Warning: The below story contains FULL SPOILERS for Fallout Season 1, which is now streaming on Prime Video.
Ever since Fallout Season 1 hit Prime Video, there’s been quite the debate over what some fans argued was a timeline discrepancy with Fallout: New Vegas. While Bethesda’s Todd Howard cleared all that up in a recent interview with IGN, original Fallout creator Tim Cain has also joined in on the theorizing fun, offering up his own speculation on what “The Fall of Shady Sands” could be referring to.
To give you the TLDR on what fans thought the conflict was: in short, in episode 6 of Fallout Season 1, fans spotted that “The Fall of Shady Sands” was written on a chalkboard, and that event happened in 2277. What got fans up in arms was the fact that, if Shady Sands was destroyed in 2277, that would essentially retcon New Vegas, since that’s four years before the events of that game.
Howard set the record straight in my recent interview with him, saying, “everything that happened in the previous games, including New Vegas, happened.” He further clarified that “the bomb falls just after the events of New Vegas.”
But Cain brings up a good point in his own review of the TV show, which he posted on YouTube earlier today: how do we know the timeline events, as written on a chalkboard, are even true?
“I know people are complaining about the dates being off. Well, you’re right! Maybe they are off! Maybe what was taught to the kids was wrong,” he says. “Maybe they were lying to the kids. They lied to the kids in Vault 33 about other things, why not lie about that? Or, maybe they’re off, but they don’t know they’re off? Just a few years either way.”
He goes on to point out that Fallout, as a series, has a long line of “unreliable narrators.”
“Maybe the dates in the games are off,” he says. “Maybe Fallout: New Vegas, some of the characters in that game, got the dates wrong. There’s no master calendar you can refer to… Fallout has a history in a lot of the games of having people tell you something that isn’t true.”
He’s not wrong, and spreading propaganda among the Vaults’ youth isn’t something you should ever put past Vault-Tec. Speaking of Vault-Tec, he also offers some theories about whether or not the corporation dropped the first nuclear bombs that ultimately led to society’s demise. Basically: Cain doesn’t think Vault-Tec shot first.
To support his theory, he points to what we saw in the season premiere of Fallout: Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) with his daughter, Janey (Teagan Meredith), at a birthday party when the first nukes drop. As we learn in the season finale, Coop’s wife Barb (Frances Turner) was one of the high-up executives at Vault-Tec who were discussing the possibility of dropping the nukes.
“I don’t think they nuked first,” Cain says. “I really don’t think they did, because Barbara didn’t strike me as a stupid woman. Would she have sent her daughter to a birthday party on the day Vault-Tec was gunna nuke?”
“I think they were planning on nuking – it was one of their strategies that they were thinking about, which is enough to go, ‘wow, Vault-Tec is evil,’ ” he continues. “But I don’t think they nuked. I think they were a bit caught off guard too when nukes came in.”
Cain stresses that his theories are just that, and goes on to encourage fans to have fun spinning up ideas on the show as well, as long as it stays good-natured.
The good news is that we may actually get answers to some of these questions, given that Prime Video officially renewed Fallout for a second season yesterday. In the meantime, check out our review of Season 1, which we gave a 9/10.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
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