What's in the box? Fallout season 2's most recent episode slowly worked its way towards revealing what was lying behind the square-shaped mainframe door in Hank's Vault-Tec testing facility. And the answer was certainly not what we were expecting – even if it likely has far-reaching implications for both the Fallout season 2 finale and beyond.
Spoilers for the Fallout season 2, episode 7 ending follow.
Lucy wanted answers and she certainly got some this week. On the face of it, the morbid head-shaped cliffhanger isn't exactly a shock to those in the know when it comes to Vault-Tec's long history of human experimentation.
Still, the identity of the head in question might raise a few eyebrows: Representative Diane Welch (Martha Kelly).
Welch was last seen in flashbacks putting together a pre-war meeting between Cooper Howard and the President of the United States (played by one-time Fallout actor Clancy Brown, no less).
Welch's head still being preserved centuries later is a surprise, to be sure, but it's what's going on with it that gives Lucy cause for concern. There are several wires running through her head and into a large mainframe.
What gives? The finale will likely clue us in fully, but our prevailing theory is that Welch was killed (and perhaps betrayed or gotten to by the Enclave) and her peacenik ways used to 'train' a new series of experiments who would be mollified by Vault-Tec's brain chip. Genius, really, if it wasn't so utterly terrifying.
That theme of quelling the masses is hammered home earlier in the episode by Hank MacLean, who told Lucy of the brain chip's inner workings, "It tidies things up a bit, cleans the memories of the horrors they've experienced. This dial controls how much amnesia they have, and the mainframe implants new ideas in their heads, turning the Wastelanders into well-meaning, good people."
How the President factors into proceedings (is he an Enclave puppet?) remains to be seen, but the episode was at pains to mention again and again that cold fusion needs to be given to a "good person." It stands to reason that Coop's frosty stance towards Maximus and Thaddeus could stem from mistakenly trusting the President and causing the death – and worse – of his political ally.
For more on Fallout, we have our Fallout season 2 release schedule and Fallout season 2 review.
