I'm loving Fallout season 2, but it suddenly has a Star Wars problem

Fallout season 2 is something truly S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Building on the foundations of an already brilliant first season, it expertly fuses the serious backdrop of nuclear-laced political tensions with the franchise's inimitable brand of gaudy, retrofuturist humor.

Yet, its penultimate episode introduces us to the backstory of Vault 32 Overseer, the eyepatch-wearing Steph Harper. It's here where the Prime Video series drops its first real payload of mediocrity.

Previously, we had assumed she was simply one of many of the 'Bud's Buds' Vault Dwellers, happily toiling away in the subterranean society and navigating the complicated relationship between the paired Vaults in service to Vault-Tec.

But that couldn't be further from the truth. As we discover in Fallout season 2, she is more than just a twisted by-product of an isolationist society. Instead, Steph escaped her pre-war captors to take up a revolutionary struggle. Worse, she's Canadian.

In truth, the Fallout franchise's alternate history of Canada and its internment camps is far more interesting than what comes next south of the border: a run-in with pre-war Cooper Howard as a member of the Lucky 38 hotel staff helping dispose of Hank MacLean.

It's a moment designed to shock, to be sure, but the Vegas-set scene is less a high-roller narrative risk and more something that comes a little too close to feeling creatively bankrupt in my eyes.

Blast from the past

In one fell swoop, Fallout went from exploring a disparate series of characters affected in their own way by the Wasteland to a far smaller, more intimate one that squishes its cast's history together to less than thrilling effect.

You may have heard of 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon', the party game that asks you to link back to actor Kevin Bacon within six (or fewer) prominent figures. Already, Fallout is taking part in Six Degrees of Cooper Howard with just how frequently he crosses paths with the show's major players. It also, sadly, echoes the main problem I've always had with another sci-fi juggernaut – Star Wars.

In a galaxy far, far away, you're never more than a fraction of a parsec away from someone who has met or been affected by either one of the Skywalkers.

For years, Star Wars' initial output – a prequel and original trilogy – didn't make this issue as pronounced as what it would soon become.

Eventually, spin-offs, cartoons, sequels, and TV series were all drawn into the orbit of the same familiar characters and events, narrowing down the possibility of narrative intrigue and turning a sprawling universe into a selection of characters that could barely fit into the Millennium Falcon's cockpit.

Admittedly, the likes of The Clone Wars and Andor have woven in street-level heroes and revolutionaries that makes everything a little more fleshed out and lived-in, but the likes of Rise of Skywalker's interminable Rey Skywalker ending and an imminent Mando-verse crossover mean Star Wars's DNA will always keep its feet on familiar ground.

Fallout doesn't have to be that way. The RPG series-turned-streaming-sensation features a rich, expressive world with hidden corners that are begging to be explored from coast to coast. But reducing the current series down into a Vault-Tec and Enclave-led conspiracy where almost everyone we've met has had a personal pre-war stake in proceedings or history with its major players rings a little hollow for me.

Steph could have just been Steph: Maniacal Overseer. It's a well Fallout has gone to in the past, yes, but it's something a lot more human and tragic than Vault-Tec's revolving cast of middle managers having their grubby mitts over everything. That, coupled with Steph coming into contact with Coop, could be one corporate bombshell too far. There's nothing S.P.E.C.I.A.L about that.

Take a look at how Fallout's TV show fits into the wider franchise with the Fallout season 2 timeline. Then dive into our rankings of the best Fallout games.