Fallout 2×06 Review: “The Other Player”

An unexpected but very welcome POV change, a new faction, and unfortunate moral choices bring us into the last act of Fallout season 2.

Have you ever seen a TV show deliver such a good sophomore season as Fallout?

With every episode this season, I’ve found myself thinking “wow, this is even better than the last one,” and having this episode start off with Barb Howard’s POV did the exact same thing to me.

Here’s what’s interesting about getting more of Barb Howard: She insists that any evil action she takes is meant to protect her daughter, Janey, and this is a show that contrasts behavior between characters to make fascinating points.

So who else is taking evil actions to “protect” their daughter?

The most obvious example is Hank MacLean, who we’re finally seeing with Lucy for the first time since the season 1 finale. Hank has done some real evil stuff that he claims is in defense of Lucy–including killing her mother and destroying Shady Sands.

It’s easy to say that Hank’s behavior is unacceptable, even when he’s setting up scenarios that are meant to compel Lucy to his side.

In “The Other Player,” Hank demonstrates that Wastelanders will be violent when they aren’t being mind-controlled–setting up this false dichotomy that mind control is necessary for peace. Does he convince Lucy that’s true? She’s been subject to and an instigator of this violence personally, so it’s hard to know how she’s going to fall.

Personally, I was disappointed she didn’t just stab Hank to death the instant he showed up, but Ella Purnell’s gorgeous nuanced performance made it clear she still loves her dad too deeply for that. (I would have stabbed him.)

The other person prominently committing atrocities for his daughter is The Ghoul. This one is especially interesting to me because we’re getting flashbacks about Cooper Howard judging Barb Howard for her choices at the same time.

Barb knows she can’t undermine the machine building toward the end of the world, so she’s become a semi-willing cog in it. By cooperating with those who threaten her, she can make sure that Janey is well-protected through the end of the world.

So far, we’ve seen Barb as a hard-shelled player active in this game. She’s got a high position at Vault-Tec; she’s cited as the one who approved the experiments at the vaults (which are at least as evil as Hank killing Shady Sands).

But The Ghoul has been up to incredibly murderous behavior for two hundred years, too. He’s killing others’ children in pursuit of finding his own. He will slaughter entire gangs who stand in his way. He tortured Lucy before they became friends, too.

We don’t know if The Ghoul still blames Barb for her choices, but in flashbacks, Cooper Howard absolutely blames Barb. He calls her a monster in their heartbreaking breakup scenes.

It’s surreal seeing him taking such a moral stance against his wife–who is struggling–when he’s fully a villain some two hundred years in the future. Maybe he had a leg to stand on before the war. At this point, he’s a hypocrite.

(Remember Moldaver saying that if we only let bad guys be hypocrites, then the bad guys win? I sure do.)

We’ve ended up with this surreal gradient of moral evil on the show, and the Barb/Coop/Hank axis is especially interesting with their supposedly selfless motivations. I don’t think Hank has any justification for what he’s done, but it does make room to wonder if Lucy will agree, when she’s befriended The Ghoul despite torturing her. Both Hank and The Ghoul are just trying to save their daughters…right?

There’s so much else going on in this episode.

I didn’t expect to feel devastated every time I saw The Ghoul impaled–I actually love when Lucy turns violence against him–but I was deeply upset by the idea that he might go feral only inches from the chems that can save him.

I’d halfway expected Maximus to save him on his way into New Vegas from Area 51, but he was actually rescued by a guest appearance from Ron Perlman as a Super Mutant. Fallout players won’t be surprised to have Super Mutants showing up, but as someone who only watches the show, I have no idea where this is going. Mutants and ghouls teaming up?

One place the show continues to fall down is how little Maximus we get. There was no Maximus last episode, and this time, we have very little screentime from the gorgeously talented Aaron Moten. If not for Dogmeat warning him that Timmy fell down the well, leading Maximus to The Ghoul, we would have had virtually no Maximus.

What’s up with that? Why are we getting eight hours of television a season, and so little of it going to one of the most talented actors and most compelling characters? If we can place Hank on the far end of the evil scale, with Barb being less evil, and Lucy being mostly not-evil, then Maximus is the only one who is arguably on the absolute opposite end from Hank. Maximus is constantly trying his best to make good choices–and often succeeds, in a way. So why not more Maximus?

We’ve still got two episodes to go this season, and I’m really looking forward to a showdown with Hank MacLean. Then I will be rocking in a corner, going through Fallout canon withdrawals, forced to mainline fanfic like chems, until we get season 3.

Author: SM Reine

Half-Tellarite SM Reine is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of fantasy. She’s been publishing since 2011 and a nerd since forever.

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