.

But, you know, just wanted to pass along some of the science here in case anyone was wondering. And I'm, I'm a dial of destiny defender, but even I will not stick up for the kingdom of the Crystal Scull. So hopefully, Spielberg's next movie about aliens, Disclosure Day coming next year will be better than that one. Okay. Another element of that flashback, and because you're playing Fallout New Vegas, this probably was not lost on you. When the enslaved, the mind-controlled soldier comes into town with the caravan carrying the bomb,

he is repeating over and over, patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter, which is a, you know, relatable sentiments given the predicament he finds himself in. But for anyone who has played New Vegas, I mean, this got a laugh out loud from me, because if you've played New Vegas, you have heard this line incessantly because the new California Republic NPC soldiers in that game, you prompt them enough. Inevitably, you will get them to say, patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter. You'll hear that so many times over the course of the game.

It's that. And when I got this assignment, I was hoping there'd be more gambling. You know, it's a really well-written game. But even so, there are limits to how many lines of dialogue could be recorded. So I thought this was so clever, you know, just really fun. Like good fan service, you know. It gave me a chuckle. It made me feel sort of seen.

But if we had not played the game, it just, it would have washed over us. we would have had no sense that this was like an inside joke or an Easter egg or anything. It made sense in the scene. Yeah, I thought it was perfect. But the day that before I watched this episode, I like was playing New Vegas at night. And there was like a row of three troopers. And they all said this line. I just like prompted them each time.

And then to see this the next day, it was perfect. Like I was, I was cracking up too. It's become kind of a meme in the Fallout New Vegas fan. Definitely. But it was a really clever way to just show him being like an empty. too. Yeah, right. He's been rendered an NPC is, yeah, he's being controlled by Hank. So, yeah, exactly. I mean, I guess he is, yeah, he's, he's not a computer controlled character. He's a Hank controlled character. But, you know, he's, he's not controlling himself. He's no longer playable in that sense. So, yeah, this on the heels of last week, as I mentioned, using Big Iron by Marty Robbins, one of the songs on the Fallout New Vegas soundtrack that you will hear forever in the initial fight scene. in Novak, which is a game location. That again, you know, made perfect sense in the scene.

No one who hasn't played the game would feel left out. But if you played the game, boy, that brings back some memories and you very much get it. And I think it's great. So they're treading that line perfectly for me of, you know, not just sticking this stuff extraneous in for the sake of it. But like, if you recognize it, then you get a little charge out of it. So this was fun. Yeah.

And they just have so much. to work with. There's so many little things that they can do and just they're doing a really good job of just putting in those little details, whether it's even just something like a sound coming on, and you just recognize that sound, having a very visceral reaction to these things. They're doing a really good job with it. If you play Fallout at New Vegas on PC, there's actually a fan mod from a few years ago called Wishes Come True that makes it so that any time an NPC in the game says patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter, they immediately get hit by a nuke. launches from behind them.

That's amazing. Yeah. Another thing that is relevant to the games here, and this was just tossed off in a delightful way, I thought, when they're digging into Area 51, you know, so they get this artifact and Maximus says, like, you know, he's asked what it is. He's like, doesn't matter, you know, just McGuffin, like, got to unlock this facility. They expose Area 51 beneath the sands, and there's an alien. in the freezer.

And they couldn't care less, the Brotherhood soldiers, which, I mean, maybe makes sense that they're not only unfazed by meeting a little green man here, but they're entirely uninterested. I mean, maybe they're already aware of the aliens. But if not, they only have eyes for the freezer, which I guess tracks, given what we have learned about fridges and their utility in the post-apocalypse. Like, you can survive a nuke in there. What does an alien corpse do for you? This was one of my favorite little moments of the episode.

