Walton Goggins, Aaron Moten, Ella Purnell, and showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet reveal their hands for the final episodes of the season.

Viva New Vegas: Fallout stars go all in for an exclusive peek at season 2’s ‘explosive’ finale

Walton Goggins, Aaron Moten, Ella Purnell, and showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet reveal their hands for the final episodes of the season.

By Lauren Huff

Lauren Huff

Lauren Huff is an award-winning journalist and staff writer at ** with over 12 years of experience covering all facets of the entertainment industry.

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January 28, 2026 12:00 p.m. ET

It's a typically warm and dusty February day in the desert. The sun is high overhead, blocked out only by numerous signs belonging to rather, uh, curious storefronts. One reads "Golden Globes Porn," and another cries, "Welcome to strip!" There's a Wrangler's Casino and a Ralph's Laundromat.****Two men who look like they just stepped off the set of *Gladiator* are proselytizing for someone called Caesar (that's pronounced Ky-zar, to you, pal). There's women dressed as all kinds of showgirls — one even has an elaborate purple headdress — only these showgirls have seen better days. It's clear everything has: The town center is covered in graffiti, and there's broken-down cars and junk metal everywhere. As if to prove that point, a homeless man walks by holding a sign that reads "beat me up 4 caps."

Amid it all, in walks Ella Purnell clad in a blue jumpsuit, and her *Fallout* costar Walton Goggins looking only vaguely human. As he, in character as the Ghoul, walks away, Purnell's Lucy cries out, "Where are you going?"

To which he yells back, "To get f---ed up."

It's all very apropos, given that season 2 of their Prime Video series (which premiered Dec. 16) pulls inspiration from the fan-favorite *Fallout: New Vegas* video game and is set almost entirely in and around the apocalyptic version of Las Vegas, dubbed New Vegas.

This entire endeavor of adapting the incredibly popular video game franchise was a gamble, but one that's paid off. According to Amazon, in its first 16 days of availability, *Fallout* season 1 pulled in 65 million viewers — the second-biggest debut ever for the streamer. It was a hit with critics, audiences, and awards bodies alike (nabbing 17 Emmy nominations including Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Goggins), and even drew a resurgence of interest in the source material.

So season 2 had massive combat boots to fill. When asked if that was daunting, Goggins tells EW he simply doesn't live his life that way.

Citing his nearly three decades in Hollywood, and his experience on "maybe 10, 12 series that have gone the distance," Goggins shares, "What I did know is that if you can build a critical mass in chapter one of an experience, then you have an opportunity to do something transcendent in season 2. Don't play it safe, but be bold and lean into your vision of this world."

'Fallout' star Walton Goggins photographed exclusively for EW.

He continues, "And luckily for us, the people that create this show, the people that write it and direct it, decided to do that. And we, in front of the camera, we're all game for that. That's why we're here. I mean, let's take big swings. And if we miss, well, then we missed swinging for the fences."

Geneva Robertson-Dworet (who acts as showrunner alongside Graham Wagner) says this go-for-broke approach was born from a desire to bring new aspects of the games to life, beyond the very vault-centric confines of season 1.

"This is such an expansive mythology that, honestly, we were really devastated in season 1 about the number of things we didn't get to that we really wanted to. So we were excited to bring more of that to life this season, whether it was Deathclaws or Radscorpions or other elements from the game that we hadn't gotten to explore yet," she says, referring to just two of the overgrown, irradiated menaces introduced to the Wasteland this season.

This meant building out the retrofuturistic neon lights of Sin City for flashbacks, as well as its dustier, apocalyptic New Vegas version in the present timeline. It also meant introducing new characters and new factions of the Wasteland, such as enigmatic tech billionaire Robert House (Justin Theroux), the Legion, the New California Republic, and a super mutant (as played by game narrator Ron Perlman in episode 6).

Steph (Annabel O'Hagan) sets plans in motion at Lucky 38 in the past timeline in season 2 of 'Fallout'.

Lorenzo Sisti/Prime

And if all that wasn't enough, as the Feb. 3 finale approaches, the sophomore season has dropped a nuke of its own: Everything we thought we knew about how the world ended and who was ultimately responsible *might* be wrong.

"In these later episodes, we're starting to hint at larger questions: Who is Hank working for? Does he work for Vault-Tec?" Robertson-Dworet says of the former executive assistant of Vault-Tec and overseer of Vault 33, played by Kyle MacLachlan. "Increasingly, I would hope that fans are starting to wonder if that is ultimately who he's working for. And if he isn't, what is that larger presence? And how many of our storylines does it essentially infect? How many of our storylines are tied up in that larger villain story that we are slowly starting to hint at as a show?"

