“Fallout” Episode ‘The Radio’ Recap: Vault vs Vault

By Bradley On May 31, 2024

It’s the penultimate episode of the first season of Fallout and this one did not disappoint, making the upcoming finale all the more exciting! Lucy and Maximus find themselves in a tough spot after discovering Vault 4’s secret, while The Ghoul reemerges on a deadly mission. Thaddeus has a difficult journey while Norm makes a risky gambit…

The Ghoul Unleashed | In the Wasteland, two masked figures collect bullets from the sand below and remove their masks revealing them to be be father and son. When they return to their home, they find none other than The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) sitting at their dining room table with a young girl serving him food. The Ghoul demands to know where the man’s oldest son is and is told that his son went away with Moldaver’s cult.

The Ghoul reveals that he’s already killed his oldest son and that he sent his brother a letter detailing Wilzig’s location so he could transport him to Moldaver, but the letter was stained with blood so he couldn’t read where Wilzig was supposed to taken to. The father makes his son tell The Ghoul that Moldaver is at the Observatory- but that doesn’t stop The Ghoul from killing the son and walking out.

A flashback shows Cooper (Goggins) witnessing Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury) giving a group of people a lecture on the merits of the impending nuclear war, but as Cooper plans on storming out, she confronts him and says that she knows his wife. Privately, she tells him that Vault-Tec bought up all of her research and that Cooper’s wife is in on it. She gives him a listening device and asks him to spy on his wife.

The Experiment | In Vault 4, Lucy (Ella Purnell) is locked in a room by the woman (Cherien Dabis) and their Overseer (Chris Parnell), who insist that her Vault was running experiments on other Vaults, including theirs, which led to many deaths. They ask what experiment her Vault ran, but Lucy says there wasn’t one, which only makes them angrier and they take her away. As they do, Maximus (Aaron Moten) sees her being hauled away and puts down his popcorn.

Elsewhere, Thaddeus (Johnny Pemberton) and Wilzig’s dog find a gas station, but Thaddeus has been walking for so long that his foot has practically wasted away. He then locks the dog inside an empty cooler and leaves it there! Back in Vault 4, Lucy is about to be executed in public, but then the Overseer banishes her to the surface instead with two weeks of supplies, which naturally, Lucy is thrilled by.

Lucy asks if Maximus can stay in the Vault, just as Maximus storms in wearing his armor and starts tossing people like rag dolls. Lucy convinces him to stop and they both are set free, but Lucy realizes that since Maximus stole the Vault’s fusion core to power his suit, the Vault will lose power soon.

She convinces him to leave the core with them, saying that her father wouldn’t forgive her if she let a community die. After dropping the core off, Lucy opens up to Maximus and offers him the chance to live with her in her Vault, but Maximus admits to her that he let Titus die. Remarkably, Lucy doesn’t care and still offers him to live with her and he says yes.

Vault Hopping | Thaddeus is still trekking through the desert, when he meets a sketchy doctor, who offers to heal him, but for a price. Thaddeus hands over the fusion core he stole from the armor in exchange for medicine and the doctor gives him a serum that miraculously heals his foot. In Vault 33, Norm (Moises Arias) finds out that the surface dwellers have been poisoned, but no one knows who did it. Betty (Leslie Uggams) reassigns a group of people to go live in Vault 32, including Chet (Dave Register) and Steph (Annabel O’Hagen), but Norm is staying put in Vault 33.

The Ghoul arrives at the gas station and frees the dog from the cooler, as another flashback shows Cooper pairing the listening device with Barb’s (Frances Turner) wrist device, but regrets it and throws the listening device in the trash. Later that night, he has yet another change of heart and fishes the device out of the trash.

Thaddeus makes it to a radio station manned by DJ Carl (Fred Armisen), who is surrounded by corpses caught in traps. Lucy and Maximus then arrive to ask for the head back, but Thaddeus accidentally triggers a trap that launches an arrow through his throat. He doesn’t die, but the wound magically heals due to the questionable drug the doctor gave him that made him a Ghoul.

Then, the Brotherhood’s helicopters arrive due to Thaddeus having called them, and Maximus convinces him to hand over the head so he can run. Maximus tells Lucy that the Brotherhood won’t stop looking for the head and he pledges to buy her time. She kisses him before making him promise to find her at Vault 33 and they run off in separate directions.

Speaking of Vault 33, Norm watches a group, Steph and Chet included, head off to Vault 32 and then sneaks into the Overseer’s office to hack into the computer. He uses the computer to message Vault 31 and pretend to be Betty asking to go back to 31. Norm heads to Vault 31 and hears a strange noise, but just as we’re about to see what he’s seeing… The episode ends! Season finale next time!

Fallout is now streaming on Prime Video.