Just the comedic timing is so perfect. I love the sense of humor that this series has. And just it's so fitting for this nuclear wasteland and just the backdrop of it all. And this is also a little bit of interesting fallout lore that Area 51, which was mentioned, I believe, way back in the original Fallout out. And was at one point supposed to be a playable area in Fallout 2 where a group of scientists, would live. And you can end up in sort of a fandom wiki rabbit hole if you start reading about alien lore in Fallout. You want some hours-long lore videos that will make the exposition about the brotherhood in this episode look like Child's Play. Search for Fallout aliens on YouTube,

because there's a whole history here. There's a species of aliens that kind of look like stereotypical aliens in the Fallout universe called the Zadens, which have had some sort of presence really since the first fallout game. And increasingly, as the series has gone on, Fallout 3 had a whole add-on called mothership Zeta, which took place on an alien ship in orbit. Fallout's weird. And like, there's just like a lot of little corners and rabbit holes and fallout lore. And it's not clear like, you know, often the Zadans don't even really intersect with the main storyline exactly. It's not clear like what they want or how they're related at all. It's just kind of for fun that they're in there, sort of intersecting with your narrative and your quest.

And that's very much how it manifests in this game, too. It's just like, yeah, all right. Alien. Who cares? Show me the freezer. I think it's what's so perfect about having such a big open world game like Fallout, because it's just, you could definitely miss some of these things. But when you do find them, it's just so rewarding.

And this was a really fun, like, clever nod to that as well. Because I do remember that in Fallout 4, like coming across. that. And it's just like, wow, what's going on here? Yeah, it seems really random. And it must seem extra random if you're just a show watcher and you haven't played the games. And you're like, what? Okay. I guess this is just, we solved the Area 51 conspiracy after all these years. But it's just totally, we're moving on to something else. So I appreciated that. That was fun. And another thing I just wanted to shout out, because there's so much hopping between timelines and settings and characters. It's always nice when you get a good establishing shot to sort of situate

you, okay, here we are. We're back with these people in this place again. And I think the needle drops in this show and in the games get a lot of credit fairly. But I also like the soundtrack and the score and the part it plays in the show. And I especially like the Brotherhood theme, that kind of ominous Gregorian chant sounding Brotherhood's score that plays anytime we're with the Brotherhood. And that was handy, I think, when we're kind of hopping around, we're with the Brotherhood, we're away from the Brotherhood. When you have just that song, that little snatch of music that plays, it's just like not only is that good pleasing to the year, but also, okay, here we are again, you know, like it helps to make it seem a little less disjointed.

Yeah, just the way they've produced this show is so solid all around. I'm always so impressed by all the details when it comes to the music or just the props, the settings. And I do have my concerns when it comes to a lot of the moving parts, the moving storylines that we've been talking about this episode. But it is just so nice to be back in this show. And I'm excited for this to be a weekly thing now and hopefully for it to build up some traction over the course of the season. Yeah. And the last thing we have to address in this episode, I think, is that we are introduced to a new character. Kumail Nanjiani comes in as Paladin Xander Harkness.

liaison from the Commonwealth who seems happy to crash this coup that's occurring and may want to play some part of it. And aside from the Harkness, Harkin and sound alike, his entrance reminds me of Jason Mamoa's entrance as Duncan Idaho in Dune when he kind of makes his grand appearance. And it's a vertebird instead of an ornithopter, but some similarities there, I guess. There is a Fallout three character named Harkness, but not sure there's a connection there. Generally, paladins are a rank in the Brotherhood. They're like special soldiers, special protectors, essentially. And so if he's an emissary from the East from the Commonwealth, but maybe he will want to throw his lot in with the Brotherhood because they have all the

cold fusion or, you know, I don't know. It's yet another character here where we're going from no Brotherhood whatsoever in the premiere to suddenly way more Brotherhood and Commonwealth than we ever imagined. So we're adding another character to the cast here. Yeah. And I think, I don't know, the moment works in the sense that you have the star power of Kamal Janjani. And like, I am excited to see him in this in this role. And I think he fits into this really comedic cast. But on the other hand, it did feel like the moment fell flat and a little bit of the sense of just like, I still don't even know what the Commonwealth is in this show. And they really built it up to be like a, like an oh shit kind of moment.

