Why Fallout's Thaddeus Isn't Becoming A Ghoul Despite Show Hints

The Fallout TV show really has been one of the best adaptations of any video game ever, whether you include movies in that equation or not.

The production’s dedication to replicating everything we've grown to love in the video games has really elevated it beyond most other projects of the same ilk and there are a ton of interesting story lines ongoing that we will hopefully get more of as Season 2 progresses.

Lucy and the Ghoul are headed to New Vegas to track down Lucy's genuinely evil father Hank, as well as hopefully finding out the fate of the Ghoul's wife and child, who he presumably last saw when he was simply known as Cooper Howard.

While those main plot threads are very interesting in their own right, there are a ton of smaller side narratives that are just as fun to explore, which feels appropriate given how important side quests have been to the video game side of the franchise over the years.

One of those is the tale of poor Thaddeus, a former Squire in The Brotherhood of Steel who the show has seemingly been telling us is turning into a ghoul. On further reflection, however, that doesn't seem to make much sense and his ultimate fate may prove to be a lot trickier than that.

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Thaddeus Definitely Isn't Becoming a Ghoul

Back in the first season of Fallout, Thaddeus finds out that Maximus is pretending to be a Knight by hiding in power armour, and gets in a fight with him, eventually removing the Fusion Core from his suit, but gravely injuring his foot and leg in the process.

After leaving Maximus behind, he bumps in to the Snake Oil Salesman who offers him a tonic that will supposedly help him heal back to his former self. After inhaling the substance, this seemingly works, and his foot and leg are restored to something approaching their former glory.

Later on, Thaddeus is shot in the neck, a wound that should have proved fatal, but which served as nothing more than a scratch, leading Maximus to claim that Thaddeus is likely turning into a ghoul.

Catching up with him in Season 2, we find the character with a mixture of ghoulified and non-ghoulified children who are working to extract bottle caps from a factory. He looks considerably more ghoul-like here, but it would ultimately be quite surprising if that does turn out to be what's going on here.

First of all we saw Walton Goggins' Ghoul character get hit by a Radscorpion in episode 2, an injury with he was forced to cut out with a knife and which certainly didn't heal in any meaningful way. Given how much of a Ghoul Goggins' character is, he would surely have similar powers of healing if that's was available.

Equally, there are smaller details like Thaddeus being able to retain his nose which point to something else going on. Behind the scenes photos have also shown the character's actor with very large hands being moulded, though we don't know what these are for just yet.

As such it makes a lot more sense if the Snake Oil Salesman plied Thaddeus with the Forced Evolutionary Virus, meaning he's well on the way to turning into some kind of mutant or super mutant.

This would explain how he's able to heal much more quickly, as well as the non-traditional physical alterations that are occurring.

With plenty of episodes still to go, we will hopefully get some answers this season, even if they aren't necessarily the ones Thaddeus once.