Spoilers ahead for Fallout season 2 and Fallout: New Vegas

It’s been a strange season on the Fallout TV series. As a massive Fallout: New Vegas fan, I was extremely hyped when I learned that the show was taking a trip to the Mojave Wasteland, especially as I really rate the first season. It’s one of those rare videogame TV adaptations that hit the nail almost squarely on the head for me, similar to Arcane, but by comparison, the second season has been pretty meandering.

It played like a highlight reel for the Mojave Wasteland as Lucy and The Ghoul slowly sauntered their way towards The Strip—they saw radscorpions, Caesar’s Legion and NCR remnants, even The Kings, albeit in ghoulified form. Meanwhile, Maximus made some ill-judged decisions, causing a minor civil war in the Brotherhood of Steel before going mano a mano with like a hundred Deathclaws. It was an enjoyable romp in places, and despite how nonsensical it got at times, I felt like I was at least able to piece together some idea of the past events that occurred in the Mojave.

The problem? Despite theories, I see no evidence that Courier 6, Fallout: New Vegas’s protagonist, was involved in any of them. I get the TV show not wanting to make one of the game’s endings canon and alienate a portion of players, but narratively, I think that approach lacks guts, and the show went too far in the opposite direction. It’s why, when you look at the Mojave Wasteland, seemingly nothing has happened in the intervening 15 years that wouldn’t have occurred anyway, apart from the obvious: shit got worse.

The moment it struck me was when they revealed that the Deathclaws from Quarry Junction (which Courier 6 is tasked with eradicating in Fallout: New Vegas) are actually alive and well, plus thanks to some kind of Enclave Deathclaw mind control, have taken over The Strip. It’s a little thing, ultimately just a small quest in the game, but it got me thinking: there isn’t a single event that I can conclusively point to as being something Courier 6 did.

There’s the obvious, right? Someone killed Mr. House. When The Ghoul is speaking to him, he mentions that his body became “something of a target for wandering travellers with something to prove,” and that he was poisoned, shot, and bludgeoned with a crowbar. But I don’t think there’s much evidence this was Courier 6. If it was, why wasn’t Yes Man installed in the Lucky 38 afterwards? And if the Courier was working for the NCR or Caesar’s Legion killing House, why didn’t either conclusively triumph in the war for the Mojave?

House mentions that someone killed his body (Image credit: Prime Video)

It’s also worth remembering that Benny was planning to kill Mr. House anyway before Courier 6 was ever involved, but more likely, it sounds like some third party assassinated House and then left. Maybe Ulysses or something? Okay, well, how about the Platinum Chip? Nope, I’m afraid it doesn’t look like Courier 6 delivered that either. If they had, surely Mr. House’s army of upgraded Securitrons would’ve been able to defend The Strip from a pack of Deathclaws, which also would have been the case if Yes Man was around.

Fallout Season 2 feels like a dark alternate reality where we get to see what would’ve happened if Courier 6 was never there.

If anything, the whole ‘Cold fusion being the key to House’s victory’ effectively overwrites the Platinum Chip entirely as a narrative device, since Mr. House says the exact same thing about the chip when Courier 6 talks to him—that it was the final thing he needed to complete his schemes. And even if killing Mr. House was the one important thing Courier 6 did, well, you didn’t even do that since he’s alive and well.

Okay, well, how about Caesar’s Legion and the NCR? Surely Courier 6 impacted the war somehow? Well, as I see it, there’s evidence that Caesar’s Legion won the second battle for Hoover Dam (which it was predicted they would in the game without Courier 6’s influence). I think the fact that their main force is in the Mojave Wasteland proper, hence how they’re able to march on The Strip in the finale, and the fact that Camp McCarran has fallen, which we see in one of the credit sequences, is evidence of that.

No, I think what stopped Caesar’s Legion from taking The Strip and Freeside was Caesar’s death, not at the hands of Courier 6, but from his brain tumour, which we know was killing him in the games, and that caused the factional infighting we see in the TV show. I think the fact that Caesar’s Legion and the NCR have been decimated after constantly battling for 15 years is evidence that there was no third party, like Courier 6, around to make a conclusive difference the way they did in the game.

The Legion likely failed to take The Strip after Caesar’s death caused infighting (Image credit: Prime Video)

Though it pains me as a fan of Fallout: New Vegas, I genuinely think Courier 6 died when Benny shot them in the head, and is buried in Goodsprings—it just makes too much sense with the state of the Mojave Wasteland in the TV show. Just like the Deathclaws of Quarry Junction never having been dealt with, Fallout Season 2 feels like a dark alternate reality where we get to see what would’ve happened if Courier 6 was never there.

Maybe I am nitpicking, but I think it would’ve been far more interesting narratively if the show had just picked a side rather than creating a weird stalemate in the Mojave where basically nothing changed for 15 years, besides, that is, The Kings inexplicably becoming ferals and Deathclaws taking up residence in The Strip. Then again, with Caesar’s Legion and the NCR about to fight over Freeside next season, maybe we’ll finally learn if Courier 6 was ever actually there.

Fallout season 2: All the episode reviews and recapsHow to play New Vegas: How to get the old clanker of an RPG running on your 2025 machineNew Vegas console commands: How to use cheats in New Vegas, just in caseBest New Vegas mods: If you’ve had enough of vanilla, soup up the strip with these

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