Fallout Season 2 showed the Ghoul's rad trick to heal himself in the wasteland. The video game adaptation has returned for its sophomore season on Prime Video, and this time, the action is shifting from post-apocalyptic California to Nevada, as the TV show delves into New Vegas. Fallout is an original story set in the canon of Bethesda's video game world, and despite the transition from game to screen, there are many callbacks to the source material that fans know and love.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Fallout Season 2 Episode 1.
One of the major storylines in Season 2 of Fallout is the road trip between Lucy (Ella Purnell) and the Ghoul (Walton Goggins), who agreed at the end of Season 1 to track down Hank MacLean, Lucy's father, and bring him to justice. However, Lucy's optimistic vault-dwelling upbringing and the Ghoul's 200 years of wasteland survival put them frequently at odds, which is immediately apparent in Fallout's Season 2's first episode.
The duo finds themselves in a sticky situation while in Novac (a familiar Fallout location), with the Ghoul strung up by his neck after an encounter with the Khans. The plan was for Lucy to cash in on the Ghoul's bounty and then free him by shooting through his noose from her position atop Dinky the T-Rex. But Lucy's aversion to killing led things awry, resulting in the Ghoul being hung from his neck by barbed wire, and having to take things into his own hands after eventually being freed.
After dealing with the Khans in bloody style, Lucy and the Ghoul leave Novac alive, although the Ghoul sustained injuries during his brief hanging, and he shows off a neat wasteland way to deal with it.
Fallout Season 2 Episode 1 premiered on Prime Video on December 16. The TV series is created by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, with Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy serving as producers. The series stars Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Walton Goggins, Kyle MacLachlan, and Moisés Arias.
Why Was The Ghoul's Face Green In Fallout Season 2?
While leaving Novac in Season 2 Episode 1 of Fallout, the Ghoul is shown holding a device close to his face, which turns his skin green. When he removes the device, it is to show that the wound around his neck has completely healed.
While this might seem an odd gesture at first, the Ghoul's healing method is steeped in lore from the Fallout games. As the end of the world in Fallout is one created by nuclear bombs, radiation is at a surplus in the post-apocalypse, and it has many benefits and detriments.
Some survivors undergo a process known as ghoulification, which turns them into mutants (aka ghouls) that have a new natural immunity to radiation, at the cost of extreme disfigurement and, often, their sanity.The perk is that radiation becomes something of a nutrient to ghouls, and in this scene in Fallout, it's a method of healing for Goggins' character.
The Ghoul is shown using an old fusion core (a long-term nuclear battery) to unleash concentrated radiation upon his skin, which turns it green as it heals. Radiation effects are commonly associated with the color green in Fallout, which explains why the Ghoul's face changes color as he is exposed to the radiation.
Ghouls' connection to radiation has been built upon in Fallout lore over the years, with Fallout 76 even introducing a perk for Ghoul characters known as "glow," which allowed for a second health bar that could be filled by radiation. There are also ghouls in Fallout known as "glowing ones," which turn brightly bioluminescent due to their inherent concentrated amount of radiation, which is sometimes strong enough to heal ghouls around them.
The Ghoul's use of radiation healing in this moment in Fallout Season 2 is in line with the mythology of the wider Fallout world, and a shout-out for players of the game who might recognize its connections to the lore. It also sets up the Ghoul's manner of healing in Fallout Season 2, affirming that as long as radiation stores are nearby, the Ghoul will be able to withstand his injuries.
