Is the Fallout TV show really Fallout 5? Star Walton Goggins says it could be, but "that's way above my paygrade"

Walton Goggins as the Ghoul in Fallout season 2 — (Image credit: Prime Video)

Fallout star Walton Goggins suggests fans have asked if the hit Prime Video TV is actually the long-awaited fifth installment of the video game franchise... and he's got a pretty simple answer.

"For me, it was all on the page," Goggins told Game Informer. "They did their homework, and it was built into the DNA of the story that they created, and this isn't like Fallout 1, Fallout 2, or Fallout 3… it's its own thing. It's original content within the Fallout world. In some ways, people have said, 'Is it Fallout 5?' That's way above my paygrade. [laughs]"

Fallout 4 came out in 2015, but rumblings of a fifth game didn't come from an official source until about 2021, when co-creator Todd Howard said he had a "one-page design document" for it. That's all well and good, but at this point we're looking at a 2030 release date... at the earliest. Bethesda says it's currently devoting most of its resources to working on The Elder Scrolls 6, which entered pre-production in 2022.

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But the Fallout TV series, which just wrapped up its second season, is kind of like a Fallout 5... It's incorporated two major locations from the games thus far, crafted new characters and included some fan-favorites, and it's about to introduce a brand new location in season 3 that we've never before seen in the games. The TV series is also canon, so anything that happens in the show also affects the games because it's all the same world... so, kinda?