5 Questions About New Vegas That Fallout Season 2 Will Have to Answer

Amazon Prime’s Fallout show has been one of the most surprising hits to come out of the studio thus far. A well-made adaptation, with respect to the source material, that continues the story while telling a good one all its own? Talk about a surprise.

And what story is it continuing? Well, if we can judge based on the final shot of Season 1, which is a wide shot of the iconic New Vegas, made famous by the eponymous Fallout: New Vegas, in a state of clear disrepair — a far cry from when we last saw the city in the game. Clearly, things have changed (even if war hasn’t), but that only leaves us with lingering questions about our favorite debaucherous metropolis of the wasteland.

Here are 5 questions that Season 2 of Prime’s Fallout will need to answer, and some ideas of how they might.

What Happened to New Vegas?

The most pressing question is also the one that most fans first uttered upon seeing New Vegas in those closing seconds of the show: “What Happened to New Vegas?” A previously bustling city of lights and sin has been seemingly replaced by an empty husk. Gone are the lights illuminating the surrounding Mojave, gone is the movement and hustle surrounding the city, and gone is the luster that many fans came to love from the game.

And so, “What Happened to New Vegas?” turns out to be a pretty dark and worrying question that the show will have to grapple with. Is it abandoned, or has it’s power simply faded? Was the change gradual, a result of the Courier’s actions many years ago (see #5), or did something more catastrophic happen, as happened to Shady Sands in the very same show? Or is there something else at play, some reason the city seems to have gone dark?

We can only speculate, especially as it seems fairly certain that the creators of the series are going to keep their cards close to their chest, but we have some thoughts. Firstly, that it would seem like a waste to make New Vegas entirely desolate; we’ve already seen the destruction of one fan favorite city, and so to destroy another without engaging with it at all seems like a waste. But, it’s clear that the city is unpowered, and has been weakened significantly, regardless.

And so, we are left with the conclusion that, for whatever reason, Hoover Dam is no longer operating to funnel power into the power-hungry city, likely as a result of the years that passed after the Courier’s decisions (whatever they were). With that change in status quo, and with the city’s stalwart overseer in limbo, it is entirely possible that the city has become just another wasteland refuge; unpowered, fragile, but persisting. At least, that’s what we suspect.

Where is Mr. House?

But that previous question begs a second. Those familiar with Fallout: New Vegas will remember the enigmatic and mechanical Mr. House: the self-empowered overseer of the New Vegas Strip, which he watched over from on high from the Lucky 38 spire. In Fallout: New Vegas, he had plans and contingencies going back all the way to the Great War and before to keep New Vegas a powerhouse of the wastes, and to preserve it at all costs.

And, for 200 years or so, he succeeded. The bombs didn’t fall on New Vegas, and the Hoover Dam provided the massive amounts of power that the Strip required. Until the Courier came along, Mr. House kept New Vegas alive.

But, we’ve seen that New Vegas isn’t doing so well by 2296, when the show takes place. As mentioned before, it has been depowered at the very least, and abandoned at worst. Something that Mr. House would never allow to happen, if he were still in power. However, we aren’t quite sure that he is dead either: not only has the show already featured Mr. House in flashbacks to before the war, but going to New Vegas at all would tease the possibility of a return in Season 2. So, how can it be possible that Mr. House is alive, and that New Vegas is in such a state of disrepair? What happened to Mr. House?

Where Are My Favorite Companions?

Fallout: New Vegas is filled with great companions. From the ever-affable Arcade Gannon, to the enigmatic and deadly Boone, to the lovable Rex and Veronica. If you played New Vegas, you know what I’m talking about. The game isn’t praised for its writing and characters for nothing.

But, those companions would’ve encountered the Courier and made their mark on the Mojave more 15 years before the timeline of the show. Which leads us to wonder… what happened to the companions of Fallout: New Vegas?

And this question is more pressing than it seems. Not only are most of the companions still likely alive 15 years later, but many promised to be movers and shakers in New Vegas following the events of the game, depending on the Courier’s actions. It makes sense that none of the companions would’ve shown up in Season 1 — after all, the California location would’ve required callbacks to Fallout 1 and 2 companions, and those games were much farther in the past than New Vegas.

But in Season 2, we are going to the location where we must presume at least some of the companions from New Vegas ought to be. Are Marcus and his band of super mutants still holed up in the mountains? Did Veronica ever find a girl to traipse across the wastes with? And what happened to the best boy, Rex? The amount of questions here is staggering, and only because they are the characters that players grew most attached to in New Vegas, forcing us to ask, ultimately: where are they?

What Happened to the Courier?

The main character of Fallout: New Vegas is the Courier: a surprisingly deep protagonist who found themselves beginning the game by being shot in the head after a not-so-routine delivery, and who ultimately used that turn of fate to change the shape of New Vegas and the Mojave wasteland.

Now, of course, it is worth mentioning that there are many possible trajectories that the Courier could’ve taken, all depending on their choices in the game. But, regardless of those choices, the fact remains: by the end of it, no matter what ending occurred, the Courier survives and, presumably, remains a major player in the wasteland for years to come (provided they don’t decide to walk off into the sunset, which still leaves them alive and well).

And so, interestingly, this begs the question as per where the Courier is? If they are still alive, and have all the power and influence of a player character at the end of a video game, then what are they doing? And, perhaps as interestingly, how do you depict that in an adaptation? How do you constrain the infinite possibilities that players had in New Vegas, down to personality differences, into a single role or piece of history?

We don’t even have guesses for this one; we’re just dying to find out.

How Did Fallout: New Vegas End?

All of the questions above, though, have been circling one primary point: we don’t know how Fallout: New Vegas ended. There are 4 different major ending paths, and dozens upon dozens of different possibilities for the smaller choices. And a surprising number of these choices would certainly come to influence the wastes even 15 years later, and even if New Vegas collapsed.

Did the courier usher in an NCR regency, disable Mr. House’s power, and make inroads to the Great Khans and Super Mutants so that they could open diplomacy with the fledgling NCR? Did they, instead, help Legate Lanius and Caesar cross the Hoover Dam, bringing the slavery and authority of the Legion to the Mojave? Or maybe they brought down the systems of power and started again from scratch, creating an independent New Vegas. And that’s only the big stuff.

It is truly mind-boggling how many possible ending there are to New Vegas, and it is even more mind-boggling to try to extrapolate any one of them out 15 years to see what happened. But, we know that Season 2 will have to grapple with this question: there is no universe where every ending to New Vegas can be canon, and it is almost guaranteed that whatever the result of the Battle of Hoover Dam, at the very least, would dramatically influence the Mojave for years or decades to come.

Even the previous questions that we’ve mentioned New Vegas will have to answer, ultimately, will have to stem from this one: we can’t know what happened to House without knowing how the Courier dealt with them. We can’t know what happened to Veronica if we don’t know how the Courier influenced her life. We can’t even really know what happened to New Vegas without knowing what the Courtier did, and how it contributed.

And so, ultimately, the most important question that Season 2 of the Fallout show will have to answer is also it’s most difficult: how did Fallout: New Vegas end?