Fallout Showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet Talks Season 2, New Characters & The Future (Exclusive)

Fallout – the post-apocalyptic drama based on the revered video game franchise – scored huge with audiences. Taking place 200 years in the future, the first season followed three survivors… Lucy (Ella Purnell), Maximus (Aaron Moten), and the Ghoul (Walton Goggins) … navigating a perilous wasteland full of monsters, mutants, and violence. Each individual embarked on their own personal quest.

A determined Lucy sought to reunite with her missing father, Vault 33 Overseer Hank (Kyle MacLachlan). Maximus strived to finally be accepted by the Brotherhood of Steel. And the Ghoul, a disfigured bounty hunter, set out on a mission to discover what happened to his family. The finale culminated with revelations, bombshells and shifting alliances. 

Lucy’s dad, Hank, turned out to be the ultimate dick. The Brotherhood hailed Maximus as a hero, wrongly assuming he was responsible for killing the villainous Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury). With Lucy and the Ghoul now teaming up, Hank on the run, Maximus in a position of power and fan-favorite location New Vegas on the horizon, Fallout could be gearing up for its most nuclear season to date.

Co-showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet spoke to ComicBook about the Lucy/Ghoul dynamic, creepy creatures, iconic video game locations, and Macaulay Culkin joining the cast.

ComicBook: Going into your sophomore season, how closely did you want to stick to Fallout’s video game lore?

Geneva Robertson-Dworet: Our philosophy and approach to the lore, starting in the very beginning, was to try as much as we could to come up with versions of our story that would honor all the possible endings of the different games. What we were trying to do is not contradict, wherever possible, anyone’s game experience. Obviously, people make different choices in the game, and they end up having different experiences in the Wasteland. That’s exactly why we didn’t do what, say The Last of Us did, and adhere to any particular game story.

We really didn’t want to contradict someone’s experience, where it’s so similar but not actually how they chose to play the game. That is why we are set after the games take place. This particular season takes place 15 years after the New Vegas game is set. As much as possible, we are trying to show with our choices and our story, how maybe things have developed since the events of the Fallout New Vegas game.  And hoping, as much as possible, we allowed for everyone’s experience of the game to possibly be true. 

The season-two premiere finds Lucy and the Ghoul embarking on a road trip. What was fun about exploring this good cop/bad cop dynamic?

I love those two on screen together. They are so funny together. They have such great chemistry. I just love watching the two of them play off each other, two incredible actors. The Ghoul is someone who has realized that in order to survive on the Wasteland, you have to be willing to do very bad things to pursue your goals. Lucy is still very much the Vault dweller that we met.

Ella Purnell had a great way of thinking about where Lucy’s character is this season. She said, “Lucy 1.0 is the person who leaves the Vault. Lucy 2.0 is the person who kills in season one, the feral ghoul in self-defense. Lucy 3.0 is the Lucy who has shot her mother in a mercy killing and is going after her father to deliver him justice.” Lucy knows she might have to cross new moral boundaries in order to ultimately do the right thing, which is to stop a very dangerous man from enacting cruelty upon the Wasteland. What I am hoping is fun for viewers this season is that we are not really sure which way Lucy will go. Will she be able to stick to her Vault-dweller values or will she be increasingly influenced by the Ghoul, who we have seen is a very immoral man? 

Similarly, it’s been a long time since the Ghoul has had a companion on the Wasteland, someone on a journey with him. Lucy is really questioning his choices the whole journey. I am hoping people are also wondering if Lucy is going to rub off on the Ghoul just as much as he might rub off on her. 

The duo encounters radscorpions in the second episode. How did you land on incorporating those specific nasty critters?

So much of the fun of the game is the monsters and the creatures that you encounter. The problem for us is there are so many wonderful ones to bring to the screen. We would love to bring them all, but we have a very specific process on our show of bringing these creatures to life that Jonathan Nolan initiated in season one. Jonathan is a very tactile filmmaker. He loves to shoot practically wherever possible. Whenever we do a creature, we build a technically sophisticated puppet. It’s very expensive. It often takes three puppeteers to handle a single one. Our deathclaw is the same methodology. When we choose to build something like the radscorpion, we shoot it practically to make it as real as possible for both the viewer and the actor. I find it very scary to watch.

I remember going on set for the first time and seeing this massive creature on set, that looks hyper-realistic. One of the puppeteers charged it towards us. It’s genuinely terrifying. We don’t do every creature in the game, but we hope what we do bring to the show we execute at the highest level and make it feel real, so it’s not purely a CGI character. It’s also one that exists in the real world.

Any other creatures that audiences might see this season?