Yeah. But I did really like that little look that he gives to Maximus where Maximus is just like in front of the dead body that he's just brawl. So I'm excited to see where this goes and what kind of character he is. Me too. Yeah. I mean, who doesn't like Kumail? He's, you know, he's kind of always himself in whatever part he's playing, which I mean,

mostly as a compliment, but also when he just kind of Kool-Aid men's in. to a show that we've been watching for a while, and suddenly it's like Kumail Nanjani's on the show, not so much embodying the character of Paladin Zander Harkness, who we don't know yet at all. Exactly. Yeah, it does almost like break the fourth wall. And I'm happy for him as a fellow geek that he just gets to be in all the projects that he likes and, you know, just gets to be a gamer guy who's in the gamer adaptations too. So that's fun.

And, you know, presumably there's some substantive role here and we'll figure out what's happening with this civil war and have the Brotherhood Commonwealth relationship and where this all came from and why they're splintering and whether they're going to fight over the cold fusion and why that matters to us and the characters we've come to care about and how the hierarchy of power in the fallout universe is about to change, as the Rock would say, presumably he'll play some part in that. But yeah, I don't know. There are various game characters that he could maybe map onto, but there are lots of characters here that are entirely original. and are either some, you know, amalgamation of game characters or are just completely independent and different.

So we'll find out which this is. Definitely. Yeah, it is really interesting to see how you see some of the lore of the characters being reflected onto individuals. And again, like how everything is being adapted in that way. But I am curious, again, to see more of Robert House after not having him in this episode. Again, that's another thing of just so many characters and moving parts, new things. happening at once. But I'm excited to see where everything's going.

Now that they, it seems like they've set everything up. Like, this is like, hopefully at least, I don't know. Maybe there's more coming and I'm speaking too quickly. Right. But this feels like this is the last. I'm like, all right, here are the players of this season. And this is where we're going. Yes, we've set the stage.

Yeah. So, and maybe Harkness comes between Maximus and Quintus in some way, like the unspoken look that they shared kind of reminded me of. Another father figure for him, yes. Yeah, maybe. I don't know if he's old enough to be a father. Well, maybe he is. I mean, Kumiles, he's looking younger these days.

His appearance has changed somewhat over the past decade or so. But yeah, maybe there's something there where, you know, there's a counter manipulation or, or he's able to provide some alternate path to power, but also like back to his essential self and goodness. Or maybe he'll play up that connection or, you know, exploit it. for his own ends. We will see soon enough. So, okey-dokey, that will do it for today. And Daniel, like Lucy with the ghoul, I'll come back for you. Merry Christmas and please don't play with grenades inside. Happy holidays. Yeah, can't wait to be back on. Coming up between now and New Year's, House of Our will publish their breakdowns of Stranger Things,

season five, volume two, this Thursday and Friday, and next Friday for the series finale. Hawkins survives. Daniel and I will be binging to. As for this feed, Ring Reverse Recommends for December is coming next week, and we're still looking for listener nominations, which you can send to Ringverse Recommends at gmail.com. After that, the Midnight Boys, piquet, there you go. We'll bring us Midnight Mulligans, and Buttmash will be back with a reaction to Fallout episode three. And because Midnight Mulligans will drop on New Year's Eve, which is Wednesday, The next fallout pod will be preempted and will come out Thursday, New Year's Day. And that means this is the final button mash episode of 2025.

It's been a blast and not in the shady sands hide-in-the-fridge way. You can contact us at RingiverseGaming at gmail.com and we'll have much more mashing for you in 2026. Big thank you to Brian Waters for producing this episode, a clutch Christmas week production pickup during Devin Rinaldo's break. And thanks to our Juno Ramco Pau for finding a way to make this schedule work. Happy holidays, listeners, and for now, this is Mr. New Vegas signing off. Just kidding. I'm not going anywhere.

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