The end of Fallout‘s first season on Prime Video seemed to pose a problem for the franchise. The show is totally canonical with the video games. Only, the series’ first year ended with Lucy and the Ghoul making their way to the remnants of Sin City, a place that offered gamers four distinct endings. Fallout: New Vegas does not have one single canonical conclusion, something fans have always loved about one of the series’ best installments. Prime Video’s show seemed to put that at risk. The series might have to choose just one ending as definitive, essentially wiping the other three out. But the show’s creators say they’re not doing that at all. The “fog of war approach” will let Fallout season two avoid having to pick a definitive ending for Fallout: New Vegas.
Fallout executive producer, creator, and showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet, along with executive producer Jonathan Nolan, spoke to IGN about how their show will handle the multiple endings of Fallout: New Vegas. Nolan said Robertson-Dworet and her fellow showrunner Graham Wagner came up with “an absolutely brilliant way to make a bit of an end run around” the New Vegas “question.”
Nolan described as “the fog of war approach.” But what will that mean in practice as Fallout season two dodges choosing one Fallout: New Vegas ending over the other? The show is taking advantage of the time Fallout New Vegas and its own story. “We had the delicious idea that at the end of a conflict, 15 years down the line, every faction might think they won, which I think has a bit of a poetic quality to it,” said Nolan.
A lot can change in 15 years. A lot of memories can also get a little hazy. Stories can change in the retelling. Everyone in Prime Video’s New Vegas can tell themselves whatever they like about what happened long ago. That ensures no single Fallout: New Vegas ending is treated as canonical in Fallout season two. Perfect! That’s exactly what we thought the show would do after season one’s finale. Now everyone gets the ending they want thanks to a non-ending.