I don’t want to do too many spoilers, but of course, one of them is very strongly hinted at in some of the early trailers. 

The last time we saw Hank, he was heading to New Vegas. For viewers who haven’t played the game, what is so iconic about that location and what is Hank hoping to find there?

One reason we were very drawn to going there is not just because we of course love the game. Lucy heading towards the City of Sin, to chase her father down, felt like a delicious metaphor for where she is at emotionally and her character journey, as she tries to cling to her moral core. We were very excited to go there.

Of course, there are so many characters that we love from the games, that we were excited to explore those factions. Robert House being a big new introduction this season, who is such an iconic character from the New Vegas game. He’s such a relevant and fascinating character for our time, the idea of a technocrat who is incredibly wealthy and says he wants to do good, but there are very serious questions about does he have too much power. That’s something we can see all around us today.

New Vegas is a pinch-me moment for gamers, too.

Yes, absolutely. And going to the penthouse and seeing all these things brought to life by our incredible production designer Howard Cummings… It’s such a treat for me, as well. I remember when Todd Howard had visited our set and just seeing his reaction…It was like, “Oh my God. It’s real. He’s experiencing it in the flesh.” It’s really fun for us to see all these iconic locations brought to life.

Lucy spent the whole first season in search of her father, only to find out he’s a real piece of work. Can you tease a bit about what that eventual reunion might look like down the road?

The Ghoul asks her, “What are you hoping to do to your dad once you find him?” and she says, “She is going to bring him to justice.” And, of course, the Ghoul basically laughs at her and goes, “What the hell does that mean out in the Wasteland? What is justice? It’s not like there is a courthouse where he is going to face a jury.” I think Lucy is struggling to figure that out for herself.

As she goes along, she realizes that she has extremely limited options for stopping someone like him that wouldn’t involve violence. Lucy has to consider if violence is something she is willing to do to her own father to make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone else. It would be motivated by the greater good. The most primal sin is to kill a parent, so is that something she is willing to do? Those are the questions that are at the core of Lucy this season.

Maximus was bestowed with this new fusion power source. What kind of ethical dilemmas is he facing going forward?

Max finds himself living the exact life he dreamed of in the very first episode of season one, which was to become a Knight of the Brotherhood, to be a somebody and not nobody. He gets to wear the armor. He gets all the cool toys that the Brotherhood has. But, at this point of the story and over the course of season one, he started to have some doubts about the Brotherhood. He wanted to be with Lucy. Unfortunately, that slipped through his fingers and he now finds himself a Knight in the Brotherhood with all the power he once wanted, but he’s not so sure he wants it. He is also starting to have doubts about whether this is an ethical society. 

When we meet him, he is telling himself, “I can slowly make this a better place.” He talks to the guy who looks up to him and who tries to convince Max that, “We should do small acts to make the world better. We make ourselves better and make the world better.” But there are increasingly going to be questions along the way, whether or not you can improve a society like the Brotherhood from within.

Some new faces come courtesy of Macaulay Culkin and Kumail Nanjiani. Can you introduce us to their characters and where they fit into the bigger picture?

Macaulay is in the Legion. Mac had such an interesting read in how he wanted to play this character, which was as an intellectual and envisioned him in the Legion. Sometimes the characters you meet in the games in the Legion are quite intellectual and thoughtful. That’s what is so interesting and frightening about the Legion is the Caesar you meet in the games is quite a thoughtful person, even though he is doing all kinds of deeply immoral things. He is using the aesthetics of the Roman Empire to intimidate the Wasteland and to further promote his own power. I think those are characteristics of the character that Mac beautifully brought to the screen. 

And for Kumail?

I don’t want to give away too much, but he is a very heroic figure who arrives just as things are starting to get quite heated in the Brotherhood in the Southwest region. As you saw in the trailer, he didn’t get his invitation to the Civil War. He is there to try to stop the growing tension. The question is just will he achieve that or make them worse?

There’s been a rumor floating around that Aaron Paul was joining the season. Did you actually have conversations with him?

That’s very interesting. I did not. He visited the set and is absolutely a lovely guy. I had the honor of meeting him. Of course, he’s a veteran of Jonathan Nolan’s Westworld and an incredible actor. His character and performance in that show were amazing.

Fallout has already been renewed for a third season. How did that factor into how you went about crafting this year’s finale?

It’s a real blessing to get to know that you will be able to continue the journey. A lot of what we were writing was that we certainly wanted to resolve many of the questions that were brought up over the course of the season. But we also wanted to leave more on the table for these characters, more room for them to grow, and more mystery for them to solve. That is very fundamental to our show moving forward.

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