Fallout Season 2 has a controversy just waiting to happen

Amazon Prime Fallout TV Season 2 is right around the corner, premiering on December 17th. The first season has already delved into the history and setting of the franchise, revealing some incredibly interesting information that fleshed out the franchise's lore and introduced a couple of notable and surprising new narrative elements. Fall-out Season 2 now promises to take the audience on a journey, this time to the beloved and titular city Fallout: New Vegas. There, the characters are set to deal with the fallout from Season 1's events.

The premise itself is exciting, but it also requires a major downside (or at least a substantial compromise). Fall-out season 2's latest trailer hints at a few things, which in turn may create the need for a cliffhanger ending for Fallout: New Vegas. And this can cause some friction among fans, given that New Vegas offered a range of outcomes for players to choose from and write their own story of what “really” happened in the Mojave.

Where Fallout Season 2 sits on the franchise timeline

Fallout Season 2 and New Vegas 15th Anniversary Perfect Storm

The resource wars – 2052-2077
The Great War– 2077
Fallout 76 – 2102-2105
fallout 1- 2161
Fallout 2 – 2241
Fallout 3 – 2277
Fallout: New Vegas – 2281
Fallout 4 – 2287
Fallout TV – 2296-2297

In-universe, the previous resource wars lasted nearly 20 years and brought major political powers into constant conflict. Of course, it was the Great War, which lasted two hours, that brought the world to an end. Each Fall-out the game has explored the aftermath of the Great War over the rest of the world.

With the show being at the bottom of the timeline so far, 15 years on Fallout: New Vegasthere are a variety of ways that the program can show what happened in the game. It is technically possible to avoid the ending altogether, but that choice would be as risky as canonizing an ending. This would likely involve establishing a “true” ending based on those available in the game, especially since the show works closely with Bethesda, but it's all a tricky balancing act.

Every Fallout: New Vegas Ending Explained

Fallout: New Vegas has 4 main endings depending on which of the 3 major factions the fans side with. There's also the Wild Card ending which involves the player's avatar, the courier, undermining them all. Within these are several nuanced variations related to how extensively (or not) the Courier interacted with minor factions such as the Great Khans and Boomers, companions and their karma level. The results of siding with each side or becoming independent all have important implications for what the wasteland looks like after the dust settles.

The choice of the major faction	Final result
New California Republic	The NCR drives out Caesar's Legion and establishes a hold on Hoover Dam, New Vegas, and the Mojave.
Caesar's Legion	Caesar's forces decisively defeat the NCR, control the Hoover Dam, and ruthlessly rule the area.
Mr House	New Vegas becomes isolated but relatively safe from the NCR and the Legion under the iron grip of Robert House.
Wild Card (Independent)	The Courier, with Yes Man's help, betrays Mr. House and drives both NCR and Legion away.

Giving Caesar or Legate Lanius control unites the Mojave, but at the cost of a dictatorial, slave-driven society becoming the norm, making life brutal for most of the survivors. Portion Fallout: New Vegas' NCR is widely considered to be the “good” ending, although it is not without complications. Although it suggests that the region is also stabilizing to some extent, the NCR represents a return to the status quo of the pre-war government bureaucracy and all the shortcomings involved in it.

At the same time, the work with Mr. House in that he lords it over the Vegas strip as a despotic capitalist, providing protection and entertainment for those who can afford it. Finally, the Wild Card ending sees the shackles of all of these thrown off, but it also contains a wrinkle that hinges on whether the courier was able to reprogram Mr. House's Securitron army for themselves. If so, it creates a level of order, but if not, then “anarchy rules the streets”. Yet, in both cases, the city survives to “take its position as an independent power in the Mojave.”

Why this will likely bother some fallout: New Vegas Fans

imagine new vegas without courier caesar

Although it is currently unknown Fall-outs new season will really choose one of the New VegasWhen ending scenarios, or somehow trying to work around them, the former is much more likely to be the case. The bigger question, then, is which one it might be and how it will inform the plot and the characters. Based on the material in Fall-out season 2 trailer, mr. House looks to be prominent. This could be a speculative clue, then, about the direction it might go. If Mr. House being alive during the show's current events could essentially mean that a version of that ending is canonized. This would still leave room for the Legion (which was also glimpsed in the trailer) and the NCR to be involved in the mix.

Fallout tv s2 trailer screeshot go to vegas

The bigger problem, though, would be that the show confirming any ending for its own narrative purposes would come with an unfortunately inevitable side effect. Such a decision would naturally diminish the sense of authorship players have over their own playthroughs and the fate they personally chose for New Vegas. That would disappoint sections of the fans who would understandably feel that it invalidates their choices and makes their shaping of events irrelevant, in a sense, at least in terms of Fall-outs official canon. And while this is undoubtedly a necessary sacrifice for the show to continue, it would still be a bitter pill for some fans to swallow, given that it could retroactively tarnish their experience of New Vegas.

Of course, it should be noted that players should not feel that a separate experience invalidates their own. It's just an unfortunately common controversy that gets stirred up with these types of adaptations.