Fallout TV show on Prime Video: release date, trailers, confirmed cast, plot, and more
Amazon’s Fallout TV show will make its debut tonight (April 10)
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- Launching in mid-April on Prime Video- Developed alongside Bethesda Game Studios, makers of theFalloutvideo games- Trailers revealed in December 2023 and March 2024- First clip released in late March- Main cast confirmed in November 2023- Official plot synopsis revealed- Will tell a brand-new story inFallout’s fictional universe- Narrative will be canon in Bethesda’s beloved game series- Season 2 all but confirmed to be happening
Amazon’sFalloutTV show is ready to emerge from its vault. Prime Video’s take on Bethesda’s beloved post-apocalypse games is out tonight (that’s April 10, if you’re reading this around its release) – and we thoroughly enjoyed what it had to offer. Read more about why we did in our spoiler-lightFalloutTV show opinion piece.
Once you’re done seeing why we had an atomically entertaining time with thePrime Videoseries, you’ll need to quickly acclimate yourself with everything we know about the streamer’s TV adaptation ofFallout. Luckily for you, we’ve rounded up every piece of important information about the genre-bending show, including its newly revised release date, cast list, story details, future seasons and more.
Potential spoilers forFallouton Prime Video follow – you have been warned!
Fallout TV show release date
FALLOUT, now arriving April 10 @ 6 p.m. PT. pic.twitter.com/a31D8Q5AqLApril 9, 2024
Amazon’sFalloutTV show is set to premiere on Prime Video – one of the world’sbest streaming services– onWednesday, April 10. Well, in the US, anyway. UK and Australian viewers can stream it on Thursday, April 11 – the series' previously revised launch date (it was initially set to arrive on Friday, April 12).
Usually, brand-new Prime Video shows, or the series' newest entry, arrives with a two- or three-episode premiere. However, in a marked departure for Amazon TV Originals, all eight episodes will be available to watch on launch day.
Fallout TV show trailer
The official trailer for Prime Video’sFalloutarrived on March 7, and itinvited you to a hilariously grim party at the end of the world.
There are tons of Easter eggs and other universe-specific references forFalloutfans to pick out, as well as a bigger teaser about what the TV adaptation’s plot will be about. Not only that, but we also get a better look at its primary cast of characters, the game franchise’s signature humor, and lots of faithful nods toFallout’s most iconic elements, including its vaults, Power Armor suits, mutated monsters, and beautifully dystopian landscape.
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Missed the first teaser, which was released in December 2023 andopening the vault on Prime Video’s authentically apocalyptic series? Check it out below:
The first trailer’s unveiling came five days after ourfirst look atFallout’s TV seriesvia various official images. You should read our article onseven things that theFalloutTV show images don’t tell youif you’re searching for more clues about what was debuted in them and the trailer, too.
Lastly, if you missed its unveiling on March 20, you can watch the first official clip, whichteased an R-rated Western stand off that suggests it’ll be one of the funnier shows of 2024, below:
Fallout TV show cast
Here’s the confirmed cast for theFalloutTV show:
Of the above, Purnell (Arcane,Army of the Dead), Goggins (Ant-Man and the Wasp,Justified), and Moten (Emancipation,Father Stu) are the show’s three leads.
Purnell’s Lucy is arguably the series’ primary protagonist. TheArmy of the Deadstar was locked intoFallout’s lead rolein March 2022, one month after Goggins was announced as the series' first cast member. Per a Prime Video press blast, Lucy is an “optimistic Vault dweller” whose idealistic view of the world is challenged when she embarks on a dangerous trip across the Wasteland.
Goggins, meanwhile, has been installed as The Ghoul, a ruthless and cynical bounty hunter who “hides a mysterious past”. The show’s first trailer suggested we’ll learn more about his backstory as Cooper Howard, a 21st century A-list actor, throughout its eight-episode run, with the teaser showing his family-centric life prior to a devastating nuclear event that destroyed the world as we know it.
