Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for the Fallout Season 2 finale.
Fallout Season 2 ends on a high note, but the finale, “The Strip,” begins on one, too. With pretty much all the season’s storylines converging on New Vegas, we also get the series’ best action sequence so far: Maximus (Aaron Moten) taking on a horde of Deathclaws on his own. It’s one of the rare cases in which character development meets lore and great choreography, becoming the defining moment in his journey since the beginning of the series. The whole sequence is also very important to the Fallout franchise as a whole, showing the full power of the New California Republic Power Armor used by Maximus against the monsters and promising that fans haven’t seen the last of that incredible original model.
Maximus Takes on a Horde of Deathclaws in the ‘Fallout’ Season 2 Finale
When playing the Fallout games, it’s usually best to avoid facing multiple opponents at once, especially if they’re Deathclaws, but Maximus has no choice when he suddenly finds himself the only thing standing between the monsters and the people of Freeside at the end of the penultimate episode, “The Handoff.” He’s been getting into similar situations from the very beginning of the series, learning that most knights in the Brotherhood of Steel rarely deserve their title and that duty and loyalty often walk hand-in-hand. His fighting the Deathclaws is all about that: being dutiful and loyal not to the Brotherhood, but to those who can’t protect themselves.
While it’s certainly cool to see Maximus slicing through Deathclaws at the beginning of the sequence, the highlight comes when his Power Armor can’t take it anymore, forcing him to face the monsters with nothing more than a roulette wheel and a pool cue. His growth is perfectly captured by the juxtaposition between his younger (Amir Carr) and present selves, with the former rescued from the rubble of Shady Sands and the latter protecting Freeside on his own. He becomes his own hero, the person he needed to rescue him all those years ago — who, as it turns out, is definitely not a knight of the Brotherhood. The NCR arrives in the nick of time to save Maximus and Freeside, going back to the idea of him being rescued from certain destruction by people in uniform, but this time, things are different. The whole sequence is the culmination of Maximus’ arc in Fallout so far, starting as a quirky squire to ultimately learning that he’s bigger than a uniform or a suit of armor.
Maximus’ Deathclaw Buster Armor Could Show Up in the ‘Fallout’ Games
The NCR Power Armor is clearly different from the version Maximus wore with the Brotherhood before, with more firepower and different gimmicks, like blades that help him take on a Deathclaw directly. It also looks closer to an NCR Ranger than a standard T-60 Power Armor, so it’s obviously special. Speaking to Collider, Fallout game director and series executive producer Todd Howard reveals that this particular design is a series original, and that it’s not the last we’ve seen of it in the franchise, too.
It’s common for each new Fallout installment to introduce new mechanics, so the series couldn’t be different, according to Howard. “Well, one of the things that we did going into Season 2 is like, ‘Hey, each of the games, they have a cool, new power armor.’ We try to do something new.” The new armor even has its own name: “Let’s do a power armor for Season 2, where we get the Deathclaw Buster, the NCR armor, working on that together, both here and with the folks at Kilter [Films] and the practical effects.”
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Although everything in the series obviously comes from or is based on the games, the Deathclaw Buster is about to move things the other way around, with Howard teasing that it will show up in other franchise installments: “And now it’s that armor that’s coming out in the game, so opportunities like that are pretty cool.” It would mark the second time that’s happened, as the Ghoul (Walton Goggins) has previously appeared in Fallout 76. It hasn’t yet been confirmed when the Deathclaw Buster will show up in the games, but fans should have the chance eventually.
The New California Republic’s Arrival Is Heavily Inspired by the ‘Fallout’ Games
Maximus might not be interested in joining any factions going forward, but had the NCR not arrived when it did, he wouldn’t have been able to hold the Deathclaws on his own without this Power Armor. A new war for New Vegas is about to happen, and the precise moment the NCR returns is another hint: it’s almost the same as the Fallout: New Vegas introduction, where an NCR Ranger is seen shooting something in the distance in the same position, wearing the same suit, and using bullet time for dramatic effect.
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Some fans have even theorized that that particular NCR Ranger might even be the Courier, the protagonist of Fallout: New Vegas, but that’s only speculation, since the series has explicitly been distancing itself from picking a canon ending for the game. Either way, the series has been making a point of portraying the NCR as the closest thing to the “good guys” as one can get in the Wasteland since Season 1, considering they were the ones who were behind the rise of Shady Sands years prior.
Fallout TV-MA Sci-Fi Action Adventure Drama 7 10 Release Date April 10, 2024
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