As the excitement over Amazon Prime Video’s smash hit ‘Fallout’ continues to ramp up, let’s take a look at what we know about the upcoming series. Speculation is rife over where the wandering wasteland survivors are going to go next, following the thrilling season 2 finale that aired on February 3rd of this year.
Main cast members Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Walton Goggins, Moisés Arias, Frances Turner, and Kyle MacLachlan are all set to return. Aaron Paul, of ‘Breaking Bad’ fame, will join the cast in a role that has not yet been revealed. Fans are also excited that Annabel O’Hagan and Dave Register, who play Steph Harper and Chet, have been promoted to series regulars, implying that more Vault-centered storylines are to come.
Before getting too far ahead of ourselves, let’s take a look back at how far the Fallout characters have come. Following the Great War of 2077 and its apocalyptic aftermath, the world is a hard place, and its remaining occupants are even harder. We are brought into the Vaults, fallout bunkers that become a refuge for survivors of a nuclear holocaust. What their occupants don’t know is that these Vaults have a dark history.
It’s the year 2296, and Lucy has left her home in Vault 33 in search of her father. Her mission takes her through the burned-out wasteland that was once Los Angeles. Along the way, Lucy meets Maximus, a Brotherhood of Steel squire, as well as infamous ghoul bounty hunter and once-upon-a-time actor Cooper Howard. They all have troublesome pasts and unfinished business to attend to.
Series two sees the unlikely companions travel to New Vegas. Once a glittering gambling hub, the dilapidated city survives under the influence of powerful factions and old-world technology. The Fallout universe has repeatedly paid homage to Las Vegas’ gambling culture through the inclusion of one-armed bandit mini-games. It’s no surprise that Fallout has inspired real-money slots at online casinos in Canada, which you can navigate with the help of industry experts.
Fictional casinos like Lucky 38 and Gomorrah are integral to the season 2 story, and gambling is a neat metaphor for the trials that our protagonists face. Do they risk losing everything just for a chance at getting what their heart’s desire? Can they beat the house, or are they being fooled by unseen powers?
Against this backdrop, they hope to uncover the truth behind Vault-Tec, and their long-lost family members. Trouble is brewing in the Brotherhood, and The Ghoul is on a mission to find his cryogenically frozen wife and daughter. He comes heartbreakingly close, and while we still don’t know the fate of his family, we are given a major clue in the form of a postcard left behind. It is this moment that the destination for season 3 hinges on.
Production has been tight-lipped about where the main protagonists will travel to next, and whether they will continue together or apart. In an interview with Collider, Jonathan Nolan and Todd Howard wouldn’t confirm or deny rumours that the Ghoul’s storyline would see him headed to Colorado. Nolan stated that “geography has always been its own character in the franchise”, adding that the upcoming season features an opportunity that they’re excited about.
That theory was corroborated later by an interview in the same publication with Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Frances Turner. They confirmed that the Ghoul would indeed be aiming in the direction of Colorado, although Lucy and Maximus’s stories will see them headed elsewhere.
According to the rumor mill, season three has been filming in locations across California, including Fillmore and Santa Clarita. Production crews have been spotted dressing up locations like the Fox Theater and downtown area in Pomona, transforming them into the post-apocalyptic landscape trudged through by our protagonists.
Colorado is a region that has not been featured in the main video games that have so far served as the backbone of the Fallout story. Readers may wonder if the series is diverging from the game’s original trajectory, or whether this will be a temporary diversion on the way. For any game adaptation to work on TV, producers need to tread a careful tightrope between respecting the original source material and allowing the story to tread its own path.
Colorado hasn’t come completely out of left field, though. Anyone who saw the Season two finale has probably already clocked that the gang is headed east. Eagle-eyed viewers may have spotted the numerous hints dropped in passing, like the Colorado postcard that Barb leaves for Cooper.
There isn’t much lore around Colorado in the Fallout universe, as is understandable given that it is on the whole new ground. We do know that the state is home to the Hangdogs, a group that battled Caesar’s Legion numerous times before the events of the game took place. It is assumed that the tribe, and their beloved dogs, still reside somewhere in the Centennial state.
For the Ghoul to get to Colorado from his last known location, it’s around 2 weeks of walking. This is Fallout, though, and his journey is likely to be far from simple. En route, we may well see him diverted into Arizona, New Mexico or Utah. These are all locations that haven’t yet featured in the franchise, and we know that showrunners are keen for our characters to traverse new ground.
For those eager to know when they can tune in to find out where the group is headed next, there is a little while to wait yet. According to Walton Goggins, the man behind the Ghoul, filming for the new series began on July 7th. The cult star of shows such as ‘The White Lotus’ and ‘The Shield’ took to social media to tease fans with a set of images of him in arguably his most recognizable role to date. In full face makeup, the actor declared that he is ‘back in the saddle’.
Based on what we know so far, we can use this reveal to take a stab at when the upcoming season might premiere. Season 2 was released 13 months after the first season, and it appears that filming for season 3 is following a similar schedule. The best estimate we can currently give is around August 2027, although time will tell. Other sources give production a little more leeway, predicting sometime in the autumn.
Up until this point, Fallout has been received remarkably well. Compared to the number of TV shows spun off from gaming franchises that have crashed and burned, to be almost, but regrettably not forgotten, Fallout’s success marks it out as an outlier. All signs point to season three continuing this trend.
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