When Chet found vault overseer Steph Harper’s old ID, he learned she’s more than 200 years old. He also learned that even though the United States issued that identification, she’s not actually American. Steph is from Canada, which America brutally annexed in the years prior to the bombs dropping. Why did Vault-Tec have a Canadian among its exalted executive group? It seemed possible Steph had once been a Canadian spy undermining her homeland. But in Fallout season two‘s seventh episode, we learned she’s anything but. She’s not a villain; she’s one of the show’s most sympathetic figures, a woman on a centuries old mission of justified vengeance against her oppressors.
In the world of Fallout, the United States began what would turn into a decades long process of formally conquering Canada in 2059. As war raged all across the globe for resources, America wanted access to its northern neighbor’s abundance of natural materials. The Sino-American War, which included China’s invasion of Alaska (which was also shown in Fallout‘s second season), led to America increasing its presence in Canada starting in 2066. Eventually, begrudging cooperation between the allies turned hostile, with the U.S. military imposing its will on “Little America.”
As the United States used more and more of Canada’s resources, native citizens pushed back. Protests and violence broke out. Eventually, despite some pushback from Americans now learning about its country’s atrocities in the north, things got hostile enough the U.S. military decided to take over the entire country. In the summer of 2072, the United States of America formally annexed “the Big 51.” Despite that nickname, Canada’s provinces did not become states. The entire country became a U.S. territory. Canadian citizens were then given IDs like the one Steph had hiding in her vault room.
The bombs dropped in 2077. When they did, like Canada before, America ceased to exist. Steph’s anger survived.
She and her mother escaped an internment camp patrolled by U.S. Marines in power armor. Their imprisonment, which happened before the official annexation, shows the two were targeted. It’s possible they were even part of the group of Canadians that tried to blow up the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which had played a big role in bringing American forces to their homeland in the first place. Or they might have been nothing more than protestors.
No matter the reason for their internment, by the time Steph’s mom suffered her fatal wound the two had come to loathe America. The United States had robbed them off their freedom, stolen their country, and robbed them of their morality. Steph’s dying mother told her daughter that to survive she should hurt anyone she had to because God wouldn’t judge her. And it would be easy to commit violence if Steph didn’t think of those people as human beings. Instead she told her daughter to think of them as Americans.
Steph took her mother’s dying command to heart immediately, killing everyone she needed to on her way somewhere “warm.” She also followed her mother’s dying wish to climb “the highest branch” by getting herself a job at Vault-Tec. A fortuitous encounter with Cooper Howard and a “drunk” Hank MacLean in warm Vegas made that possible. That minimum wage job ultimately led proud Canadian/American hater Stephanie Harper to an executive vault.
It was a long, painful journey to reach two hundred years into the future. It required surviving a path paved by an immoral friend-turned-enemy, an evil nation who sacrificed whole countries so it could cling to power for a few more years before it helped blow up the world. No wonder Steph is so full of hate and wants retribution on people who still proudly claim America as their home.
Now she just has to figure out how to escape an American prison once again. The Vault dwellers know the truth about Steph. But they don’t know the whole story. They now see her as a villain, just as we did before we learned about her past. It’s a tragic past that has turned one of Fallout‘s most detestable villains into one of its best, most interesting, most sympathetic figures. Because long before someone dropped the bombs that ended the world, worse monsters turned its weapons on friends. It made Steph a monster herself, one of righteous fury who has never forgotten what America did and never will no matter how much time passes. And who could blame her for that?
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He loves Canada and its people. You can follow Mikey on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.