When does “Fallout” season 2 come out? What we know about the post-apocalyptic series’ journey to New Vegas

Key Points

• Amazon renewed Fallout for seasons 2 and 3.

• The post-apocalyptic action comedy stars Ella Purnell, Walton Goggins, and Aaron Moten as denizens of an irradiated wasteland in the far future.

• Season 2 is slated for a December 2025 premiere.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Fallout season 1.

It was a risky proposition, building a TV series from the beloved, retro-futuristic world of the Fallout video game franchise. But Amazon’s gamble paid off — following its April 2024 premiere, the post-apocalyptic action-comedy emerged as one of Prime Video’s most-streamed series.

The games, which include six proper titles and several spinoffs, allow players ample freedom while exploring an irradiated, post-nuclear wasteland filled with several warring factions, all of which you can ally with or destroy.

The Fallout series is set in 2296, though the story routinely returns to the year 2077, interrogating how corporate interests helped facilitate the nuclear attacks that decimated the world. While the privileged live comfortably in subterranean vaults, the majority of survivors occupy arid, violent communities that dot the surface.

Created by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet alongside producers (and Westworld alums) Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, Fallout aptly uses its ensemble to evoke that breadth of exploration.

Its trio of leads embodies the differing perspectives you’ll find as a player. There’s Lucy (Ella Purnell), a doe-eyed Vault dweller unfamiliar with the horrors of the Wasteland; Maximus (Aaron Moten), a rigid soldier in the Brotherhood of Steel; and the Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a former actor who, after being ravaged by radiation, has turned into a sadistic, ageless bounty hunter.

Nolan discussed this approach to the story with Entertainment Weekly prior to the show’s premiere. “One of the hallmark elements of the franchise is that you have to make decisions about whether your character’s going to be good or bad,” Nolan said. “So how do we translate that moral ambiguity? So when Geneva and Graham came back and said, ‘We think it should be The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, with three characters who each represent stations along that moral spectrum,’ that was a brilliant solution.”

Fallout‘s eight-episode debut season ended with many bombshells, not to mention a few Easter eggs for fans of the games. Pop open a Nuka-Cola, fork up a bowl of Blamco mac and cheese, and read on as we share everything we know about Fallout season 2.

Will there be a Fallout season 2?

Yes, Fallout was renewed for a second season in April 2024. The folks at Amazon are clearly high on the post-apocalyptic series — during Prime Video’s Upfront presentation in New York City in May, the streamer announced they’d also green-lit a third season.

“The holidays came a little early this year — we are thrilled to be ending the world all over again for a third season of Fallout,” said executive producers Nolan and Joy at the presentation. “On behalf of our brilliant cast and crew, our showrunners Geneva and Graham, and our partners at Bethesda, we’re grateful to our incredible collaborators at Amazon MGM Studios and to the amazing fans as we continue our adventures in the wasteland together.”

According to Amazon, Fallout‘s first season has been seen by over 100 million viewers globally.

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Goggins himself marveled at the show’s reach while speaking with EW last year. “I’ve been fortunate to get stopped in public for not really one thing but a variety of projects over the years. Then, all of a sudden, people were talking about Fallout more than anything else,” he said. “There was a moment when I was walking down the street with my wife and my son in Istanbul, where within the span of a block, someone from Iraq who was there on vacation came up, someone from Syria came up, and someone from Kurdistan came up. We were walking and eating baklava after having a glass of wine at a restaurant, then there were these three encounters, one right after another.”

How did Fallout season 1 end?

Fallout began with Lucy leaving the subterranean vault where she spent (most of) her life to find her father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), who was kidnapped by a raider group led by Lee Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury). By season’s end, Lucy learned that neither Hank nor Lee were who she thought they were.

Her father, much to her dismay, turned out to be partly responsible for the nuclear attacks that destroyed their world. In the pre-apocalypse, he worked for Vault-Tec, a company that could only thrive in war and destruction. Along with his fellow corporate goons, he helped orchestrate the apocalypse to better serve Vault-Tec’s bottom line.

He was then cryogenically frozen and reanimated hundreds of years later. He and several of his former colleagues now live in vaults, where they hope to breed the perfect society.

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They also work to ensure the wasteland outside remains a wasteland. That includes the destruction of Shady Springs, a city that blossomed in the post-war years. Lucy discovers that when she was a child, her mother, Rose (Elle Vertes), escaped with her and her brother. Hank, however, retrieved the children and nuked Shady Springs, turning Rose into an irradiated ghoul.

That’s a lot, we know. But we’re not done yet. Moldaver is also a relic of the pre-war years. A scientist, she invented cold fusion but saw her creation suppressed by Hank and his collaborators to prolong a war between America and China.

In the finale, Moldaver is able to activate her fusion reactor and bring power to the wasteland of Los Angeles with Lucy’s help. Having suffered a gunshot wound, Moldaver dies soon after.

As a battle pits Moldaver’s New California Republic raiders against the militaristic Brotherhood of Steel, Hank steals Maximus’ power armor and escapes to a city on the horizon. He’s pursued by Lucy and the Ghoul, who believes his daughter and wife, who worked at Vault-Tec with Hank, may also still be alive due to cryogenics.

What will Fallout season 2 be about?

No specific plot details for Fallout season 2 have been revealed just yet, though Amazon said in a press release that it’ll “pick up in the aftermath of season 1’s epic finale and take audiences along for a journey through the wasteland of the Mojave to the post-apocalyptic city of New Vegas.”

That last bit will be of particular interest to fans of the games, specifically the sublime Fallout: New Vegas, first released in 2010. The season 1 finale teased New Vegas, with MacLachlan’s battered and bloody Hank approaching the one-time metropolis in the episode’s final moments. As such, we can likely expect Lucy and the Ghoul to navigate the city’s (relatively) glittering strip.

New Vegas is one of the most striking areas to explore in the gaming franchise, and the “Three Families” that operate its various casinos on behalf of the mysterious Mr. House offer plenty of material for the show’s creators to mine for horror and comedy.

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But New Vegas isn’t the only Easter egg in the final moments of season 1. Buried in the sand on the route to the city is a skull and a claw that fans will recognize as belonging to a Deathclaw. One of the toughest (and coolest) creatures you’ll meet in Fallout, they were absent in season 1. That skull and claw, however, seem to tease that our heroes may encounter one in season 2.

What else can we expect in season 2? Clearly, Lucy and the Ghoul both have unfinished business with Hank, the man responsible for destroying so much they held dear.

The Ghoul, especially, will likely be a focal point, as he believes his wife and daughter may, like Hank, have been cryogenically frozen prior to the nuclear blast. While Robertson-Dworet and Wagner didn’t confirm whether the Ghoul finds his wife, Barb (Frances Turner), the showrunners did tease that there’s more story to tell on that front.

If they do meet, it may not be pretty. Lest we forget, Barb was a high-ranking Vault-Tec executive right alongside Hank.

Who’s in the Fallout season 2 cast?

The cast of Fallout season 2 has yet to be confirmed, though the finale has us thinking we’ll most certainly be seeing Purnell, Goggins, Moten, and MacLachlan return to the wasteland.

Last fall, Deadline reported that Macaulay Culkin had been cast in a recurring role as “crazy genius-type character.”

There’s no shortage of them in the Fallout franchise, though that description makes Culkin a good fit for New Vegas scientist Arcade Gannon or even as the voice of malaprop-spouting robot Doctor Mobius. Of course, he could also be playing an entirely new creation.

When does Fallout season 2 come out?

Fallout season 2 will premiere in December 2025, though an exact release date is still forthcoming.

Where can I watch Fallout?

Fallout season 1 is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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