Warning: This article contains major spoilers for the Fallout TV series.
The Fallout TV show has been out for several hours now, and fans are already taking to social media platforms like Reddit and X/Twitter to discuss the show, particularly the sixth episode and the season finale.
Chatter about the show's eighth episode has already caused one Fallout game to trend online because of what fans consider a potential retcon.
Seen it come up a couple of times, so here's a helpful little Fallout timeline!
— Emil Pagliarulo (@Dezinuh) April 11, 2024
* Bombs drop - 2077
* Fallout 76 - 2102
* Fallout 1 – 2161
* Fallout Tactics - 2197
* Fallout 2 – 2241
* Fallout 3 – 2277
* Fallout: New Vegas – 2281
* Fallout 4 – 2287
* Fallout TV show – 2296
Over on X/Twitter, many are claiming that the show is trying to alter the events of Fallout: New Vegas, the 2010 action RPG developed by Obsidian Entertainment. Fans are reaching that conclusion in part because it causes contention with the Fallout timeline. Fallout: New Vegas is set in the year 2281 — 204 years after the bombs dropped. Meanwhile, the first season of the TV show is set in 2296 — 15 years after the events of Fallout: New Vegas.
The biggest conflict between the two can be found in the sixth episode of the TV series, which mentions that Shady Sands, the capital of the New California Republic (NCR), was destroyed in the year 2277 — four years before the events of Fallout: New Vegas and the same year that the NCR fought in the First Battle of Hoover Dam.
In the show, the NCR has been scattered by the destruction of Shady Sands and exist as a ragtag group trying to rebuild society. The show also doesn't make it clear whether this is the full remnants of the NCR or just a small contingent of it. These discrepancies have fans claiming that Fallout: New Vegas has been retconned by Bethesda, which did not work on the original release in 2010.
Bethesda design director Emil Pagliarulo took to X/Twitter to try and correct the record by noting the official timeline, but that did little to satisfy confused fans who pointed out the discrepancy between the two.
"Okay cool. It’s just that according to the show, an, ahem…major event occurs in 2277 that would definitely have had an impact in Fallout: New Vegas," one user wrote. "The only way I can rectify this would be to move the date of the event until *after* New Vegas, and call it a typo."
Fallout: New Vegas was created by many of the developers who worked on Fallout 2, grounding it more heavily in the lore developed by the franchise's original creator, Black Isle Studios. Bethesda has long sought to put its own stamp on the series going back to Fallout 3, fueling unconfirmed rumors of friction between the two, though they both now share a parent company in Microsoft.
One way or another, the timelines seem to be at odds with one another, and Bethesda executive Todd Howard reportedly considers the show canon. In an interview with TheWrap earlier this week, co-showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet told the outlet that the team "wanted to be faithful to all of them and not contradict them as much as possible."
“Oh boy I sure hope the Fallout Amazon TV show pays homage to the older Fallout games and New Vegas”
— SuperMadz (@madis259) April 11, 2024
*Monkey Paw Curls* pic.twitter.com/1GA3pif0OT
Is Fallout Season 2 teasing a move to New Vegas?
Before the credits cut to some snippets of New Vegas, however, we see Hank, the father of the main protagonist Lucy, staring off into he distance New Vegas before it cuts to the credits. This moment has some arguing that the glimpse of New Vegas is actually a tease for the second season.
Though Prime Video has yet to announce a second season, it feels all but confirmed given the overwhelmingly postivie feedback from fans and critics combined with the fact the show was awarded a $25 million tax credit from the state of California if the series opts to relocate filming from New York State to the Golden State. It seems like we'll know soon enough how Fallout plans to handle New Vegas going forward.
In our review of the first season of the Fallout TV series, which we awarded a 9 out of 10, my colleague Matt Purslow wrote: "A bright and funny apocalypse filled with dark punchlines and bursts of ultra-violence, Fallout is among the best video game adaptations ever made."
For more on Fallout, check out our season one ending explainer.
Taylor Lyles is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
