Fallout Season 2 Turns Its Strangest Arc Into Its Most Scathing Parody

Spoilers ahead for "Fallout" season 2, episode 6 — "The Other Player."

Prime Video's stellar video game adaptation "Fallout" has gone to New Vegas in season 2, but Lucy MacLean's (Ella Purnell) home back in Vault 33 remains very much part of the narrative. In fact, the interconnected vaults 31 through 33 have a fair few side quests going on, from Norm's (Moisés Arias) Vault 31 escape storyline to Chet's (Dave Register) increasing discomfort with Steph's (Annabel O'Hagan) Vault 32 Overseer antics. 

One slow-burning vault plot has seemed a little mysterious, though. Reg McPhee (Rodrigo Luzzi), Vault 33's resident PhD holder in the noble art of event planning, has spent much of the season arranging an inbreeding support group after the events of season 1 left him feeling listless. A certain air of "What gives?" lingers around the storyline, especially with bigger beats going on all around it ... but "The Other Player" finally reveals that "Fallout" season 2 has been building an absolutely ruthless parody of populist politics all along.

When Overseer Betty (Leslie Uggams) tries to shut Reg's group down for a perfectly valid reason (it keeps consuming resources like salty foods at the time of a dramatic water shortage), Reg promptly transforms into a populist leader. He demands a public confrontation and spews cheap catchphrases of the "We're giving the people what they want" variety. He then proceeds to make a big speech about America's prosperous survivors (in this case, the Vault dwellers) coming from a long line of ancestors who proudly put themselves before others and even invokes the classic "fear of the other" tactic by painting Betty as being untrustworthy because she's from Vault 31. It's a fantastic scene, and Luzzi's performance as Reg transitions from meek nerd to fiery-eyed, hate-mongering orator seals the deal.

Apart from the Reg twist, "Fallout" season 2, episode 6 turns the show's sociopolitical screws pretty tight. The episode sets up the shadowy Enclave faction as the big bad of the show and introduces a mysterious super mutant (Ron Perlman) who's setting up a resistance. We also get some pretty heavy-handed commentary on state control and security, courtesy of Hank MacLean's (Kyle MacLachlan) brain chip test subjects, who have lost their free will but gained shelter and purpose. Thaddeus' (Johnny Pemberton) speech about people only being good if they have enough resources to afford that luxury is also food for thought. Combine all of that with the flashback storyline's focus on ordinary people struggling in the face of greater powers that are leading the world toward inevitable ruin, and the episode rarely pulls a punch. 

Of course, this isn't the first time "Fallout" has leaned on the social and political aspects of its narrative. Both the show's present and past storylines are rife with struggles between the haves and the have-nots, and the show has always featured plenty of themes of control and social disparity. Since "The Other Player" does this with comparatively few side orders of introducing funny mechanics from the "Fallout" games or bringing the weirdest parts of the games to live-action, this serious side of the story has far more room to breathe than usual ... and if you ask me, the episode hits all the harder for it. 

"Fallout" season 2 is streaming on Prime Video.