Now, with the penultimate episode fully loaded into the public mainframe, those hints are starting to look as obvious as the neon signs at EW's *Fallout* cover shoot, where Goggins has just excitedly cried out, "Let's go to Vegas!"

He and fellow stars Purnell and Aaron Moten are dressed to the nines, surrounded by a gaggle of Vegas Strip-inspired lights and retro slot machines — all of which, despite their age, are apparently fully operational… much to Purnell's delight.

'Fallout' stars Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, and Aaron Moten photographed exclusively for EW.

The only thing that can pull Purnell's attention away from testing her luck is Moten's shiny new denim jumpsuit.

"Aaron, you look so great," she yells as she once again pulls the lever.

The look is a far cry from the full body suit his character Maximus dons in episode 7, which is the first time fans of the game are treated to NCR power armor in the series. Maximus' journey this season has seen him ditch the Brotherhood of Steel and team up with Thaddeus (Johnny Pemberton) and the Ghoul to try and find Lucy. In the penultimate episode, Maximus uses the suit — much to the townsfolk's delight, who herald what they mistakenly believe is the return of the NCR — to distract a pack of those dreaded Deathclaws while the Ghoul goes to find Lucy and, he hopes, his long-lost wife and daughter.

To actually shoot the battle was a grueling process, which Moten says took the better part of six full days of filming to complete. This was largely due to the fact the showrunners opted to not rely solely on visual effects and CGI to create the Deathclaws. Instead, the team at Legacy Effects created a giant lifelike puppet, which had to be manned by three or four people at any given time.

Thaddeus (Johnny Pemberton), Maximus (Aaron Moten), & the Ghoul (Walton Goggins) look at an NCR suit on 'Fallout'.

Lorenzo Sisti/Prime

"We only do complicated stuff on this show — that's one of the rules,” Robertson-Dworet jokes. "Puppets, animals, endless period details, massive sets, insane stunts. We take the hard path with everything it seems."

The extra effort was worthwhile for Moten, who admits to not being a fan of the traditional green screen model for these sorts of scenes.

"It's so much more to act opposite something built out like that than someone showing you a photograph and saying, 'Can you imagine this in front of you?'" he explains.

0:33 Fallout Cast Shares Their Bunker Must-List

He's not the only one struggling to react to something. Purnell's goody two-shoes Lucy has found herself in quite a pickle by the end of episode 7. After finally finding her father, Hank, which she first set out to do in season 1, she now faces the tall task of trying to bring him to justice. In the time it took for her to find him, though, he perfected the black box technology Mr. House first introduced in the season's cold open. Essentially a mind-control device, it turns even the most violent men into kind, obedient, perfect worker bees, and even Lucy must admit it has its advantages in the Wasteland.

Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) gets ready for a fateful meal with her father on 'Fallout'.

Lorenzo Sisti/Prime

Either as a test or not believing her capable, Hank tells Lucy how to stop him — she must find the mainframe that powers all of these black box-controlled workers and destroy it. At episode's end, she cuffs her father to an oven and finds the mainframe, where she's horrified to discover the system is not a what but a who — the disembodied, but still alive, head of Congresswoman Diane Welch (Martha Kelly) to be exact — presenting yet another moral quandary for *Fallout*'s favorite morally upstanding denizen: Does she kill Welch to stop her father?

"I think episodes 6 and 7 are very confusing episodes for Lucy, trying to marry her understanding of morality, what makes a good and bad person, everything she's learned about the Ghoul, everything she's learned about herself," Purnell says.

'Fallout' star Ella Purnell photographed exclusively for EW.

This season, though she still believes she's a good person, Lucy is "inevitably changed in a way she doesn't even realize," the star says. Take, for instance, the time she was on drugs, and killed the group of ghouls known as the Kings (who were Elvis impersonators in a past life, naturally), or when she ditched the impaled Ghoul on a pole. Then there's all the additional atrocities she's been exposed to this season, like the barbaric violence of the Legion.

"The temptation of what her father is explaining to her, what he's doing and also what he's offering her — he's offering her this very sort of seductive idea of a new and reformed civilization that touches on what she was raised to believe in, which is reformation, but in a really, really messed up way," Purnell explains. "But he knows her. So he's really calculating the way to present this idea to her in a way that's going to be very, very seductive."

Ella Purnell photographed exclusively for EW.

Further complicating matters, of course, are Lucy's ongoing daddy issues.

Or, as Purnell puts it, "You don't stop loving someone because you realize they're a monster. The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference — and she certainly doesn't feel indifferent. She could love and hate him in the same breath. So I think by the time she sees the head at the end of 7, that, to me, is like her breaking point."

