TL;DR – While it did manage to pull most of the threads together, you can’t help but feel that they were too ambitious this season for what they were able to pull together in the end.

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime subscription used to watch this series.

Post-Credit – There is a post-credit scene

Fallout: The Strip Review Introduction –

And so we have reached the end of the season, and I do have some feelings as we hit some real highs and then some head-scratching decisions. It’s a cavalcade of choices that show the creators love Fallout deeply, even if they don’t always have a firm grip on the world they’ve built. Honestly, it means that while the season had some high moments and a surprise Canada, I was left disappointed by the finale, and today we will dive in to see why that was.   

So, to set the scene, things are going down in the Wasteland as most of the characters in the show have convened in New Vegas. However, around the Wasteland, things are on the move. Caesar’s Legion has finally sorted out their civil war, Hank’s (Kyle MacLachlan) assortment of weaponised people is growing, and Lucy (Ella Purnell) just discovered what is powering them all. But while people are out there all trying to find their destinies, little do they know that there is another organisation out there more powerful than they can dream. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode and season as a whole, so there may be [SPOILERS] ahead.   

The Conclusion

While there are some good moments in this final episode, such as Maximus’ (Aaron Moten) beat down with the Deathclaws and his clear ‘I will protect the people at all costs’, making him more like the ‘lone wanderer’ than any of the other characters in the show so far. However, it felt like just about every ending for the characters suffered from part-two-of-three syndrome, where they feel less like good conclusions, and only exist to propel the story forward next season. Lucy is robbed of actually having a real ethical dilemma by Hank activating the chip. The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) has to find another vault, and Norm (Moisés Arias) is heading back to the vault he escaped from. It doesn’t leave in a satisfied “wow that was great, I can’t wait to see where they take it from here” feeling, but instead “oh, so that is how they were getting all their ducks in a row for next season”.

Which doesn’t even come close to some of the cringer moments like “surprise, the New California Republic still is alive even though every, and I mean every indication all season was that they were dead as dead. But also we will be doing a Deus ex Machina here because you wrote yourself into a corner with the Deathclaws and now we need to get you out of it”. It was clearly meant to be the grand moment, with the music and all to go with it, but alas, it and the post-credit scene just fell flat to me.  

The Overreach

One of the main issues that I could see as the season drew on is that they had too many stories to keep track of, and they all suffered because of it. This season, we had what was happening in Vault 33, Vault 32, & Vault 31, the Brotherhood, Lucy’s Quest, the pre-war flashbacks, and The Ghoul’s Quest, as well as all the side quests as well. There was no way to keep all of these stories feeling relevant, so we get situations like how they fundamentally wasted Moisés Arias’ time with the dullest side quest so far that was finished by Schrodinger’s radroaches that somehow existed both as a dull Deus ex Machina and also one of the most foreshadowed Chekhov’s Gun in television history. You can feel that the writers understood the issue because the end of the season condenses everything back down to three plotlines for Season Three.

The Worldbuilding

Because of all these truncated storylines, the other casualty of this season is how the more we went on, the more the worldbuilding failed. There was some great stuff at the start, exploring the Brotherhood and Area 51 or a lot of the stuff around House (Justin Theroux). However, as the season progressed, more and more of that got pushed away and reduced to easter eggs for fans of the show. Look, those easter eggs are nice, but they don’t build a world, and they only work for people who have played the game and probably know who Ron Perlman was cameoing as. It flattens the world and makes it inaccessible to people who have not played the games before.

It also means that the one area that they do spend most of their time building up becomes even more important to the show. Unfortunately, they chose to build up The Enclave, which is, personally, one of the weakest aspects of all of Fallout Lore. To say The Enclave has been done to death is to list how many of their “this is our big base that controls things” have been destroyed so far, only for another to pop up because we need them there for some reason. The more they appeared, the more the season started to drag for me.  

Recommendation

In the end, do we recommend Fallout: The Strip? Look, I don’t think it was a bad ending to the season, but more a completely underwhelming one. While serviceable, I don’t think it made the most of the world, faction, or characters. It looks like they are refining the story for the next season, and I hope they take some of the lessons from this season on board because I am not sure the show can survive another season like this. Have you watched Fallout: The Strip? Let us know what you thought of the episode in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Bluesky at @Tldrmovrev, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Feel free to share this review on social media and check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Fallout
Directed by – Frederick E.O. Toye, Liz Friedlander, Lisa Joy & Stephen Williams
Written by – Karey Dornetto, Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Graham Wagner, Chris Brady-Denton, Chaz Hawkins, Jane Espenson, Owen Ellickson, Dave Hill & Kieran Fitzgerald
Created by – Geneva Robertson-Dworet & Graham Wagner
Based on – Fallout designed by Tim Cain, Mark O’Green, Scott Campbell, Christopher Taylor  & Interplay Productions & the Fallout video game series by Bethesda
Production/Distribution Companies – Amazon MGM Studios, Kilter Films, Bethesda & Amazon Prime
Starring – Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Moisés Arias, Frances Turner, Kyle MacLachlan & Walton Goggins
With – Johnny Pemberton, Michael Cristofer, Macaulay Culkin, Martha Kelly, Annabel O’Hagan, Dave Register, Barbara Eve Harris, Xelia Mendes-Jones, Bashir Salahuddin, Edwin Lee Gibson, Clancy Brown, Rachel Marsh, Adam Faison, Jeremy Levick, Shinelle Azoroh, Justin Theroux, Leslie Uggams, Natasha Henstridge, Jon Daly, Jon Gries, Rajat Suresh, Michael Emerson, Rodrigo Luzzi, Michael Esper, Rafi Silver, Jared Bankens, Ron Perlman, Sarita Choudhury, Dale Dickey, Tony Robinette, Zach Cherry, Dallas Goldtooth, Jon Gries, Brian Thompson, Sisa Grey, Chris Browning, Ciel Shi, Kumail Nanjiani, Judson Mills, Susan Berger, & Christopher Matthew Cook
And – Amir Carr, Leer Leary, David Perez Babich, Lana 5, Sheila Head, Princess Bey, Jasper Cole, Les Brandt, Victoria Schmidt, Sarah Waisman, Carol Cantu, Edythe Jason, Jesse Burch, Guy Heilweil, Ava Scarola, Alyssa Riley Ndati, Kaleti Williams, Grace Kelly Quigley, Cody Alexander Guevara, Teagan Meredith, Jeff Wolfe, & Shawn Crowder
Episodes Covered – The Innovator, The Golden Rule, The Profligate, The Demon in the Snow, The Wrangler, The Other Player, The Handoff & The Strip