Fallout season 2 has dropped its seventh episode a few hours earlier than usual, which just gives us all the more time to sit with our shock as we process everything it had to offer. Over the course of its 48-minute runtime, "The Handoff" shakes things up dramatically, with new alliances rising and falling, new players joining the fray, long-hidden secrets revealed, and an epic showdown in the streets of New Vegas. It's a thrilling episode that's among the season's best.
We've got a ton to discuss, so let's waste no time and get right into it. FULL SPOILERS for Fallout season 2 Episode 7 beyond this point.
Steph's big secret comes out
"The Handoff" begins with a flashback that caught me totally off guard: a glimpse at what Steph's (Annabel O'Hagan) life was like before the bombs dropped. Back in Episode 204, Chet (Dave Register) found Steph's pre-war ID, and learned not only that she was more than 200 years old, but that she's Canadian. I'll admit, I glossed over the Canadian part a little when I watched the episode, but it's become relevant here, as we see Steph fleeing the country, and murdering her way across the border and into the United States following the loss of her mother.
This opens the door for an interesting bit of Fallout lore. In the show as in the games, Canada was annexed by the United States prior to the Great War, and is often referred to as "The Big 51," since it becomes the 51st state. (Which, I won't lie, hits quite differently given the current state of global affairs in our own world.) This obviously creates a lot of bitter feelings, thus the dying words of Steph's mother to not think of the people she'll have to kill as humans, but as Americans. We're getting a glimpse at what that terrible transition looked like, which is also letting us know that Steph is built very differently from the rest of the Vault 31 management trainees. She's a bona fide killer.
That comes back around later on in the present, when Chet discovers Woody's broken glasses lodged in the garbage disposal of his and Steph's sink. He draws the obvious conclusion that Woody has been harmed or even killed by Steph. This boils over at their wedding, where Steph tries to force Chet into marrying her. At last, he finds his spine, and outs her big secrets to everyone in Vault 32. Steph ends the episode being chased into the Overseer's office, cracking under the pressure as the Vaultdwellers demand answers.
The other large development for Steph in this episode is that she coerces Betty (Leslie Uggams) to hand over Hank MacLean's keepsake box. We don't find out what's in it, but if Steph wants it, it can't be anything good. Tensions are rising between Steph and Betty, and I doubt they're going to get any better in the finale.
There's one other revelation regarding Steph we get in this episode, but to discuss it we have to get into the details for Cooper Howard's game-changing flashback sequence.
Hello, Mr. President
Thankfully, Fallout doesn't keep us in suspense about what happens next for Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) and his wife Barb (Frances Turner) after the end of Episode 206, where we saw Barb extract the cold fusion relic from an unconscious young Hank MacLean following the reveal that the Enclave was trying to pull the strings on the apocalypse.
The main dilemma Cooper and Barb have is, if they're not going to hand the world's most powerful technology over to the world's most powerful man, Robert House, then who are they going to give it to? But before they can make that decision they have to get Hank back to his room. Enter Steph, who we find out eventually made her way to Vegas and got a job as a maid in House's hotel. She desperately wants to get into a Vault. Cooper obviously isn't about to endorse them and help her out, but he does tell her that she should ask Hank when he wakes up. This presumably sets up how Steph got into Bud Askins' management program, through Hank. I didn't realize I wanted all this backstory for Steph, but it inarguably makes her a much more interesting character.
Ultimately, Cooper decides to meet with Diane Welch (Martha Kelly), the U.S. Congresswoman he saw being thrown out of House's hotel earlier in the season. She knows all about the cold fusion technology, and convinces Cooper the most moral thing to do is to give it away — to the president of the United States. Surely he'll just give it away to the people and won't have any ulterior motives...
Naively, Cooper goes along with this. Near the end of the episode, he gets into a car with Welch and hands over the relic to the president, played by none other than sci-fi movie icon Clancy Brown. And that's when Fallout's true cascade of reveals begins to come at you so fast that it melts your brain.
Lucy is faced with a true Fallout dilemma
Back in the present, Lucy (Ella Purnell) tries to navigate an uneasy situation with her father Hank (Kyle MacLachlan). By the end of the previous episode, Lucy had caved and used Hank's mind control device on an NCR soldier and a member of the Legion, in order to stop them from murdering each other. She's still wrangling with the implications of the brain-computer interface, and how exactly it works.
This leads to some unnerving scenes between her and Hank, where he explains the nuances of the device, and how it hollows out a person's memories to make them more pliable. MacLachlan plays Hank in a way that is so hard to read; he's disarming and seemingly kind, but there are glimpses of the controlling megalomaniac beneath. There are also some pretty charming scenes as well that really drive this strange balance home, like when he teaches Lucy how to drive a golf cart. You want these two to get along on some level, even though you know it's the absolute wrong thing because of all that Hank's done.
