Review: Fallout, "The Strip" | Season 2, Episode 8

Hey free subscribers—it's a finale kind of day! If you've kept up with the second season of Prime Video's Fallout, here's a glimpse of Les' take on the finale. $5 a month gets you the full review, all his past reviews, and everything else we're covering.

“I could have prevented this. There’s gonna be a war and it’s all my fault.”

“Yeah, well. Welcome to the wasteland.”

It’s a recurring theme that comes up on a lot of Fallout discussion boards and Reddit posts about how little time players can spend following any of the main narratives. Despite the games having central plots that should require a certain sense of urgency—saving your Vault or your village, finding your missing father or son—it’s all too easy to shove that central plot to the back of the priority list and spend your time exploring the wasteland. You overturn every abandoned complex looking for interesting weapons and armor, or just build collections of random junk. You do repeating faction quests or spend hundreds of hours building settlements. It’s a franchise where it’s truly about the journey, not the destination, and the main plot is something to focus on when you’ve exhausted everything else.

That approach is all well and good for the games, but as season two of Fallout comes to a close there’s some unfortunate consequences that, much like the pack of Deathclaws, are rearing up and roaring across “The Strip.” Season two of Fallout has certainly had a lot to recommend it: the trio of central performances and several engaging guest stars, the commitment to the series’ brand of dark comedy, the successful embrace of the Fallout: New Vegas environment. Yet from the start it felt like it was an overstuffed season, too many plot threads splitting the audience’s attention like so many side quests scattered along the wasteland, wasting runtime on plots like Bud’s Buds and the inbreeding support group that wound up coming to no conclusions. And far from tying up those plot threads, “The Strip” largely feels more interested in pulling those threads out further, setting up the factions and conflicts of season three rather than giving a satisfying resolution to what’s transpired in season two.