Fallout star Walton Goggins says the Ghoul's season 2 backstory "broke my heart": "I can't wait for people to see where it ultimately goes"

Walton Goggins as Cooper Howard in Fallout season 2 — (Image credit: Prime Video)

Fallout season 2 star Walton Goggins says we get to see a whole new side to the Ghoul this time around – and that we're in for quite the emotional journey.

"We get to spend more time with Cooper this season, and this is a man who has had the rug pulled out from underneath him," Goggins tells GamesRadar. "He realizes just how little control he has over anything in his life, and it broke my heart. Some of these things we were filming... God, in episode five, there was this thing that he goes through where he's so despondent by his lack of control, and it coincided with how I felt in my own life. It was a very personal journey for me."

We were first introduced to the Ghoul in Fallout season 1 as a ruthless, cutthroat bounty hunter who takes no prisoners and only cares for himself. However, a series of flashbacks reveals that, prior to the nuclear disaster that ended the world as we know it, the Ghoul was once a beloved Hollywood actor named Cooper Howard who had a wife named Barb (Frances Turner), and a daughter named Janey (Teagan Meredith). Barb's status as a higher-up executive at Vault-Tec, and her involvement with the impending nuclear disaster, caused them to separate – and the Ghoul has wandered the Wasteland post-war looking for them both.

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We can gather from both Goggins and the latest season 2 trailer that the Ghoul has a special connection to New Vegas, and that Lucy (Ella Purnell), who continues to accompany him through the Wasteland, is going to find out just what that connection is. It's possible that Cooper Howard is the key to the end of the world, but whether or not he can find out what happened to his family remains to be seen.

"Whenever you cut from [Cooper Howard] to the Ghoul, without any words, you understand the Ghoul a little bit more, and you see him," he continues. "And the Ghoul is so resistant to being vulnerable, which equates to being human in any way, because of what it is that he's trying to do. Understanding how resistant he is to that, and ultimately, he gives over to it, even if it's incrementally for him, it means everything. It was just so rich to play both sides of this person and both iterations of this person. I just can't wait for people to see it and to see where it ultimately goes."