Vault Dwellers, be advised of varying timezones when placing your location marker. Adjust those alarms on your atomic clock accordingly! pic.twitter.com/hjiBTKSEv8April 9, 2024
As for Moten, he’ll portray Maximus, a member ofFallout’s iconic Brotherhood of Steel faction, a group of military hardware-toting zealots who plug the sociopolitical gap in the absence of an official government. Labeled “a young soldier with a tragic past”, Maximus is said to believe in the Brotherhood’s mission to bring stability to the Wasteland at any cost. Like Lucy, though, his worldview will be questioned as the plot progresses.
McLachlan (Twin Peaks) is playing Hank, Lucy’s father and Vault 33’s oversee (aka leader). Other confirmed character identities include Michael Emerson (Lost) as Siggi Wilzig, an enigmatic wanderer who reportedly helps Lucy on her quest (perVanity Fair), Mike Doyle (Law and Order) as another Vault 33 resident called Mr. Spencer, Moisés Arias (The King of Staten Island) as Norm, Lucy’s brother, and Matt Berry (What We Do In The Shadows) in a duel role as the voice of multipurpose robot Mr. Handy.
Fallout TV show plot
Here’s the official synopsis for Amazon’sFalloutTV show: “Based on one of the greatest video game series of all time,Falloutis the story of haves and have-nots in a world in which there’s almost nothing left to have. 200 years after the apocalypse, the gentle denizens of luxury fallout shelters are forced to return to the irradiated hell-scape their ancestors left behind – and are shocked to discover an incredibly complex, gleefully weird and highly violent universe waiting for them.”
In theFalloutfranchise, a two-hour nuclear bomb exchange between the US and China (known in-universe as The Great War) decimates planet Earth in October 2077. Those lucky (read: rich) enough to survive the brief but destructive event did so in Vaults – subterranean bunkers, built across the US from 2054 onwards by a mysterious company called Vault-Tec, that could support up to 1,000 people each in the event of nuclear war.
I had an explosively entertaining time with #FalloutOnPrime . Its devotion to the source material, plus its original, high-octane, and hilarious tale ensures that the iconic “everyone liked that” meme will do the rounds again once more people see it, too: https://t.co/ggt1ROvsRAApril 10, 2024
Fallout’s TV adaptation is set 219 years after that cataclysmic event in the year 2296. Lucy, a wide-eyed and naive inhabitant of the Los Angeles-located Vault 33 (one of three Vaults we’ll see, Jonathan Nolan toldIGN), ventures above ground for the first time when she willingly agrees to embark on a one-person rescue mission for… well, reasons that enter spoiler territory. As Nolan pointed out to Vanity Fair, though, Lucy’s utopian view of the world is quickly shattered and that “her collision with the hard reality of other people’s experiences and what happened to the people who, frankly, were left behind, left to die” makes for a chastening experience that threatens the virtuous perspective she learned about underground.
As the show’s likely first season progresses, Lucy’s story will intersect with The Ghoul’s and Maximus’. Expect dramatic fireworks when the trio cross paths and their wildly different outlooks on life subsequently clash.
Falloutfans will be pleased to learn that the TV adaptation hasn’t left the franchise’s dark, absurd, and twisted sense of humor – complete with macabre levels of levity and sardonic slant on modern day America – behind. Bethesda Games director Todd Howard, who oversees theFalloutfranchise and is one of the show’s executive producers, told Vanity Fair: “We had a lot of conversations over the style of humor, the level of violence, the style of violence.Falloutcan be very dramatic, and dark, and post-apocalyptic, but you need to weave in a little bit of a wink. I think they [Nolan, Joy, and the showrunners] threaded that needle really well.”
As mentioned,Fallout’s prestige TV iteration will also explore 21st century issues and themes through its story, and two particular 60s/70s movies were key inspirations behind weaving such topics and melodrama through the show’s otherwise tongue-in-cheek tone.