The moral quandary of the brain-computer interface eventually hits Lucy when Hank shows her a door deep in the compound which supposedly has the mainframe behind it, and she notices the Legion soldier she had to mind control in the previous episode politely mopping the floors. Surely, if the mind-control chips can turn the Legion from a murderous gang to passively good citizens, that would be a worthy use of it?
This is such a Fallout game sort of dilemma: do you essentially lobotomize every single person in the Legion, or let them continue to run amok across the Wasteland? Either choice would have unexpected consequences. I love how well the show is capturing the feel and tone of the franchise at large.
However, Lucy manages to cling to her morality a little bit longer. While having dinner with Hank, she realizes they're being served by the former NCR soldier who was kind to her, and has now had his memory completely wiped. He doesn't remember her, or the New California Republic, at all. This helps galvanize Lucy's resolve, and she handcuffs Hank to a kitchen drawer before taking his Pip-Boy and returning to the mainframe door, where she hopes to shut down the entire mind control system.
But what she finds inside is no simple electric mainframe: it's the severed head of none other than Diane Welch, with all sorts of scientific equipment attached to it and a straw propped into its mouth to provide a drip of sustenance. Gnarly, and just like the moral dilemma, extremely Fallout.
Obviously, we can assume from this reveal that Cooper Howard's plan to give away the cold fusion tech by handing it off the president and Welch didn't go to plan. We need to learn more about that in the finale.
Showdown at the New Vegas strip
Meanwhile, on the surface, The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) joins forces with Maximus (Aaron Moten) and Thaddeus (Johnny Pemberton) in hopes of reaching Robert House's building in the center of the main New Vegas strip. The only problem is that the pack of Deathclaws is still hanging out there. The group needs to gear up. There are tons of Easter eggs in the NCR warehouse where they do so, especially the weapons, most of which are designed to look just like their video game counterparts.
The pairing between The Ghoul, Maximus, and Thaddeus is interesting to watch. Unlike Lucy and The Ghoul, who had total opposite personalities that often clashed, all three of these men have seen their fair share of trauma in the Wasteland. It makes for some compelling conversations, and the dialogue especially sings here in instances like when The Ghoul tells Maximus they're back to where they started, a bit of wisdom that has special meaning for The Ghoul, since he's once more in possession of the cold fusion relic after hundreds of years, and Maximus, who dons a new suit of (very well-designed) NCR power armor.
Geared up, the trio head to Freeside and march directly up to the gate that will lead to the Deathclaws, since The Ghoul believes the Vault where Hank is holding Lucy is below House's casino. I chuckled at how eccentric the costuming is for the crowd of Freeside denizens who humorously follow Maximus right up to the gate.
At this point, Thaddeus unfortunately has to dip out of the fight, because his arm literally falls off. It turns out his ghoul mutations or going quite a bit worse than The Ghoul's did. I'm curious to see where the show is going with this storyline.
Inside the Strip, Maximus goes toe-to-toe with some beautifully designed Deathclaws. This sequence is epic, with Maximus fist-fighting a Deathclaws, The Ghoul wielding a gauss rifle, and some brutal turns as the monster tries to make them its lunch. Thankfully, Maximus does buy The Ghoul the time he needs to get inside House's casino; though Maximus himself stays back to keep fighting the Deathclaws. The fight goes awry, and he ends up crashing right through the gate to Freeside, unleashing these beasts on the populace at large.
Once inside the compound, The Ghoul quickly makes his way to House's chamber, and activates the cold fusion device. It boots up House's computer, displaying his face on a computer screen. This is an iconic way he was displayed in the game Fallout: New Vegas, so it feels just right that House would make this kind of debut as we come up on the finale of the season.
What sort of questions will The Ghoul ask this specter of his past? What answers will House give? I can hardly wait to find out in the season 2 finale!
Norm calls for help
The last plotline we spend time with in "The Handoff" is Norm (Moisés Arias), who is a prisoner of the disgruntled Vault 31 management trainees. Norm awakens to hear them planning to kill him, before he's promptly knocked out again. When he next comes to, it's to find Claudia (Rachel Marsh) trying to help him escape.
But rather than run for the hills, Norm calls for help on the radio in the Vault-Tec offices. And as he does, we see that his message for help from Lucy is received by Hank's radio in the New Vegas Vault. Neither Lucy or Hank is there to hear it, but hopefully it has a record function so that one of them can stumble across it in the season's final episode.
Norm's S.O.S. is cut short, however, when the Vault 31 managers find out he's free. We last see Norm and Claudia facing down the wrath of these long-hibernating Vaultdwellers. It's only a small bit of movement for Norm, but given everything else that happens in this episode, that feels just about right.
Verdict
"The Handoff" is a thrilling episode of Fallout that perfectly tees up its approaching season 2 finale. Nearly every main character in the show ends in a very different place than where they started, and it is an unpredictable journey from that's hard to look away from. Throw in a big old showdown with the Deathclaws, and this is easily going to go down as one of the most memorable episodes of the season, if not the show at large.