Why Walton Goggins & the ‘Fallout’ Bosses Are Already Primed for a Season 2 (VIDEO)

Strap in, folks, because Prime Video’s big-budget live-action adaptation of Bethesda’s globally popular video game Fallout is dropping faster than expected, 

Created by Westworld‘s Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy and originally slated for an April 11 release, but now all eight episodes of the first season will bow a day earlier, on April 10 at 6 pm PT / 9 pm ET. Thankfully, we’d already been on set during filming and had chatted with showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, along with Walton Goggins (Justified), who stars as, well, we’ll get that in a second.

But first, there’s the matter of bringing what is easily one of the most beloved video game franchises to television. With such elevated fan expectations, surely this was a daunting undertaking, right?

“Maybe if we were smarter, we’d be more daunted,” laughs Wagner. “But part of maybe why we were selected is we were just guileless enough to wander into this…this is all of television now. You make it almost to feed the conversation online and it’s part of the deal. I kind of welcome the discourse, because it so vividly replicates the factionalism as represented in the games.”

Walton Goggins (The Ghoul)

Robertson-Dworet adds that the task was fun because “we had 25 years of incredible games to pull things from.” There was so much content on tap that the exec-producers found it “really frustrating and sad to have to leave certain things out because we just couldn’t do them justice. In the eight hours we had, there’s tens of thousands of hours of potential gameplay in the games and we have f**king eight hours, guys!” she continues. “So we had to do some streamlining and it sucked. It was really painful to want so badly to do certain things in this first season that we didn’t get to do [but] it would’ve been given short-shrift and just kind of like a shitty version of it. So we’re praying we get a Season 2 — and more than that — so that hopefully we can bring more of these things that are really meaningful to us from the games into the show.”

#WaltonGoggins talks the emotional side of his #Fallout character, Cooper Howard pre-The Ghoul. pic.twitter.com/sNPoe3K0CW

— TV Insider (@TVInsider) April 10, 2024

In the opener, we get a peek at what the world is like 219 years after a nuclear event that’s forced what is left of mankind to seek shelter in expansive subterranean vaults all around the planet.  Boasting a massive budget that shows on screen (the effects and machinery designs are impeccable), and a pitch-perfect mix of grim reality, cockeyed optimism, graphic violence and dark humor, with splashes of retro-futuristic Mid-century modern flair, the series feels so assured in the world it establishes early on. You’d think the storyline was based on one of the game’s established arcs. but nope. It’s all new and does not go where you expect.

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Centered on Lucy (Ella Purnell of Yellowjackets), a sunny, hopeful Vault dweller who has lived her entire life below ground, Fallout quickly finds a (wildly brutal) reason for this unprepared neophyte to visit the surface, where things are much more insane that anyone below ground imagined. There are mechanical-armored soldiers from the militaristic Brotherhood of Steel running the show (including Aaron Moten‘s wannabe recruit Maximus), irradiated roaches and monster fish, and, as we mentioned, Goggins, one of the rare survivors of the apocalypse who has mutated into a noseless bounty hunter called the Ghoul. And it’s through his eyes that we get to see what really went down two centuries back when he was a Hollywood actor named Cooper Howard and the world was on the verge of cataclysm.

“That’s revealed in the story as it goes along,” offers the actor. “He’s been walking the wasteland for 219 years and, you’re right, you touched on something, the opening of this show when you meet Cooper Howard.? For me, that was a very emotional day to witness the ending of the world. It was f**king terrifying, man. It was a horrific experience visually, but a real privilege.”

Brotherhood of Steel and Vertibirds in “Fallout”

As for the Ghoul’s interactions with Purnell’s Lucy, we don’t want to spoil anything, but suffice it to say that the two do not vibe. “Her naivete is just irritating,” explains Goggins. “Everything about her is irritating, she doesn’t really listen to anything…that how she says so happy.”  Still, there’s a hilarious, almost Wizard of Oz-ian combo in the making as these disparate characters collide. “You have her experience, you have the Ghoul, who has seen it all and then decides to mess with her throughout this entire experience, and then you have Maximus, right? He’s only, what is he, 32 years old? So he’s experienced life on the wasteland, but as a child…he’s looking for courage, he’s looking for purpose and a place in this world. There are three very unique experiences in this iteration of Fallout. And it’s very cool to see the world from those three perspectives.”

Game on!

Fallout, Series Premiere, Wednesday, April 1o, 9/8c, Prime Video