Fallout has officially emerged from the vault and down the red carpet for a second outing of the video game-based series.
On Monday, Prime Video celebrated Season 2 of the Emmy-winning show with stars Ella Purnell, Walton Goggins, Kyle MacLachlan, Aaron Moten, Justin Theroux and more at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, where Deadline spoke with the cast and creators about the new season, premiering Dec. 17.
For Goggins, who plays the antihero The Ghoul, it meant getting back into character and costume as the necrotic post-human. The SFX makeup required to bring the undead cowboy to life helped the actor slip back into the role he played in Season 1.
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“I think every person I’ve ever played, I’ve been given that opportunity on some level,” said Goggins on the red carpet, referencing The Righteous Gemstones‘ Baby Billy. “But I like clothes, and I’ve enjoyed expressing myself in that way.”
In Season 2, The Ghoul sets off across a desert wasteland with Lucy MacLean (Purnell), who is on a mission to bring her father Hank (MacLachlan) to justice after learning about his role in the nuclear apocalypse. The buddy roadtrip ultimately sees the opposing personalities rubbing off on each other.
“I think that maybe they don’t realize how similar they are, and the things that annoy each other the most … are the ways that they’re similar,” Purnell explained. “They’re both imperfect characters. Lucy might be good and have good intentions, but she’s still a flawed character. She’s a human, there’s no such thing as a perfect person.”
Purnell noted both characters are “very stubborn,” adding: “Lucy’s got this moral righteousness and just wants to lecture The Ghoul, and The Ghoul just does not care. He just wants Lucy to shut up, probably. But I think Lucy sees something in The Ghoul, and despite what he wants and how he wants to behave, maybe she brings out something in him, and vice-versa.”
Amid the search for Hank, Purnell doesn’t think the character is “fully redeemable” to his daughter. “I think there’s some fundamental core truths that have been broken and betrayed in her eyes, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t still love him,” she said.
“You don’t stop loving someone when you realize they’re a monster,” added Purnell. “She might hate him; that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love him. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference, and she doesn’t feel indifferent towards him. So, I think it’s complicated, and I think that’s something she has to grapple with this season.”
Meanwhile MacLachlan teased that Season 2 explores “a little more of the ‘why’ for Hank’s actions,” noting, “I’m not saying they’re justified, but you begin to understand more about where he’s coming from, which I appreciated as an actor. The writers are very smart, and they’ve created this journey for him that I think everyone will be happy.”
The journey also sees The Ghoul searching Vault-Tec’s many bunkers across the country for his long-lost wife Barb (Frances Turner) and their daughter Janey (Teagan Meredith). “To me, it’s so beautiful that he is still looking for them 219 years later,” raved Turner.
“That is a love that survives Radroaches and Deathclaws and Ghoulification. And why is he still looking for them?” she pondered. “We’re gonna learn more about that, of course. But I just think it’s really beautiful, and you don’t see often onscreen, that kind of epic, ‘I would walk an apocalyptic wasteland for you 219 years later.’ Give me all of that.”
Moten is also back as Maximus, who takes over with a new leadership role in the Brotherhood of Steel, Meanwhile, a past timeline reveals his origin story, surviving the Shady Sands blast.
“That’s the conversation he’s always having in his head, I think, a guy who’s been abused and abandoned—through no fault of his parents—but by everyone he’s ever known,” he explained. “That’s why he doesn’t trust people, it’s why he’s so naive in similar ways to Lucy. He’s sheltering himself, it’s like his suit of armor around himself. So, as we go through these next seasons, we’ll see how he bursts out of that.”
Also in attendance at Monday’s premiere was the video game’s executive producer and game director of Bethesda Game Studios, Todd Howard, who teased his favorite element of the game to see come to life on screen in Season 2.
“When you see the Deathclaw on the screen, which is a very popular enemy in the world of Fallout,” said Howard. “We were doing Season 1, like, ‘Are we gonna do Deathclaw?’ [We said] ‘Well, we should give them their own time in Season 2, really do them right, tell a little bit of a Deathclaw story. So, it really came together awesome.”
Premiering Dec. 17 on Prime Video, new Season 2 episodes of Fallout are available to stream Wednesdays.
Glenn Garner
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