Fallout has returned with a bang, literally; it’s here that I’ll warn you that I’m about to address what happened in Season 2’s opening episode.
While viewers are all eager to catch up with Lucy, The Ghoul, and Maximus, Fallout’s second season opted for a cold open, introducing viewers to an important new figure, Robert House.
Robert House is, of course, a familiar name to those who have played Fallout: New Vegas but it’s important the TV series establishes to the viewer just how powerful of a figure he is.
The show certainly achieves that in a, let’s say, explosive way.
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In the opening scene, House encounters a number of working class men who are less than impressed with his attendance at their local establishment.
Things soon escalate and move outside where House offers one of the men a car trunk full of cash in exchange for allowing him to place a device upon his neck.
The man isn’t convinced by the deal, wondering what the catch is, which House himself soon reveals, latching the device onto the man’s neck without permission.
Initially, House is able to control the man, but the frequency used to manipulate the device soon explodes it and the poor guy’s head along with it.
I had the opportunity to catch up with House actor Justin Theroux who unpacked the introductory scene, describing House as having a “logical compass” instead of a moral one.
“An Enormous Amount of Money Can Absolutely Be Corrosive to Character”
“Humanity is such a weird thing,” Justin began. “I don't really think of him as having a moral compass so much as a logical compass, you know? He’s someone who's working in tandem with other corporate entities to sort of socially engineer the end of the world.
“Obviously with great villains, you see, ‘Oh, their father got killed,’ or, ‘This is what happened.’ I think his origin story, and it's sort of invented by myself, is the addition of things and it's not the addition of a parent or anything; it's the addition of money and how money corrupts a really sharp brain. An enormous amount of money can absolutely be corrosive to character.
“You can see it, you know, obviously with people who are multi-billionaires, or you can see it even just with pop stars or whatever. When people stop hearing the word no or when people stop having the wind at their face and there's no resistance in their lives - which is, I think, what happens to very rich people when they don't have to go through security anymore or they don't have to wait in lines with common people - it's a corrosive thing. That's sort of the tack that I took for him.
“I thought, ‘This is someone who’s lived in rare oxygen for a long time,’ so people aren't really people in the same way that they are to you and I. For him, they're sort of pieces to be moved around and they're zeros and ones.”
Season 2 Is Morally Murky, With No Clear Hero
“You know what I would say in addition to that, just as a fan of this story,” Walton Goggins interjected, the man behind The Ghoul / Cooper Howard. “Antagonists are protagonists and protagonists are antagonists in this story, right? It's constantly shifting, but everybody has an opinion. And everyone has an opinion that they can justify.
“Whether you agree with it or not, whether you label them a villain in any given moment or not is up to you. In some ways, that's kind of the individual player aspect of this narrative, right? But everybody has an opinion that does hold water.”
“I'm sure Walton would agree with this,” Justin continued. “Every character you play, whether they're the good guy, bad guy, or however they're classified once they're out in the world, I love every character that I play and I'm sympathetic. I have to love them.
“I have to be sympathetic to their point of view, otherwise if I'm judging the character while playing it, it's going to come out a bit egg-shaped, you know? I have to sort of fall in love with his logic. I got his frustrations. I'm not sure what episode it's in, but we [Justin and Walton] have this big meaty scene where Cooper is sort of the fly in the ointment, and I need to see him, and it’s that frustration of having to perseverate over, ‘Who is this person and what are they in my maths?’
“The frustration of that was fun to play because that's resistance, so his reactions to that are even bigger than they would be, you know, maybe if he were sort of a more chill guy.”
“I can't wait for you to see it,” Walton teased. I’m counting down the days.
House Is a Perfect Through-line From the Pre-War Flashbacks to the Present Day Story
House isn’t just this season’s key antagonist. He also crucially links the past and present, joining the ranks of characters like Cooper Howard / The Ghoul.
“Well, I think first on House, when we talked about where the story’s going and that we're going to take our characters to Vegas, we usually talk about geography and locations that we want to do right,” Todd Howard explained, executive producer and, of course, head of Bethesda. “But then you have House who's really the first big character from the games that we're bringing into the show.
“He's just such a remarkable character and Justin does an absolutely incredible job with it. What's great about House is he sort of has this thread through not just Vegas, but this thread through the world of Fallout before the bombs fall, and then after as well. It’s a great opening.”
“He's one of my favourite characters from the games because he's so brilliant but conflicted and complicated,” added executive producer Jonathan Nolan.
“The analogy to Howard Hughes is an obvious one, but we, in our time, have several of these very smart, very powerful people who kind of are wrestling with the biggest questions of society and civilisation.
“He's a character at such a remove. He's so mysterious and the way that we've introduced him in the series is that he’s a riddle wrapped up in an enigma. I love stories in which you have the important figure who sort of goes anonymously to interact with ordinary people. You have a little bit of that moment, right?
“Here's Robert House, you know, deigning to bless the working man with his presence and interact with them in this almost kind of anthropological way. It just illustrates his bizarre, specific worldview.”
Fallout Season 2’s season premiere is available now on Prime Video, with subsequent episodes airing every Wednesday.
Topics: Fallout, Interview, TV And Film, Bethesda, Amazon