Fallout TV series first look reveals new details of upcoming show

The TV series based on Bethesda’s famous Fallout video game franchise was announced over three years ago. Following an interview Vanity Fair, we now have some idea of what the show will be about, alongside some new shots of the show in action, including the iconic ghouls and vault jumpsuits.

As revealed by Vanity Fair, new details of the show have now been confirmed. The show will follow Lucy, a sheltered Vault-dweller played by Ella Purnell, who is forced to leave her home and venture into the hellish radioactive surface world on a perilous rescue mission. During her adventure, she will encounter wannabe Brotherhood of Steel soldier Maximus, played by Aaron Moten, and an enigmatic ghoul played by Walton Goggins. Other notable cast members include Kyle MacLachlan as Lucy’s father and Moisés Arias as her brother.

Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard mentions in the interview that he had little interest in directly adapting the storyline of any of the existing games, and was sold on the original tale set in the Fallout universe pitched by Jonathan Nolan. “I did not want to do an interpretation of an existing story we did,” he says. “That was the other thing—a lot of pitches were, you know, ‘This is the movie of Fallout 3…’ I was like, ‘Yeah, we told that story.’ I don’t have a lot of interest seeing those translated. I was interested in someone telling a unique Fallout story. Treat it like a game. It gives the creators of the series their own playground to play in.”

According to Howard, the show’s events are considered canon to the world the games take place in. “We view what’s happening in the show as canon,” he says. “That’s what’s great, when someone else looks at your work and then translates it in some fashion.” He admits to being envious of some of the TV show’s interpretations and additions: “I sort of looked at it like, ‘Ah, why didn’t we do that?’”

Of course, the quality bar has certainly been raised for video game adaptations between when the series was announced and now. Comparisons to HBO’s lauded The Last of Us series, itself a live-action TV adaptation of a popular post-apocalyptic video game franchise, will probably be inevitable. At any rate, we will find out more when the Fallout series releases on Amazon Prime Video in April 2024.