The first episode of Fallout’s second season debuted yesterday, and within its hour or so run time solved one of the biggest cut content mysteries from New Vegas, which had been left unanswered for 15 years.
Please be aware of spoilers for Fallout season two episode one below.
Along with introducing some new faces, the second season of Fallout also reunites us with the likes of Lucy and The Ghoul, who left together at the end of season one on the trail of disgraced (at least, in the eyes of many) Vault-Tec executive Hank MacLean. Hank, meanwhile, was last seen fleeing towards a ruined New Vegas in his pinched Brotherhood of Steel Power Armour.
And, that brings us to the first episode of season two, with Lucy and The Ghoul following the bloody trail Hank has left in his wake. This includes a little stop off at Vault 24, a cut location from Fallout: New Vegas. We only know about this place because players discovered a Vault 24 jumpsuit tucked away in New Vegas’ game files, which could only be found using console commands
Now, as I am sure you are aware if you have read this far, many of the vaults in Fallout – both the show and the games – were set up to conduct experiments and such within. This has included the TV show’s Vault 4, which experimented with mutants, and Fallout 76’s Vault 63, which was set up by Vault-Tec’s Hugo Stolz and his wife as a research facility for various technologies that would help with setting up post-War societies. There was also that poor chap that got put into Vault 77 totally on his own save for some puppets.
So, what was tucked away in Fallout: New Vegas’ Vault 24? For a long time it seemed likely we would never know, but, thanks to Amazon’s show, we now have an answer. And that answer is… communists! When Lucy and The Ghoul step into the vault, which is now derelict and covered in vegetation, they come across skeletons strapped down in front of a propaganda video, which when they were alive would have been brainwashing the poor chaps.
These aren’t the only skeletons that were left to rot in the vault. Lucy and The Ghoul find many more strapped down within Vault 24, with pseudo-Soviet gear about the place. “These are Americans,” Lucy realises, “and the Vault turned them into communists.”
This seems like a pretty odd thing for the Vault-Tec heads to have done, but to be fair, when did they ever do anything that couldn’t be labelled as pretty odd? (Again, that poor man with the puppets). On further exploration, Lucy and The Ghoul come across someone alive down there. A Wastelander with a chip in his head like the one House used at the start of the episode, which allowed him to control a goon’s mind, is sitting strapped down and clearly not of sound mind.
This mind controlling chip is what Hank went into the vault to get a hold of, though it still needs some work to perfect, as so far the only people we have seen with the chips in their heads have not lived very long… that’s probably a plot thread for another episode.
So, there you have it. After 15 years, we now know what’s in Vault 24.
The second season of Amazon’s Fallout is releasing on a weekly basis, with the final episode airing in February of next year.
The team is already hard at work on season three, though, with the next series being written as we speak. Filming is then expected to begin in summer 2026, Fallout series executive producer Jonathan Nolan said earlier this month.