“Just asMASHgets to talk about Vietnam through the lens of the Korean War,” Nolan toldEmpire magazine, “we get to talk about the mess we’re in now through the lens of… ‘What if everybody just gets on with it and destroys the f***g world?'”
“We talked a lot aboutThe Good, The Bad And The Ugly,” Wagner added. “That’s three characters in search of a box of gold, so we asked ourselves, ‘What’s the gold in this world?'”
As for the silly bugs and ridiculously funny glitches that the game series is renowned for, don’t expect any such references to appear in Prime Video’s adaptation. Speaking toIGN, Wagner said: “One of my fondest memories playing [Bethesda gameThe Elder Scrolls II:]Daggerfallis a moment where I just bumped into the wall and watched the entire world fly away from me as I fell off. It was just transcendental and wonderful.
“I was like, can we get this in the show? And not in the first season, but it’s definitely on my mind as a concept. But yeah, we stayed clear of too many winks… we really just want people to buy into this world and not be pushed out of it, because a tall order. It’s a pretty crazy place and we just want to get people invested in that first.”
That said, fans can expect to see some of the game series’ most famous iconography – the smiling, thumbs up-toting Vault Boy, who’ll get his own origin story in the TV show – throughout. There’ll be plenty of other nods to the games, too, such as the inclusion of the wrist-mounted Pip Boy device, mutated insects and monsters aplenty, and the iconic costumes/armor worn by Vault dwellers and the Brotherhood of Steel. Those elements, Nolan exclusively told TechRadar, would hopefully satisfy fans, especially asFallout’s TV show will be “asking them to surrender"other aspects of the games, which they might not necessarily agree with the changes it makes to the source material.
Everything that happens in theFalloutTV show is official lore in Bethesda’s award-winning franchise, too. “We view what’s happening in the show ascanon,” Howard told Vanity Fair. “That’s what’s great, when someone else looks at your work and then translates it in some fashion. I looked at it [some revised elements] like ‘Ah, why didn’twedo that?'”
Adds Wagner (via a differentIGNarticle): “We didn’t start from a place of characters from the games,” Wagner said. “We set things after. We kind of told ourselves, this isFallout 5, this is just another installation, and we’re starting with fresh snow.”
Elaborately further in an exclusive chat with TechRadar, Howard revealed that the seriesincludes “the one thing we could never do” in the games– that being, exploring the franchise’s alternate reality before The Great War decimated planet Earth. As mentioned in our cast section, we’ll view the world through Cooper Howard’s eyes in the lead-up to the first bombs dropping, as well as the actual event itself. Essentially, whatever happens in Amazon’s TV show, then, is officially part ofFallout’s expansive universe.
Will there be more seasons of Amazon’s Fallout TV show?
Amazon hasn’t officially announced that there’ll be more seasons, but it’s inevitable that itsFalloutTV show will return. Considering the rave reviews its first season has earned, it’ll not only take a spot on ourbest Prime Video showsshortly, but it’s also sure to be a big hit among general audiences – yourself included.
Speaking exclusively to TechRadar,Nolan said that “really cool” season 2 plans had been discussedin-house, even though a second season hasn’t been greenlit yet (at least publicly, anyway). According toThe Hollywood Reporter(THR), the state of California has gifted a $25 million tax credit to Prime Video with the aim of luring the production over from New York. Ordinarily, as THR claims, such offers are only made to TV shows that have been secretly renewed, so this is our clearest indication thatFalloutseason 2 is already on the way. Here’s hoping we get confirmation on that front very soon.
For more Prime Video-based coverage, read our guides onThe Rings of Powerseason 2, all of thenew Prime Video moviesto arrive recently, and our pick of thebest Prime Video movies.
As TechRadar’s senior entertainment reporter, Tom covers all of the latest movies, TV shows, and streaming service news that you need to know about. You’ll regularly find him writing about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, Netflix, Prime Video, Disney Plus, and many other topics of interest.
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