Fallout 2×04 Review: “The Demon in the Snow”

Last week, Lucy inspired The Ghoul to do something good for once. This week, The Ghoul is enabling Lucy’s worst possible behaviors… and it’s awesome.

I’ve spent an unspeakable amount of time reading Fallout fanfic since the end of its first season. The idea of a naïve, aspirationally good Vault-dweller adventuring through the Wasteland with a pre-war ghoul cowboy sparked the imagination of many, many writers, so it’s been good eating (so to speak).

Imagine my surprise when I tuned into “The Demon in the Snow” to see the events of many fanfics unfurl on-screen.

It took time to break Lucy of her nonlethal fighting habits. Apparently, what she needed was a brand-new addiction to Fallout-universe stimulants — enabled by The Ghoul — before she could start aiming for the head. It’s been established from the beginning that Lucy is a great shot. Finally, she’s clearing out hordes of feral ghouls without her Ghoul needing to raise a (transplanted) finger.

As fun and satisfying as Lucy’s murder-spree is, there’s a dark side to it. She rationalizes killing because they’re “just” ghouls. Obviously she doesn’t think of Cooper Howard as “just” a ghoul because she talks about him as a person, even when he’s not around. I think there’s something a lot sadder going on: She’s really trying to rationalize shooting her feral ghoul mother at the end of season one.

Plus, the violence is at least somewhat a reaction to niceness with the Legion getting her crucified. Lucy’s good heart is breaking.

She probably isn’t going to be quite as thrilled about her action scenes once the stimulants wear off.

Though this episode is more focused on Lucy than Ghoul, it’s clear The Ghoul is having a great time. Lucy chose to leave with him instead of staying with the scraps of the New California Republic. They bonded over disliking cults. He gets to corrupt her with drugs. He’s actually grinning and winking at her when she kills. They’re friends!

We already know another shoe is waiting to drop, and it won’t just be Lucy sobering up. They’re on their way to confront Hank MacLean, after all.

I’d love to read The Ghoul’s giddiness at Lucy’s change of attitude as something romantic, but something tells me he’s delighted to be corrupting Hank’s daughter. While Lucy is rationalizing her experiences, so is The Ghoul. If he can turn the most Vaultie of Vaulties into someone like him, then maybe it was inevitable he would become this monster, too.

Is violence inevitable? Will the Wasteland corrupt everyone, even those with the best intentions?

We’ve now seen how Maximus came from a loving family, but he’s turned to violence in order to please his surrogate family and thrive in a cult of his own. His struggle comes to an utterly heartbreaking head in this episode.

After killing another Knight to save children (some of which were ghouls), Maximus is running on fumes and terror. He plans to kill the leader of his Brotherhood group. But when he can’t do that — because, if you haven’t noticed, Maximus is a beautiful sweet innocent baby who can do no wrong — he instead has a breakdown with the most incredible performance on the show to date.

Seriously, Aaron Moten is running circles around the rest of the cast. That’s saying a lot! This show has great actors. He’s just got a singularly incredible performance in Maximus.

Every time Maximus devastates me (like running away and leaving Dane behind), we can at least take comfort in the ongoing hilarity of Thaddeus. It’s hard to believe this ghoul struggling with panic attacks who was a single father of a whole sweatshop started out in the Brotherhood. He’s useless in a pinch, can’t pilot the suits, and everything goes terribly wrong once he’s involved.

It’s interesting that Maximus is turning out a bit less compromised than Lucy. Whenever he does something violent or less-than-moral, he pulls back. A whole system wants him corrupted, but he’s resisting because he must. It’s not a choice. Things happen, and he reacts, and his reactions are so pure.

In the meantime, Lucy’s morality is on the decline because the Wasteland is beating it out of her. Maximus has Dane reminding him of goodness, but Lucy’s Jiminy Cricket is a walking piece of cowboy jerky that wants to see her fall.

She told The Ghoul his family wouldn’t like who he’s become, but I’m starting to wonder if Maximus will like what Lucy is becoming.

These moral arcs are my catnip. Although there are also subplots with Vault 33 and Norm, I’m less interested in that. I wish we could spend more time with the main trio, because it’s so chewy, the way these characters are molded by circumstance. This element of the show is perfect.

That said, I must note that leaving the cold fusion artifact unguarded strains disbelief to the point of snapping. Why the heck is this priceless valuable just sitting in a warehouse where anyone can grab it? There’s zero justification. Normally I’m not one to pick at plots like this, but come on.

Some of the issue there is surely season length. We’re still doing eight episode seasons. It’s more tolerable here than on many shows because they air the seasons at a relatively quick clip — season 3 begins shooting in May, for instance — but there simply isn’t enough screen time to develop all these stories in depth. What they accomplish at a breakneck clip is amazing. But it also demands leaving priceless artifacts completely unguarded for narrative convenience, I guess.

Overall, this was my new favorite episode of Fallout. That’s amazing considering last week’s episode was also my new favorite episode of Fallout. We’re halfway through the season now, and I really can’t guess where this will all land.

Fallout season two is airing on Prime Video.

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