"The Beginning" is the eighth and final episode of the first season of the Fallout TV series.
Synopsis[]
Summary[]
Having been rediscovered by the Brotherhood of Steel at the KPSS radio station, Maximus is flown under heavy guard to Filly, which has now fallen under occupation by the Brotherhood. He is presented before Elder Cleric Quintus, who quickly discovers that the head Maximus brought back does not contain the artifact. Maximus is promptly sentenced to death. He is spared after Dane pleads for his life, admitting that they injured themself (as seen in "The End"). Maximus agrees to lead the Brotherhood to the artifact.
In private, Quintus confides in Maximus about his own displeasure towards the Brotherhood, believing the organization to have lost its way (with the details of Titus' death only reinforcing this). He sees the artifact as an opportunity to reshape the Brotherhood in his own vision and invites Maximus to personally join him at his side.
Hank in a cage
Meanwhile, Lucy reaches the Griffith Observatory with Wilzig's real head, and is escorted to Moldaver by her elite guards. Along the way, she finds the observatory courtyard to be filled with NCR civilians and notices one of the ghouls that she freed from the Super Duper Mart among them. In Moldaver's control room, Hank is imprisoned in a birdcage as Moldaver awaits Lucy at a dinner table alongside a female feral ghoul. Having finally received the head, Moldaver uses a tool to extract the artifact from it. Lucy demands that her father be released. Moldaver instead reveals the truth about her father's past; Hank is not really someone who grew up in a vault. He's one of numerous pre-War Vault-Tec junior executives that have been cryogenically frozen in Vault 31, each one periodically unfrozen to oversee and indoctrinate Vault 32 and Vault 33 in a bid to preserve Vault-Tec's authority and eventually recolonize the surface by force.
Simultaneously, Norm ventures deeper into Vault 31 and discovers it is controlled by Bud Askins, who is now little more than a "brain-in-a-Roomba." Ignoring Bud's attempts to stop him, Norm discovers the cryonically frozen Vault-Tec executives. Among the pods are Hank's and Betty's, having already been opened. He also finds a list of Vault 31's residents on a nearby monitor, including many other names, including Steph.
Elsewhere, the Ghoul continues toward the observatory. Meanwhile, in flashback, Cooper drives Barb to the Vault-Tec headquarters, having bugged her Pip-Boy with the audio transmitter he received from Moldaver earlier. They meet Bud outside, and Cooper momentarily panics when Barb complains to him about her Pip-Boy acting up as a result of the bug, but Bud convinces her that they can have it looked into later, and Cooper makes a thinly veiled excuse to head out to further distract her. Cooper's mention of Janey leads Bud to take a brief moment to tell him about his managerial program, which he calls "Bud's Buds," before heading inside with Barb. Cooper prepares to drive off, but realizes he'll have to stick around when he finds that the transmitter has a limit on how far it'll broadcast from.
Cooper is brought to Barb's office by Betty Pearson, Barb's secretary, who makes small talk with Cooper and mentions that Barb's new assistant Henry is a big fan of Cooper's movies. She offers to bring Henry down and introduce the two of them, which Cooper accepts. After Betty leaves, Cooper sits down in a chair, puts the earpiece into his ear and listens.
In a dimly lit room, Barb and Bud are chairing a roundtable summit of several corporate leaders, including RobCo Industries CEO Robert House, West Tek researcher Leon Von Felden, business magnate and casino owner Frederick Sinclair representing Big MT, and REPCONN Aerospace CFO Julia Masters, in discussion of potential collaboration with Vault-Tec. The meeting descends into bickering over Vault-Tec's methods. Barb, on directions from a shadowy man observing the meeting from the alcove, mediates by proposing that of the more than 100 vaults across the country, each corporation be given its own vaults for experimentation. When House asks how Vault-Tec plans to guarantee a return on their investment, Barb explains that they'll do so by staging a nuclear conflict themselves. Cooper is horrified by this revelation, and is on the verge of having a panic attack when Betty returns to the office with Barb's new assistant...who we see is a young Hank MacLean. Hank is a big fan of Cooper's scene from The Man From Deadhorse where he shoots Joey Toro dead, and asks him for an autograph.
In the present, Moldaver reveals to Lucy that she had worked closely with Lucy's mother, Rose. Rose escaped Vault 33 with Norm and Lucy after growing suspicious of Hank's past and believing that civilization could rebuild itself on the surface, especially after having discovered evidence of Vault 33's water supply being siphoned from somewhere on the surface, suggesting the surface had been inhabited, contrary to Hank's claims. The MacLeans discovered Shady Sands, where Rose raised her children before Hank caught her, took Lucy and Norm back, and destroyed Shady Sands using a nuclear warhead. Rose survived, becoming the feral ghoul currently sitting at the table, while Moldaver has continued her research on cold fusion and became fixated on the artifact. With Wilzig's artifact now in her possession, she only needs the proprietary authorization codes from a Vault-Tec executive. No longer able to hold back her tears, Lucy begs her father to cooperate and give Moldaver the codes, to which Hank hesitantly obliges. Moldaver uses the now-unlocked artifact to begin priming a makeshift cold fusion reactor.
