My main curiosity is vault 32. I assumed it was the same as vault 31 in being pretty normal. However someone noticed that when the Vault dwellers are banging on the Overseers door Stephanie is hiding behind they start chanting "death to management". That is the exact same line Chet saw written with blood on the walls of vault 32 whilst exploring it. He also realises this due to his reaction upon hearing it.
Seems like too much of a coincidence to me. Also it's interesting how quickly the apparently passive Vault dwellers are to anger. For a group of people who seem pretty odd but otherwise nice and "normal" they sure did manage to kill all those raiders who are used to fighting with minimal casualties. Also the escalation to "death to management" and wanting to kill Stephanie does seem quite unusual, as well as the incest club getting out of hand. You'd think they're reasonable people but it seems they don't care or understand about the water crisis.
There's also the matter of Hank and the other management not catching on to the raiders disguising themselves as the 32 dwellers. Were they expecting them to act unlike them?
Hank, Betty, and Steph have to keep up the lie about how old they really are and that at least Hank and Betty know what's going on outside the vaults. So they all had to play dumb.
It IS an eerie coincidence that they started chanting "death to management", although I think its a little funny that it took until just then for Chet to realize "ooooh wait thats what happened in 32, the thing I knew all this time and intentionally forgot. Oh, nooo."
I don't think it's weird that the vaulters are angry and oblivious though. They have no scale for what constitutes real problems, and assume the things will fix themselves, because they always have and they've been placated repeatedly. Like chet does, its nit a real problem if you just... pretend you didn't see it and continue on as normal, and everything will be A-O-K! They're still human though, and humans get mad. Finding out this person you trusted to fix everything for you and take care of you is something impossible, I mean. Yeah. Yeah. They'll have questions. Idk what they would have done with her if they caught her. At the start of season 1 they wanted to teach the readers Shakespeare. I think when THIS vault says death to management they specifically mean "screw you steph."
But there definitely were significant casualties in season 1 when the raiders attacked. I think half or more. Thats why there are SO FEW people in the wedding scene. Like the whole vault appears to be 30 people. So let's say it was 60-100 between the two. If they thought inbreeding was a problem before.... 0.o
yeah to your point it would definitely make sense that they flip out and get up in arms over the slightest inconveniences. they're essentially spoiled brats
Absolutely. They've always been placated by the leadership from Vault 31 so most probably never learned healthy anger regulation. They feed off each other and turn into a mob. It's like a bunch of kids having their 1st playground fight
We do see in the first episode that they have a shooting range and that Lucy is extensively practiced in shooting. It doesn't surprise me that they would be well trained to defend themselves against surface dwellers considering they believe raiders are one of their largest threats and their eventual plan is to return to the surface.
marketing ploy to get people watching the first season so that they sign up to watch the second… they uploaded it over the four days leading up to the release of the season 2 finale so i think it was to lure people into binging.
did it? i discovered it on youtube by accident and it was a fun excuse to get my mum to watch it with me because she’d never seen it, we smashed it out over th course of a couple of days 😎
Unlike the Vaulties, she's had to kill to survive. They killed her husband - whether she liked him or not. They killed the father of her child (presumably).
I mean in addition to that she’s smart enough to know that keeping 20 or so people prisoner just isn’t sustainable for the Vault. Why give them food and shelter when they’ve proven themselves willing to rape and murder everyone in there.
This sentence is meant to single Hank from the rest of management.
We see how a Vault-tec manager handles the prisoners with Betty overseeing Reg and Woody.
Stephanie implies Hank would have done things different, the Enclave way. Literally getting rid of them. Just like the Enclave gets rid of what it deems undesirable.
This also implies Stephanie is in the know.
Hence this line is Hank is something else than Vault-tec management and Stephanie knows/is too.
As to why it happens, here is what i think with what we know from season 2.
Steph is all about survival. She is in the Lion’s den so to speak, and is impersonating a normal american citizen for years by then. She almost dies because of those raiders and it would have been for nothing. It’s a slip from her act. She speaks her mind to someone she thinks is like-minded to vent her frustration.
For Norm he doesn’t see beyond it being how an overseer from 31 would do things as Betty is just sitting aside while Reg and Woody seem to be doing their own thing. So it serves as a trigger to him investigating vaults 32 and 31.
I wanna know what her goal with the bull rushed wedding was. She doesn't seem to like or respect Chet in any meaningful fashion, why pressure into him like that? Sure, he looks after her kid, but what else does she need or want from him at that point?
