Hollywood Boulevard is a location in the Fallout TV series.
Background[]
In the era before the Great War, Hollywood Boulevard was famous as a cultural icon of the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California, running through many tourist areas. Museums, landmarks, and more defined its attraction.
After the bombs struck, a large part of the boulevard located off of Exit 12A from a nearby highway became submerged and surrounded by overgrown forests, with the concrete skeletons of old, stripped buildings still popping out of the water; by 2296, several have collapsed and sunk below the surface. A population of deer is present in the area, preyed upon by other creatures inhabiting the flooded areas, such as leeches.
By 2296, the flooded area had become home to at least one gulper, mutant creatures originally created by radiation experiments in Vault 4's Level 12 laboratory, some of which evidently managed to escape from the Vault at some point after the Great War.[1]
In the TV series[]
The Head[]
While carrying the decapitated head of Siggi Wilzig on her solo trek to find Moldaver, Lucy MacLean reaches the flooded shores of the Boulevard where she is briefly amazed by the peripheral view of the area, then spots a baby deer drinking by the lakeside. She tries to feed it some grass and admire the peaceful atmosphere until a gulper strikes fast from the lake, dragging the deer into the water from behind a thicket of tall grass and forcing Lucy to equip her tranq gun.[2]
The gulper reemerges and catches Lucy off-guard, using its tongue to latch onto her backpack trying to drag her into the water too. Lucy manages to stun it by firing a tranq dart into the gulper's mouth. However, as the creature retreats, it catches the cloth sack holding the head, tearing it away as it returns to the depths.[2]
Pursuing the creature to the opposite side of the boulevard, Lucy listens as her Pip-Boy's geiger counter starts to go off at detecting the intense radiation in the water. She remembers the tracker she implanted into the head and uses her Pip-Boy to track its location and prepares to go after it. However, she is interrupted by the arrival of the Ghoul following CX404 who tracked Wilzig's scent to the Boulevard. After striking Lucy with his revolver, the bounty hunter demands to know where the head is. When Lucy does not answer, he ransacks her backpack but does not find it. Though Lucy tries to tell him that she lost the head, the Ghoul, upon examining a nearby pile of animal droppings, deduces that the creature that attacked her and took the head is a gulper.[2]
Taking Lucy prisoner, the Ghoul ties up the Vault dweller and secures her to an old shipyard winch with an attached anchor. Lucy attempts to plead and strike a deal with the Ghoul, but he ignores her and starts dunking her into the irradiated waters, causing her geiger counter to go off again. Lucy frustratedly questions why he is torturing her, but the Ghoul elaborates that he is not interested in torture, rather merely using her as bait to attract the gulper and retrieve the head, then drops her in one more time.[2]
Eventually, Lucy's struggling makes enough noise to lure over the gulper, which bites down on the winch anchor to drag her deeper. The Ghoul manages to work the winch's controls and pull Lucy back along with the gulper onto the dock. While the gulper is trying to eat Lucy, the Ghoul attacks it with a harpoon but is pushed back. After it clamps down on her leg, taking off her boot, Lucy grabs the Ghoul's satchel and throws it into the gulper's mouth as a distraction, along with CX404 landing a bite on one of its limbs. The gulper spits out the satchel and retreats into the water, taking the head with it.[2]
Once the Ghoul recovers, he inspects his satchel and discovers that the gulper managed to destroy the tin containing his supply of inhaler vials. In anger, he takes Lucy prisoner again, tying a rope leash onto the Vault dweller in order to take her to trade for more vials at the Super Duper Mart. Lucy again tries to beg with him, citing the Golden Rule, but the Ghoul callously replies that the wasteland has its own Golden Rule: "Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every goddamn time." Lucy notices they are leaving CX404 behind at the waterside, but the Ghoul brushes it off stating the dog is not his.[2]
Sometime after Lucy and the Ghoul departed from the Boulevard, Thaddeus and Maximus (disguised as Knight Titus) arrive there following the radiation signature of the Ghoul, trying to locate the head themselves. When the tracker leads them into the waters of the flooded area, Thaddeus realizes the signature is not coming from the Ghoul but something else. The two then spot the gulper surfing through the water towards them. Maximus-as-Titus orders Thaddeus back to shore as he attempts to shoot the creature with his T60 pistol but to no effect. As the knight is confronted by the gulper emerging from the water, Thaddeus distracts it with a shot from a heavy assault rifle, but this causes it to charge toward him instead, managing to get his legs in its mouth.[2]
As the gulper tries to devour Thaddeus, Maximus runs after him and manages to stop the squire from being swallowed whole. Using the loose anchor caught in its mouth as a foothold, with a battlecry of "Ad victoriam!", Maximus extracts Thaddeus from the gulper's mouth and in the process pulls out a large portion of its innards, killing it. The two share a brief moment thanking the other for their help, then notice CX404 nearby licking at the head regurgitated by the gulper. Once they confirm it to be the object of their mission, they cheer in celebration and later depart from the Boulevard with their find.[2]
Behind the scenes[]
- The location of Hollywood Boulevard is based on the real-world street of the same name, which runs through Hollywood, Los Angeles. The highway exit marked on the Hollywood Boulevard road sign in the TV series, Exit 12A, is likewise a real-world freeway junction in Los Angeles, connecting Highway 101 with Lankershim Boulevard.
- A pre-release promotional image from the first season's Amazon overview page depicted the Hollywood Boulevard area from the TV series, but with the exit sign reading "Lankershim Boulevard" instead of Hollywood Boulevard.
- Scenes taking place at Hollywood Boulevard was filmed at the Cortlandt Quarry in Verplanck, New York, situated at the northwesternmost lake within hamlet limits. Another location within Westchester County, Briarcliff Manor, was also used for scenes taking place at Hollywood Hills in the first episode.[Meta 1]
Gallery[]
References[]
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