So, what's a former vaultie to do heading into the finale?

"She might believe she wants to bring her father to justice, and that's really what she's going to do. But what we realize when we get to the finale and episodes 6, 7, 8 — by the time she actually is reunited with her dad, her idea of justice is no longer the same." Okey dokey, then.

It's not just for Lucy that the times, they are a-changin'. Cooper Howard, via flashback, and his future iteration, the Ghoul, concurrently have perhaps the biggest reveals of the season. In the past, Cooper — who seems to have finally reconciled with his wife, Barb (Frances Turner) — devises a plan to stop the ongoing wars over power with Congresswoman Welch to get the cold fusion diode into the hands of the President of the United States (played by series newcomer Clancy Brown).

The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) arrives at Mr. House's lair in season 2 of 'Fallout'.

Lorenzo Sisti/Prime

This being *Fallout*, it's safe to say this will likely be a disastrous decision. But Coop's heart is in the right place.

"Suffice it to say, Cooper Howard is the best of America," says the actor. "He is a part of that greatest generation. He's someone who believes in this country and believes in institutions and knows that he's incapable of getting this thing that is so powerful and so valuable out there in a safe way. And so, of course, if you get the opportunity to meet the President of the United States of America, why wouldn't you give him this technology, this opportunity to save f---ing humanity? That just stands to reason. But, little did he know that the president was also for sale."

In the future, thanks to the valiant efforts of Maximus, the Ghoul has managed to successfully sneak into Mr. House's, *ahem*, house. There, he puts the cold fusion diode to good use this time, by plugging it into some sort of mainframe in House's secret lair. The giant screen behind him illuminates to reveal the face and preserved consciousness of Robert House, who ominously greets his "old friend" as the screen fades to black.

The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) prepares to meet Mr. House in season 2 of 'Fallout'.

As for how they filmed this scene of a disembodied House, and all of those presumably still to come in the finale, Goggins jokes: "He was in the f---ing screen. We killed him and we put his brain inside a Macintosh with everything Amazon has in their warehouses.

"No, every conversation I had with Mr. House — that's all I can call JT now — was one of the best days I've ever had on set with anyone," he continues, referring to his longtime friend Theroux. "We went to great lengths to make it as real as possible for both of us. So Justin came into work, he got dressed up, he sat in another stage, a different part of the stage, way, way on the other side. They set up the camera with the effects on it. Everything was set up. He had an earwig in so that he could hear me, and we just played it out as if it was really happening."

This cliffhanger scene finally reveals the answer to the season-long question of, who, what or where is Mr. House in the future. It also reveals the real reason why he sought the cold fusion diode from Barb and Vault-Tec (the same one Cooper ended up giving to POTUS).

Walton Goggins, Aaron Moten, and Ella Purnell photographed exclusively for EW.

"It did seem to us like a version of himself powered by cold fusion would be sort of the ultimate possible incarnation of Robert House," Robertson-Dworet explains. "And as someone who is interested in robotics and artificial non-biological versions of selves, it made a lot of sense to us that this would've been something that he would've developed and sort of be the ultimate version of him. I've always seen it as something that allows for many players' experiences to have happened, but still Robert House had this other version of himself, that he was always ready to create and what he needed was the diode."

But can we trust that this is, in fact, House's *final* final form?

"That's an interesting question. I'm not answering that, but I'm very intrigued by the question," the showrunner replies. Fair enough.

What she *can* say though, is that fans should expect a whole lot more of House and the Ghoul in the finale.

"The question is, what is Coop's bargain," Robertson-Dworet says. "He's just given House what he wanted after 200 years. He's finally given him the thing that he's most desired. And the question, of course, is what will he get in exchange? He obviously is looking for his wife and daughter, and what will he find?"

Walton Goggins photographed exclusively for EW.

Goggins teases that the name of the game for his character in the finale is "family, family, family." He also reveals his favorite scene of the season happens in the episode, and has to do with a different kind of family.

"I can tell you that in episode 8, without giving something away to your audience, something profound happens for both the Ghoul and Lucy that would also be my favorite, but we can't talk about that," he teases.

He's more open about how things begin to come full circle for everyone in the final minutes of the season.

"I mean, the whole first seven minutes of this experience in season 1 was about [Cooper being] a guy at a birthday party. Well, how did he get to that birthday party? What happened? It's all leading somewhere."

Purnell, meanwhile, teases a finale that is "conflicted, explosive and character-defining" for little ol' Lucy MacLean.

"You get to see Lucy be a real human with real human problems, and I think at times, because of her strength and her optimism, it doesn't always feel that way with her," she says. "But in this moment, and that maybe says a lot about what her choices and decisions are, she's flawed and she's actually just getting more and more human."