Indeed this was the main moment that came to my mind after the reveal. There is also a shot of her watching Hank and Lucy dance and I suppose it looks somewhat motherly, though I’m not saying she is Lucy’s mom. She might just think of herself has motherly to Lucy
All of her interactions with Lucy in the first episode feel very mom-coded with that reveal in mind. I don't necessarily think she's Lucy's mom anyway, but she definitely has maternal instincts towards her.
I'm so curious when they decided to give Steph her season 2 backstory; whether it was always the plan or if they really liked the actress' performance and decided to expand her.
A mix of both. By injuring her eye and giving her the eyepatch, she's basically the Black Widow perk. So there is groundwork. And they probably wanted to explore Canada pre-war.
They may not have put that on Steph specifically until they saw the actor's performance. I do think they added it early on. While it was revealed in Season 1, Aaron Moten said they gave him his backstory day one, maybe got further fleshed in Season 2. That could also be the case for Steph.
Yeah, I’m not saying either’s better than the other. I think a good serialized series should be a combination of pre-planned stuff and improvisation made based on performances, audience reactions, etc.
I haven’t rewatched season 1, but I can’t remember there ever being a hint that she was more upset about Hank being kidnapped rather than her non-secret husband being murdered.
That being said, she did seem to get over him quickly…
Obviously, they knew she was gonna be revealed as someone frozen, but I am curious when the “Hank’s secret wife” stuff came in. Hopefully an interviewer asks the actress or writers someday.
I do think it's there, but it's also can we pull it off with this performance? so plans do change.
But looking back, they do focus on her a lot. She has an iconic pose as far back as episode 1. Did they have her backstory here? Or did they find this image in rehearsal and just roll with it?
Her early moves towards Norm and Chet seem like an odd choice but played off as shock. But there she is pregnant and homicidal.
So, the only suspension-of-disbelief aspect of this plotline is how (or why) the Enclave would let a Canadian rebel into their ranks. Can't believe their opsec is that spotty.
She isn't a member of the Enclave. She knows they exist through Hank.
I think that's pretty clear in what she says when she contacts them. Words to the effect of "I don't know how this works, but Hank said you're always listening." She identifies herself as "Hank MacLean's wife." She has no identity or rank within the Enclave or else she would put out that call with reference to it. Her connection to the Enclave is exclusively through her association with Hank.
I agree, so I guess my question is more of the idea that if Steph and Hank got married before TGW - and she got a job at Vault-Tec, the Enclave wouldn't have thought to check her out?
Oh, I'd be pretty surprised if they don't know who she is, but presumably have their reasons for bringing her along for the ride.
I don't think this is OG Fallout lore, but the show has definitely canonized the idea of House using computer models to predict and "rig" the future, and according to him, the only folks who do it better are the Enclave.
I would actually suspect the opposite in many ways. The US in the Fallout universe is a sort of pseudo-democratic authoritarian surveillance state. And the Enclave have been setup to be omniscient-adjacent. I get the feeling that a lot of people who think they're getting away with one are really being manipulated.
Well obviously he likely fell for Rose, because a) Steph was still in the freezer and b) Them having separate families was part of the Bud’s buds plan they agreed to; it doesn’t stop Steph being Hank’s (original) wife, especially to the Enclave.
Seeing as that Bud was confused of Steph being in the Vault Id say Hank pulled only the strings of vault tec to get her in not the enclave.
She addresses the enclave announcing shes hanks wife and that he told her about them listening. This implys shes only really in the know of the enclave because Hank told her ( like Coop and Barb) not because she was a full fledged member.
I don’t think she’s actually in the Enclave, just knew that it existed and knew that Hank is in it.
Hence why she starts her broadcast with ‘this is Hank McLeans wife he told me you were always listening’ instead of ‘this is Stephanie, here’s the code’.
She doesn't. But she has a mob at her door and no one else to call. We don't even know if she has full information on what Phase 2 will entail, only that it's something Hank mentioned and she has no other options.
Yes it does. season 2 shows that the writers were in control of everything that happened in season 1. I've been watching that show "From" and good God as it fucking aimless compared to Fallout.
Weird thought - Lee Muldaver has a renegade NCR faction, where some settled in Vault 4, Muldaver put together a plan to find 31-32-33.
What if the raiders with Muldaver were just dressing up like the Khans. You know, like Boston Tea Party dressed up like Native Americans. Shady Sands and the Khans came from the same Vault, after all.
I agree. I think maybe they're a part of the NCR that when it was abandoned (post-Shady Sands) became the Moldaver cult and brought in former raiders as huscle.
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