Spoilers for this week’s episode of Fallout ahead.
Another week, another episode of Fallout. This week saw lots of use of Lucy’s (Ella Purnell) “Golden Rule” and a look into the politics of the Brotherhood of Steel. In many ways this episode felt like a significant step forward for the series, but it also took its time to honor Fallout’s past. From iconic locations to lore deep cuts , there was no shortage of callbacks. Let’s take a look at what “The Golden Rule” had to offer.
A Familiar and Friendly Place
This week’s episode showed us a flashback of Shady Sands in its prime. While we saw the bombed city in the first season, this season gave us a look at what life was like in the New California Republic settlement before it was destroyed. Longtime fans will recognize Shady Sands as one of the first locations you can visit from the original 1997 Fallout game. Since the series is canon to the video games, its destruction is the city’s eventual fate.
Monotony Builds Character
Shady Sands meets its fate when a mind controlled stranger enters the city with an armed atom bomb. When confronted by Maximus’ father, the stranger keeps muttering a single phrase over and over: “Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.” Fans of Fallout: New Vegas will recognize this line as one used by New California Republic NPCs that didn’t have meaningful dialogue. It’s in-game use is also used to represent their mundane duties and boring patrols, which has led to the phrase being meme’d into oblivion online.
Area 51
Maximus (Aaron Moten) and his Brotherhood of Steel chapter gained a new base of operations this week in the form of Area 51. Though this base hides numerous old world artifacts for the Brotherhood to use , chief among them is an icebox housing an alien corpse. The alien is specifically a Zetan, whose most notable appearance is in the Fallout 3 DLC “Mothership Zeta.” Did you know that you can also encounter them in the Mojave Wasteland in Fallout: New Vegas, too? If you have the Wild Wasteland trait selected, there’s a possibility that a spacecraft with two Zetan’s aboard will spawn. , If not, you’re left wanting to believe.
Reclamation Day
When Norm (Moisés Arias) wakes up all of the Vault-Tec Junior Executives in Vault 31, he convinces them that it’s Reclamation Day to get all of them to follow him. Reclamation Day, in Fallout lore ,is the designated day when the Vaults open up, permitting all their inhabitants to return to the surface to reestablish society. This is most notable in the game Fallout 76, where players create a resident from Vault 76, the first vault to open up after The Great War and whose inhabitants explored and settled in Appalachia.
Power Leads to Madness
Throughout the episode, various chapters of the Brotherhood of Steel conspire to stand together against the chapter from The Commonwealth, despite it potentially causing a civil war. Fallout 4 fans will recognize The Commonwealth as the Boston-inspired setting of that entry. The Brotherhood of Steel chapter of that game was led by Elder Arthur Maxson, who was driven mad with power and sought to bring conflict and destruction to The Commonwealth by using the Brotherhood’s freedom enforcing robot, Liberty Prime.
