<em>Fallout</em> Season 2, Episode 1 Recap

Vegas, baby! Vegas! Fallout is back at last, with a season 2 premiere that doesn't break down the door so much as saunter through the entryway. Still the same show as it was when we last left things off a short year ago (remember when TV shows didn't spend years making a single season?), Fallout knows exactly where its bread is buttered: characters bouncing off one another like dodgeballs, a textured post-apocalyptic world that only keeps growing, and mysteries that are savored instead of spoiled.

"The Innovator," the season 2 premiere now streaming on Prime Video, zips between the present and the past (which means yes, there's still plenty of Walton Goggins when he had a nose) as the characters make their way to New Vegas, one of the last and only cities standing in the wasteland. Lucy (Ella Purnell) and The Ghoul (Goggins) wander the wasteland, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid style, while the inhabitants of Vault 33 and Vault 32 adjust to their new status quo. It's a lot of table-setting for what you can just feel is going to be a bigger season, but for now, it's good to just be here again.

Here's all that went down in the Fallout season 2 premiere.

After a prologue introduction of Justin Theroux as industrialist Robert House—think Tony Stark meets Don Draper with a psychosexual streak—we pick up again with Lucy and The Ghoul, who are hanging by a thread. So to speak.

On their latest stop of Lucy's mission to find her dad (Kyle MacLachlan) and bring him to face justice, the two have wound up in the crosshairs of some virulent wastelanders. It's little more than an excuse to see some action and quippy exchanges to kick off a new season, but what really matters is when the dust settles, after Lucy and The Ghoul make quick work of this side quest and level up with invisible XP.

After all the time they've spent, The Ghoul and Lucy still aren't friends; they only have a common goal. Lucy may have a little more swagger in her steps, but she's still trying to believe in the best in people. The Ghoul, meanwhile, just needs her to shoot when she's told. Soon they arrive outside the city limits of what used to be Las Vegas. Under the control of Robert House, Vegas just barely survived the bombs. But as the Ghoul warns Lucy, it's still no safer than the rest of the wasteland.

Following her daddy's trail, Lucy and the former Cooper Howard reach a derelict vault. The Ghoul already knows he isn't in there, but he's keen to know what brought him there in the first place. "Ain't you a little curious too?" he asks Lucy. Together, they venture down into the vault's depths, where they find the long-decayed remains of Americans being fed communist propaganda. They also find a wastelander turned "guinea pig," one manipulated by Lucy's father Hank and using technology innovated by Robert House. The tech isn't perfect, however. It has, shall we say, fatal side effects, which Hank will have to sort out in the old Valt-Tec laboratories. We end the episode catching up with Hank, who has made his way to the old Valt-Tec HQ to bring a new meaning to the term "work-life balance."

Hank (Kyle MacLachlan) brings a little midcentury style to the wastelands in the Fallout season 2 premiere.

Even with Lucy gone, life in the vaults continue. In Vault 33, Reg (Rodrigo Luzzi) struggles to find a new purpose in the aftermath of his failed run for Overseer. Meanwhile, over in Vault 32, the unsuspectingly temperamental Steph (Annabel O'Hagen) adjusts to her new role as Overseer of Vault 32 while her "husband" Chet (Dave Register), well, is just trying to live a decent life.

It's down in Vault 31 where the story is really cooking. Norm (Moisés Arias) is still a prisoner to Bud Askins—or rather, his brain bot, who can be quite menacing if you don't kick him over. After a whole episode of keeping Norm down, Norm gets the bright idea to awaken all of "Bud's Buds," the hand-picked junior Vault-Tec executives aware of their secret mission to dominate over Vaults 32 and 33 (and eventually, all of Earth). Norm doesn't have much of a plan beyond chaos, but chaos is good. "Chaos is easy," Norm says. In the old world, there was such a thing as trains. Norm seems intent in figuring out how to lay the tracks as the train is moving.

Intercut throughout the episode are flashbacks to Cooper Howard's life pre-apocalypse. Picking up from his big revelation about his own wife's role at Vault-Tec in season 1, Cooper races home to get his daughter to safety. But where? It doesn't matter. Just far away from Barb (Frances Turner) is safe enough.

Consulting with Sarita (Kate Williams), Cooper is talked into going back home and joining his wife on an upcoming work trip to Vegas. It's there where Cooper can get close to the elusive Robert House. But he's not there to spy on the wealthiest man in America. "Not spy on him," Sarita says, cold and calculating, ice on her lips. "Play nice with your wife and get on that trip to Vegas." Orders are orders. So he goes home, while he still has one.