This review contains spoilers for Fallout Season 2, Episode 2, “The Golden Rule,” which is available to stream now on Prime Video.
Last week I wondered if, by holding back the return of Maximus and the Brotherhood of Steel beyond the premiere, we’d have to spend a chunk of this week’s episode further recapping events and re-introducing ideas. Thankfully no such issues weigh down Fallout Season 2’s second chapter, “The Golden Rule,” which wastes no time not only expanding the scope of the Brotherhood, but also sowing the seeds of violent rebellion among its members.
Uneasy friction between factions is the defining factor of Fallout: New Vegas, the video game this season draws most heavily from, and it’s a great idea to replicate that in the movements of the Brotherhood, which turns out to be an uneasy alliance of multiple chapters rather than a unified force. Now conspiring with groups from the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Coronado, it’ll be fascinating to see how Quintus (Michael Cristofer) attempts to seize control of the Brotherhood from the Boston-based Commonwealth chapter – especially with the last-minute arrival of its liaison, Kumail Nanjiani’s Paladin Harkness.
The Elder Cleric’s first steps on that journey provide quite a spectacle. The circling vertibirds, spinning wind turbines, wide-angle desert shots, and Ramin Djawadi’s exceptional Brotherhood of Steel signature theme all combine to lend the reveal of Quintus’ new military base a little Dune-flavoured grandeur. Of course, Fallout can’t deliver all that with a completely straight face, so the base is Area 51 and there’s an alien hidden in the freezer – both among the episode’s funniest reveals. These sequences also never forget to emphasise that the Brotherhood’s incredibly imposing, efficiently violent, power-armoured knights are hilariously stupid. This episode is perhaps the best example so far of their child-like tendencies, with the warriors constantly beating each other up or fiddling with live plasma grenades.
With civil war brewing, it seems like the Brotherhood itself will have one of the season’s most significant storylines, rather than simply being the background fluff for Aaron Moten’s Maximus again. That’s not to say he’s been reduced to simply part of an ensemble, though. Now an obedient Brotherhood dog who’s totally numb to violence, he’s been crushed and reshaped by Quintus in the weeks that bridge each season’s events, so much so that the sneering Cleric finally admires him. Maximus has always been weak, unsure of what to do and easily manipulated, but it’s now clearer than ever that he has no control of who he is or his own destiny. Yes, he’s finally the knight he lied his way into becoming, able to kill a man twice his size, but none of it is his doing.
Maximus’ pathetic existence is made all the more tragic by the episode’s cold opening, which takes us back to his childhood in the ill-fated Shady Sands. Writer Chris Brady-Denton successfully captures the emotion of Maximus’ family saying their hurried goodbyes, knowing full well that they’re about to be nuked off the face of America. As the boy is bundled into the kitchen refrigerator (a tactic presumably taken from the Indiana Jones school of survival), his father reassures him that “you will be a good man.” How disappointed he’d be, then, to see what a spineless creature Maximus has become. The two time periods contrast perfectly, and establish the path down which Maximus must surely walk this season. It’s time to make dad proud.
Maximus has always been easily manipulated, but it’s now clearer than ever that he has no control of who he is or his own destiny.
Talking of proud dads, Shady Sands’ demise was, of course, the work of Hank MacLean. The flashback really does cement him as a truly evil piece of work, as this is the first time we get to see what the town had flourished into. Once little more than a few crop fields and buildings during the timelines of Fallouts 1 and 2, it became an incredible bastion of progress with access to clean water… and Hank took it all away in a flash. We always knew that he was motivated to do so because his wife and daughter ran away from his vault to live there, but Season 1 left the half-answered question of how the bombing was linked to Vault-Tec’s wider corporate plans. That question only gets more complicated now we’ve seen that the explosion was achieved through the use of the mind-control chips that Mr. House was testing in last week’s flashback. Hank, House, and Vault-Tec are all linked, but I don’t think the relationship between the three is as simple as the Season 1 finale’s board meeting made it seem – this will be a great mystery to be unpicked over the next few episodes.
Of course, anything with Kyle MacLachlan in it can’t be 100% sinister, and his mouse-testing trial-and-error montage is one of the episode’s comedic highlights. There’s so many fun details – the cheerful tune, the tiny rodent Vault-Tec office, the constant yo-yoing, and the perfect timing of each bursting mouse. And while it’s fun, it’s all in aid of showing how flawed the control-chip tech is. A similar trick is executed in the Shady Sands flashback, with the mind-controlled travelling trader repeating “Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter” on a never-ending loop. That’s a nod to the New Vegas video game, where budget restrictions meant dozens of characters across the wasteland would parrot the same line ad nauseum. But here, the meme becomes a smart, funny way to depict the tech’s deficiencies.
Also providing a few chuckles is Norm, who has found himself in charge of a gaggle of clueless middle managers after thawing the entire population of Vault 31 last week. In a smart recognition of how little screentime this storyline has, things move at a rapid pace, and the entire group are out on the surface before the credits roll. Norm’s story was a slow burn last year, and while it ultimately paid off, it did require patience as it built from frivolous distraction into one of the show’s key reveals. I’m pleased the momentum continues here, rather than being reset, and does so while still dropping a bunch of “idiot vaultie” jokes along the way. It fulfills the show’s more dedicated comedy needs without feeling inconsequential – something I hope the storylines of vaults 32 and 33, which are absent this week, will adopt when we rejoin them in later episodes.
As Norm sees the ocean and sky for the first time in his entire existence, his sister continues her long walk to find dad almost 300 miles inland. Slightly frustratingly, Lucy and The Ghoul are once again stuck in recap mode this week, as they go on a side quest that closely echoes the events of last season’s trip to the Super Duper Mart, where Lucy could have abandoned The Ghoul after he betrayed her, but instead gave him the life-restoring drugs he needed. It’s largely the same story here – Lucy is poised to leave him for dead after yet another bout of needless violence, but she promises to return for him, proving that she’s “nothing like” him in the process. The parallel between these two scenes is made all the more clear by having the duo’s original tiff in the “previously on Fallout” recap, and so once again it feels like this relationship is treading water… or perhaps it’s such an incompatible pairing that growth is impossible. Only with the entire season in the rear-view will we know if this sense of arrested development worked or not.
That’s not to say Lucy and The Ghoul don’t have any fun, though. Far from it. We have an enjoyably chaotic run-in with radscorpions, a quintessential Fallout monster brought to life with some top-notch visual effects. Also brought over from the games is the classic “choose between these two people in need” dilemma, in which Lucy must decide which dying person is most deserving of her final stimpack. Of course, to have Lucy pick the tunic-wearing woman, seemingly the obvious choice between a vulnerable mortal and a 200-year-old mutant, only for that choice to lead her right into the den of Caesar’s Legion, New Vegas’ cruellest faction, is a wonderful translation of the video games’ unforeseen consequences. Next week’s episode, where we’ll learn more of Lucy’s infamous captors, is sure to be a treat.
