All Fallout Season 1 Episodes Recapped
Fallout is the biggest show on Prime Video, a grand post-apocalyptic drama with centuries of lore. It’s also left viewers with a whole lot of questions.
That’s why, in this feature, we’re recapping all eight episodes. So if you want a full explanation of Fallout’s entire first season, read on below.
And don't miss our Fallout review: a horrific and hilarious must-watch.
Fallout season 1 recap
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The End kicks things off with the mother of all bangs, dropping a barrage of nukes on LA. Walton Goggins’ celebrity cowboy Cooper Howard flees the scene on horseback in one of the greatest opening shots in all of dystopian fiction: a slow panning shot of the Los Angeles skyline on fire. That won’t be the last we see of him.
Next, we jump 216 years into the future and follow Ella Purnell’s Lucy, an inhabitant of Vault 33. It’s one of several underground communities built to protect humanity. When her vault is invaded by vicious raiders and her dad kidnapped, however, she sets off for the surface to find him.
The third and final story of episode one concerns Aaron Moten’s Maximus, a much-bullied member of military faction the Brotherhood Of Steel who might be getting pushed too far. These three characters - Maximus, Lucy, and Cooper (or what’s left of him) - are who we’ll be focusing on going forward.
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The second episode starts in an enclave on the surface where we meet Dr. Wilzig (Michael Emmerson), a scientist who implants a strange, glowing chip in his neck. That looks like it might be important later…
Meanwhile, Maximus and Knight Titus get attacked by a massive, mutated bear during an expedition. Knight Titus dies, and Maximus takes his power armor for himself.
Lucy heads to an outpost called Filly on the search for her dad. Soon after she arrives, a huge fight breaks out between her, The Ghoul (an irradiated Cooper, now a bounty hunter), and Maximus. Lucy manages to escape with Dr. Wilzig, and the pair set off to find Moldava, the raider leader who’s got her dad.
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Lucy continues onward to find Moldava with Dr. Wilzig - well, his head anyway. She cut it off at his request. Since it’s got the chip in, it’s the only bit she needs.
The Ghoul catches up to her. He wants Dr. Wilzig’s head for himself, but he’s not the only one. They have to fight off a giant, mutated salamander, one of many horrors lurking in the wasteland.
Maximus has his own struggles in a vicious scrap with a gang who wants to steal his power armor, and back in Vault 33, Lucy’s brother Norm wants revenge against the raiders that attacked his home.
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In Vault 33, the dwellers vote for a new Overseer in light of their last one getting dragged off by raiders. On the surface, Lucy and The Ghoul come across a Super Duper Mart. The Ghoul orders her to enter.
Inside she fights off a chipper robot who wants to harvest her organs. Lucy then grapples with a horde of ghouls before managing to escape.
She emerges to find The Ghoul lying on the floor, close to death. She decides to take pity on him and gives him a bunch of drugs and medicine. Despite everything, she still has her humanity.
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Maximus and his new squire Thaddeus are bonding. That is, until Maximus reveals he stole power armor, prompting Thaddeus to sneak behind him and insert an off-key, trapping Maximus inside.
Lucy stumbles upon Maximus and agrees to free him in exchange for anti-radiation medicine. Together the two set off in search of both Dr. Wilzig and her father. On the way they learn about a town called Shady Sands, which was home to over 34,000 people. Her whole identity as a Vault Dweller tasked with repopulating the world is upturned.
At the end of the episode they fall down a hole and end up in an entirely new vault. Meanwhile, in Vault 33, Norm’s unravelling a vast conspiracy.
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This episode explores a lot of what happened prior to the apocalypse. From the perspective Cooper in a flashback we learn about Vault-Tec, the organization responsible for building the vaults.
A Vault-Tec representative tells Cooper the vaults are how America wins its war against other nations by using one element no one else has thought of: time. They’ll outlast them.
Lucy and Maximus are quickly discovering the idyllic life in Vault 4 holds a deep secret: human experimentation.
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After Lucy’s discovery in episode six - that Vault 4 was an experimentation chamber for scientists to combine human DNA with animals, she’s banished from the vault. Maximus joins her.
The two head to a radio station, where the Brotherhood of Steel pick up Maximus. Thaddeus gets an arrow through the neck but doesn’t die due to his ingesting of drugs earlier. He’s now a ghoul, cursed with immortality.
The Ghoul is now on the hunt for Moldaver. Exactly why he’s on her trail will be revealed in the next episode.
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In a Cooper flashback we hear the series’ biggest, most horrific revelation: the bombs were dropped by corporations to sell access to vaults. And one of the key perpertrators is his own wife.
Another revelation happens when Lucy meets Moldaver and her father, caged, at the Griffith Observatory. Moldaver reveals her father bombed Shady Sands and turned her mother into a ghoul.
Below the surface in Vault 31, Norm discovers thousands of Vault-Tec executives frozen for centuries in cryopods. They’re meant to breed with the inhabitants of Vaults 32 and 33 and create a superior, Vault-Tec-approved race.
At the climax of the episode, Moldaver uses the cold fusion chip from Dr. Wilzig’s head to bring power back to LA, while Lucy’s father steals a set of power armor and flees. In the last shot, he comes across New Vegas, a location fans of the games will know well.