In Filly, the Brotherhood prepares to move on the observatory. As they're gearing up, Dane apologizes to Maximus, who wishes to live alongside Lucy in Vault 33 once the artifact is found, although Dane doesn't find his dream feasible. The Brotherhood mounts an all-out aerial offensive against the observatory, overwhelming the NCR defenders and moving towards the observatory building despite taking some casualties. Maximus and Dane part ways, with Maximus' squad (including Petty Officer Shortsight) heading into the observatory.
Maximus' squad doesn't make too far into the building before they're ambushed by the Ghoul, who has infiltrated through a hidden back entrance. He overwhelms them by exploiting structural weak points in the armor that have been present since he served in the Marines, as well as killing the lights to disorient the team. Shortsight's entire team is killed save for Maximus, who narrowly escapes. Maximus makes it to the control room, and shoots the lock off of Hank's cage to let him out. Lucy is too shell shocked by the revelations about her father, and by the time she's able to warn Maximus, it's too late. Hank uses this brief window of opportunity to fit himself into a suit of power armor stolen from a Brotherhood soldier whose head had been blown up by the Ghoul with a grenade. As Hank advances on Lucy and prepares to grab her, Maximus steps in between them and tries to pull his gun on him, only for Hank to punch him in the face, knocking him unconscious. Lucy runs to his side, but he is unresponsive.
Lucy aims at Hank
Enraged, Lucy grabs Maximus' gun and points it at her dad's head as he tries to talk her down. As she's on the verge of pulling the trigger, a shot rings out... as the Ghoul emerges from the shadows and fires a bullet that cuts a deep gash across Hank's left cheek. Seething with rage, the Ghoul advances on Hank, waxing nostalgic about meeting the man whose most notable work pre-War involved picking up Barb's dry-cleaning. He points a gun at Hank and demands to know where Barb and Janey are. Rather than answer the Ghoul, Hank immediately turns around and jets off into the evening sky.
The Ghoul reflects that "war never changes" and tells Lucy someone is always controlling the wasteland despite the apparent chaos, and that person is likely who Hank is on his way to (and he's letting Hank go for now because that'll make it easier to find him). Noticing the Brotherhood's reinforcements in the distance, the Ghoul offers Lucy a choice: she can stay with the fallen Maximus and be killed by the Brotherhood when their reinforcements arrive, or travel with him to "meet [her] makers." Lucy makes the decision that her dad needs to be brought to justice for his crimes, and elects to leave with the Ghoul, leaving Maximus behind. Before she does so, she picks up Maximus' gun and shoots her mom in the head, putting her out of her misery.
Sometime after Lucy's departure, Maximus regains consciousness. A mortally wounded Moldaver returns and activates the reactor, returning power back to the ruins of Los Angeles. Moldaver asks Maximus to think about what the Brotherhood will do with such power, if he can even stop them, before succumbing to her wounds. Dane enters shortly after, believing Maximus to have killed her. Maximus feebly denies it, yet Dane raises his fist into the air and proclaims him a knight to a cheering crowd of Brotherhood soldiers.
The Ghoul reunites with Dogmeat outside the mausoleum, with the Hollywood Sign visible in the distance. Lucy emerges from the building soon after, now carrying several more guns, and the trio set off on foot in pursuit of Hank.
As the sun rises on the Mojave Wasteland, Hank passes the skeletal remains of a deathclaw and stops on the summit of a mountain overlooking the city of New Vegas.
Credits[]
The Tops cryo suites billboard
The credits sequence begins on a billboard advertising The Tops Hotel & Casino Cryo Suites, which are billed as "100% safety guaranteed." The camera pulls back to travel along the New Vegas Strip itself, showing a crashed NCR vertibird and human skeletons near the skeleton of a large, horned creature resembling a deathclaw. The buildings along the road are ruined, and the street is also filled with rubble and barricades. The camera passes through a destroyed gate along the city wall, with numerous destroyed Securitrons seen nearby and further outside. The Lucky 38 becomes visible at this point, while the shot ends after panning out far enough for the Fabulous New Vegas sign to become visible.
