Fallout Season 2: Everything We Know About The Amazon Megahit's Return

More Fallout is coming. Eventually.

It has already been more than a year since Season 1 of the Prime Video series, based on the popular video game franchise, exploded onto our screens. But rest assured, there is much more to look forward to, as detailed below.

Fallout — which with its freshman run delivered Prime Video's most-watched season globally since Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power — is set 200 years after the apocalypse, where Lucy (played by Ella Purnell), a denizen of a luxury fallout shelter/"vault," found her peaceful nature tested when she was forced to the toxic (?) surface to locate her father (Twin Peaks' Kyle MacLachlan).

Aaron Moten (NeXT) co-stars as Maximus, a young soldier rising in the ranks of the militaristic Brotherhood of Steel, while Walton Goggins (Justified) plays Western star Cooper Howard and his post-apocalyptic persona The Ghoul, a morally fluid bounty hunter. The three parties collided in Season 1 when chasing a researcher (Evil's Michael Emerson) who was in possession of an artifact with the potential to change the power dynamic in this dystopian hellscape.

What all do we know about Fallout Season 2, and the hit series' future beyond that? Well....

Oh, it was big. Huge, really.

Season 1 became one of Prime Video's top three most-watched titles ever, and it set multiple records along the way.

In Nielsen's weekly U.S. rankings of streaming originals, Fallout 1) racked up the most minutes viewed for any Prime Video title, 2) became the first series outside of the Netflix platform to rack up 2 billion minutes viewed in consecutive weeks, and 3) was the first Prime Video series to top the Overall Top 10 chart three times in a row.

What's more, Nielsen's "Streaming Unwrapped" report for 2024 crowned Fallout the Top New Original Drama Series after it amassed 11.95 billion minutes streamed last year.

Season 1 garnered 16 Emmy nominations, including for Outstanding Drama Series, Lead Actor in a Drama (Walton Goggins), Special Visual Effects, Prosthetic Makeup, and Production Design. (It wound up grabbing Emmy gold once, for Outstanding Music Supervision.)

Fallout's many kudos also include three Writers Guild of America Award nominations, Television Critics Association Award nods for Best Drama and Best New Program, and it won at the Art Directors Guild Awards for Excellence in Production Design for a One-Hour Fantasy Single-Camera Series.

The new season will "pick up in the aftermath of Season 1's epic finale and take audiences along for a journey through the wasteland of the Mojave to the post-apocalyptic city of New Vegas," says Amazon.

Said finale saw Lucy process a gut-punch of an epiphany — that her father, Hank, had a hands-on role in bombing Shady Sands — and in turn ally with the Ghoul to, among other things, go find his (meaning, Cooper Howard's) family.

"Will Lucy be able to hang on to her core?" in the wake of that bombshell and not devolve like The Ghoul, co-showrunner Graham Wagner asked in a THR Q&A. "It's sort of a nature vs. nurture question. Has her time in a happy cozy vault steeled her against that? We will find out. What we're already into in Season 2 is exploring how far we want to push this character, how much do we want to see her hang onto to herself. It becomes the game of the show in its own way."

Goggins, meanwhile, told Deadline in February (see video below) that while he personally thought "Season 1 was extraordinary," the second season "blows it out of the water, what these writers have done and the artisans that have come together to tell this story. It's really gonna be something. I can't wait for people to see it."

Returning cast members from Season 1 include, of course, Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets, Sweetpea), Walton Goggins (The White Lotus, The Righteous Gemstones) and Aaron Moten (Emancipation, Father Stu) — as Lucy, The Ghoul/Cooper Howard and Maximus — as well as Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks) as Lucy's father Hank, Moisés Arias (The King of Staten Island) as Lucy's kid brother Norm, and Frances Turner (The Boys) as Cooper's wife/high-ranking Vault-Tec exec Barb Howard. 

The only reported cast addition for Season 2 is Macaulay Culkin in the recurring role of "a crazy, genius-type character."

Culkin, of course, is best known for playing resourceful tyke Kevin McCallister in the 1990 holiday smash Home Alone and its 1992 sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. As a child actor, he also had memorable roles in My Girl and The Good Son.

Culkin returned to acting as an adult, earning acclaim for his work in Party Monster and Saved!, among others. He more recently co-starred in Season 10 of FX's American Horror Story, dubbed Double Feature, and HBO's The Righteous Gemstones.

If one looks closely once Season 2 arrives, you might detect that Fallout relocated its base of operations from New York to California (specifically, Santa Clarita aka NCIS-land) after receiving a $25 million tax credit. (Season 1 also filmed in New Jersey, Utah and, for the Wasteland scenes, Kolmanskop, Namibia.)

As one result of the move to the West Coast, you might spy "less gray skies," co-showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet told THR. "That was tricky about New York. We were shooting partially in the summer and partially in the middle of winter. And some of those exteriors, the gray skies, they're just not as beautiful."

Would you settle for a release month...?

At Prime Video's Upfronts presentation on May 12, cast members Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten and Walton Goggins appeared onstage to announce that Season 2 will premiere this December, in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide.

That means some 20 months will have elapsed between seasons.

TVLine will of course keep you posted on the precise release date for Season 2.

In a way, there already is!

At Amazon's annual Upfront presentation held May 12, it was also announced that Fallout has already been renewed for a third season.

"The holidays came a little early this year — we are thrilled to be ending the world all over again for a third season of Fallout," said executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. "On behalf of our brilliant cast and crew, our showrunners Geneva [Robertson-Dworet] and Graham [Wagner], and our partners at Bethesda, we're grateful to our incredible collaborators at Amazon MGM Studios and to the amazing fans as we continue our adventures in the wasteland together."

So, then, maybe the question is: Will there be a Season 4, and maybe more?

"Look, we've talked about three seasons and we've talked about five seasons...," co-showrunner Graham Wagner told THR. "Given the success of the show, five is suddenly feeling a little more appealing. But the industry is a temperamental thing and we kind of have to go into each season being like, "This is our last."

Want scoop on Fallout, or for any other TV show? Shoot an email to InsideLine@tvline.com, and your question may be answered via Matt's Inside Line!