Fallout (2×07) The Handoff Review

For our spoiler-free review of Episodes 1-6 of Fallout Season 2, click here.

The episode description is that you always end up back where you started, and that is certainly the truth. As the penultimate episode of Season 2 of Fallout, it continues the work done in last week’s episode to lay the groundwork for next week’s season finale. All roads lead to Vegas, where our characters are trying to save the world. However, between the past and the present, the task did not mean the same. While the question as to who dropped the bombs is yet to be answered, what will remain of the Wasteland is another. And could the solution to either be connected? Now before that could happen, the episode, entitled ‘The Handoff,’ presents a few more wrinkles to consider. A series that is showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon, what it will look like come Season 3 may be different. In the end, a morally ambiguous Ghoul could very well be the key to it all.

Checking in on the back half of the ongoing storylines, the drama between Vault 32 and 33 (and 31) was still an issue for Overseers Steph of 32 (Annabel O’Hagan) and Betty of 33 (Leslie Uggams), as their respective shady behavior loomed large. With the latter vault’s water problems appeared to have been by design, Steph’s grip on her own vault grew tenuous at best. Devoting the opening act to a quick backstory, her motives became that much clearer. Now, her focus was survival, which could put the fate of Vault 32 and 33 in jeopardy. Norm also found himself in jeopardy while embedded with the gang of hopeless Vault-Tec survivors he awoke. Being discovered by them, the only matter was his fate. Learning many truths on his own, hinting that a larger plan involving Vault 31-33 was not yet complete, he at least got a message out his sister and father before being recaptured.

Lucy’s reunion with her father, similarly, was also tenuous at best. Still developing her own moral code, trying to understand Hank’s experiments remained a challenge. As both sides continued to play along with one another, Lucy waited for the right moment to strike. Finding The Ghoul, Maximus and Thaddeus followed along to find Lucy and give her the cold fusion diode, being the only “good” person Maximus could think of (while Thaddeus asked The Ghoul questions about being a ghoul). Gearing up in preparation for the deathclaws that awaited them outside the Lucky 38, Maximus, in a new set of NCR Power Armor put up a fight against a pack of them, but it may not be enough.

On the other hand, as Cooper Howard found himself with the diode in the past, after Barb retrieved it from Hank’s lifeless body. Thinking had given it to the right person and that he and his wife’s first step to saving the world, he came into possession of it once again, but his intentions were a bit different this time around. Creating a sequence with Lucy and The Ghoul, presumably suggesting that they would intersect with one another, as one was about shut one thing down, the other would turn something else back on. And now we are right back to where we started.

While the answers to the aforementioned larger questions look to remain somewhere in the future, it appears that the finale is in a prime position to steer audiences closer to them. With many facets of the world of Fallout that the series has yet to explore, the ‘New Vegas’ storyline, and presumably the big bad in Robert House, will have a large impact on what happens next. Focusing more on Lucy and Cooper Howard/The Ghoul, they continue to guide the way, delivering some compelling character arcs, each clutching hope from the jaws of defeat in their own ways.

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.