Cast[]
Starring:
Guest starring:
Co-starring:
- Princess Bey - Young Betty Pearson
- Elle Vertes - Rose MacLean
- Chelsea Reuter - Ghoul Rose MacLean
- Peter Brensinger - Freed ghoul
- Brendan Burke - Officer Shortsight
- Collin Ware - Chanting cleric
- Kenneth James Yuille - Commanding officer
- Luciana VanDette - Young Lucy MacLean
- Amir Carr - Young Maximus
- Benjamin Izaak - Young Hank MacLean double
Stunt performers:
- Kyle Austin - Maximus stunt double
- Victor Plajas - Maximus stunt double
- Justice Hedenberg - The Ghoul stunt double/NCR soldier[1]
- Jamal Warren - Vertibird pilot
- Calvin Ahn - Brotherhood officer[2]
- Rory Clarke - Brotherhood soldier[3]
- Lenny Cruz - Brotherhood soldier[4]
- Jake Eavey - Brotherhood soldier[5]
- Shane Geraghty - Brotherhood soldier[3]
- Kingsley Ibeneche - Brotherhood soldier[6]
- Hannah Scott - Brotherhood soldier[7]
- Jénel Stevens - Brotherhood soldier[3]
- Eric Sun - Brotherhood soldier[3]
- David Chen - NCR soldier[8]
- Warren E. Hull - NCR soldier
- Marie Mouroum - NCR soldier
- Mark Odgers - NCR soldier
- Victoria Lee Parella -NCR soldier[9]
- Travis Staton-Marrero - NCR soldier
- Adam Shippey - Brotherhood knight/hero power armor
- Jacob Warren - Brotherhood knight[10]
- Scott Hoffman - Brotherhood knight[11]
- Drew Reade - Brotherhood knight/Vertibird pilot[3]
- Justin Clarke - Brotherhood knight
- Jamal Warren - Vertibird pilot
- Paige Rhea Allison - additional stunts
- David Armstrong - additional stunts
- Frank Bal - additional stunts
- William Barnes - additional stunts
- Bryce Biederman - additional stunts
- Nikki Brower - additional stunts
- Kyle W. Brown - additional stunts
- Pat Buck - additional stunts
- Orien Elizabeth - additional stunts
- Jared Frenke - additional stunts
- Matthew Quinn Flanagan - additional stunts
- Califf Guzman - additional stunts
- Aaron Joshua - additional stunts
- Nick LaRocca - additional stunts
- Luis Moco - additional stunts
- Mark Pettograsso - additional stunts
- Hannah D. Scott - additional stunts
- Turner Smith - additional stunts
- Robert Wynne - additional stunts
- Vesselin Todorov-Vinnie - additional stunts
- Alex Huynh - utility stunts
- Anthony Mecca - utility stunts
- Kara Rosella - utility stunts
Uncredited:
- Aixa Kendrick - Moldaver's elite guard
- Josh Martinez - Vertibird pilot
- Unknown performer - Man in shadows
- Unknown performers - Spectators
Soundtrack[]
- Douglas A. Wood - "Oktoberfest"
- Nat King Cole - "I Don't Want to See Tomorrow"
- The Ink Spots - "We Three (My Echo, My Shadow and Me)"
Behind the scenes[]
- The exterior scenes for the Vault-Tec building were shot at the Fordham University's Westchester campus around January 18th, 2023.[12] The entire superstructure was digitally added in post-processing, and the campus was selected due to its resemblance to Vault-Tec's regional HQ building found in Boston in Fallout 4 while given a West Coast twist.[13]
- The arrangement of the conference room is a deliberate reference to the war room in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. In the movie, the titular Dr. Merkwurdigliebe actually proposes the construction of nuclear shelters not dissimilar to Vaults in the event of Soviet nuclear aggression in the final act. Unlike the HQ building's exterior and suite shots, the conference scene was filmed in a Manhattan movie theater.[13]
- Leon Von Felden's proposal for a Vault to create super soldiers has him refer to them as "super-mutant soldiers," despite the term "super mutant" only coming into use post-War.[14]
- The code given by Hank used to activate the cold fusion device "10101997" is a reference to the release date of the original Fallout game: October 10, 1997.
- Both the Howards, Barb and Cooper, repeat the maxim "War never changes..." that serves as a core theme of the Fallout series.
- The skull of a deathclaw that Hank passes by while walking through the Mojave Wasteland more closely resembles their East Coast design compared to the species' previous appearance on the West Coast in Fallout: New Vegas.
- ^ (Note) In the episode's credits, the actor who plays Robert House was initially miscredited as Anthony Misiano. On April 21, 2024, the credits were corrected, now showing that House was portrayed by Rafi Silver, who had already been credited in Prime Video X-Ray.
- Actor Kenneth James Yuille is credited as "commanding officer" for the episode, though it is unclear which character in the episode this actually refers to. This wiki currently assumes that he is one of the Brotherhood officers seen in the armory before the battle at Griffith Observatory, since that is otherwise the only uncredited character with a speaking role.
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ Justice Hedenberg on Instagram (archived)
- ↑ Calvin Ahn on Instagram (archived)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Eric Sun on Instagram (archived)
- ↑ Lenny Cruz on Instagram (archived; pic 2)
- ↑ Lenny Cruz on Instagram (archived; pic 6)
- ↑ Kingsley Ibeneche on Instagram (archived)
- ↑ Hannah Scott on Instagram (archived)
- ↑ David Chen on Instagram (archived)
- ↑ Hannah D. Scott on Instagram
- ↑ Jacob Warren on Instagram (archived)
- ↑ Scott Hoffman on Instagram (archived)
- ↑ Reddit post
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 "Fallout TV Show's Production Designer Talks Making Vault-Tec From the Ground Up" from Game Rant
- ↑ Frederick Sinclair: "We could intentionally overcrowd a vault so people have to compete to survive inside it."
Julia Masters: "We have been developing a robot that delivers milk to the front door. It's quite intelligent. I would like to see a vault governed by it."
Leon Von Felden: "What about using a vault to develop a super-mutant soldier using illegal immigrants?"
("The Beginning")