Maximus (Aaron Moten) faces off against a Deathclaw — sans suit! — in season 2 of 'Fallout'.

If the showrunners are taking feedback though, Purnell has some hopes for Lucy as she continues her growth as a human being in the Wasteland.

"I would never want her to lose her comedy. It's my favorite thing about her. And no matter how experienced she becomes, I hope she doesn't lose a little bit of her naivety,” she says, adding, “I mean, I'd like to see her and Max maybe try to work it out. I miss Maximus.”

Does she ship them? "Oh, I ship them *hard*."

Aaron Moten photographed exclusively for EW.

Speaking of Maximus, Robertson-Dworet says his finale arc embodies one of the show's favorite themes: "Be careful what you wish for."

"He's gone in there to, in his mind, not just save Lucy, but he thinks he's saving everyone from the Deathclaws. And now, uh-oh, he's let them out, in essence," she says. "What is he going to do, and what is he *willing* to do, in order to save these people that he's now put in jeopardy, I think is the question for Max."

In other words, expect "a long war," Moten teases, before backtracking a bit. "No, I just think people should expect the crescendo that we've been building toward, and to expect the *fireworks*."

Walton Goggins photographed exclusively for EW.

Back at EW's shoot, Goggins is busy making cinematic fireworks of his own, gamely riding away on a mechanical bull, even waving around a lasso for good measure. With the end of the day rapidly approaching, he starts psyching himself up, clapping his hands, and yelling, "Let's go!"

This is in early December, and later that day he and his fellow cast and crew will attend the sophomore season's premiere, so he's understandably a bit antsy, he tells us.

Now, just over a month later, staring down the barrel of the finale, Moten echoes these sentiments when asked how he's feeling in anticipation of season 2's end.

"Can I be honest?" he asks conspiratorially. "I'm like, 'Come *on* already.'"

In other words, let the end times roll, baby.

Aaron Moten photographed exclusively for EW.

*Directed by Kristen Harding + Alison Wild*

*Photography by Abi Polinsky*

***Motion** - DP: Maddie Leach; 1st AC: Corey Cave; Steadicam Op: Luke Rihl; Techno Crane Op: Garrett Dorin; Techno Crane Tech: Alexandre Nunez; Gaffer: Bailey Clark; Best Electric: Noah Shettel; SLT: Baele Alexander; Key Grip: Sam Satossky; Best Grip: Derek DiPippo; Grip: Sean Blair; PA: Julia Pai*

***Production **- Producer: Austin Sepulveda; Directors’ Assistant: Millie McGuire*

***Production Design** - Production Designer: Isaac Aaron; Lead Man/Fabricator: Matt Banister; Set Dressers: Charlotte CaHill, Gavin Sullivan, Julian Garnier, Tyler Johnson*

***Photo** - Lighting Tech: Johnny Tergo; Digital Tech: Michael Preman*

***Wardrobe** - Stylist: Michael Fusco/Exclusive Artists; Styling Assistants: Rachel Cocca, Nicole Cochary; Tailor: Juliette Kendall*

***Post-Production - **Color Correction: Nate Seymour/TRAFIK; VFX: Wyatt Winborne; Design: Alex Sandoval; SFX: Kristen Harding*

***Aaron Moten** - Grooming: Tasha Reiko Brown/The Wall Group; (Cover Look) Full Look: Amiri; Boots: Vintage; (Header Look) Full Looks: Dzojchen; Belt: Barabas; Boots: Tom Ford; Jewelry: Pianegonda Fodeus; (Look 3) Full Look: Kody Phillips; Hat; Nick Fouquet; Boots: Stetson*

***Ella Purnell **- Hair: John D/Forward Artists; Makeup: Kelsey Deenihan/The Wall Group; (Cover Looks) Dress: Ott Dubai; Shoes:  DSQUARED2; Jewelry: Burkinabae; (Header Look) Dress: Amiri; Shawl: Epuzer; Jewelry: Rommanel; Shoes: DSQUARED2; (Look 3) Suit: Zadig & Voltaire; Bralette: La Perla; Shoes: Lucasheva*

***Walton Goggins** - Grooming: Ermahn Ospina/Tom Ford Skincare/Exclusive Artists; (Cover Look) Suit: Kimia Arya; Boots: Los Altos;  Sunglasses: Max Mara; Jewelry: Pianegonda; (Header Look) Vest: DSQUARED2; Pants: Kody Phillips; Tank: Custom Gio Garcia; Boots: Stetson; (Look 3) Full Looks: Amiri; Shoes: Tom Ford***

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Source: “EW Sci-Fi”