Fallout TV show’s big finale reveal about the bombs may have been a huge misdirection

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All might not be what it seems

Fallout
(Image credit: Prime Video)

The biggest revelation in Prime Video’s Fallout TV show comes in the finale. When Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) is listening in on his wife Barb’s (Frances Turner) phone call at Vault-Tec he learns a horrifying truth that it was actually the company who first dropped the bombs back on that fateful day in 2077.

Well, at least that’s what it seems. This reveal is a bit complicated when you delve into the canon of the Fallout games, which the show apparently sits within. Indeed, game co-creator Tim Cain has even previously stated that China was in fact the first nation to drop the bombs in the world of Fallout. So what’s going on here, and which one is the real truth?

One Fallout fan has a great theory explaining just that, and it’s all down to a key moment in the show’s premiere (H/T IGN). You’ll recall that the harrowing way the Fallout TV show starts is with Howard at a birthday party with his daughter, which we know takes place on the day that the bombs were dropped. It’s mentioned that he’s separated from Barb at this point, but if Vault-Tec were dropping the bombs, wouldn’t she want to make sure that her daughter was safe in a Vault?

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Not only this, but the Redditor also points out that while maybe it was the plan to drop the bomb first, China may have beaten them to the trigger. "They planned to bomb the world, which would explain a lot," the Redditor writes. "But what if China nuked the US 20 hours prior to Vault-Tec’s planned bombing run?"

They went on to speculate: "The Chinese, after losing so much ground against the US, like stated in the TV broadcast during the Fallout Show, launched nukes at US Forces, the US retaliated by launching nukes at China, which then led to China striking American cities. This would explain why in Fallout 4 the TV Broadcast says that there have been multiple records of nuclear explosions on American soil."

It’s certainly an interesting theory and might explain why the reveal doesn’t quite line up in terms of the Fallout canon. Now Fallout has been renewed for season 2, it seems pretty certain we’ll find out more about the events leading up to the first bomb in flashbacks, especially as The Ghoul hopes to find out what happened to his family.

Fay Watson
Fay Watson
Deputy Entertainment Editor

I’m the Deputy Entertainment Editor here at GamesRadar+, covering TV and film for the Total Film and SFX sections online. I previously worked as a Senior Showbiz Reporter and SEO TV reporter at Express Online for three years. I've also written for The Resident magazines and Amateur Photographer, before specializing in entertainment.