Fallout: The Commonwealth, Caesar's Legion, Aliens, and More, Explained

Season 2 of Falloutdropped its second episode on Christmas Eve, and the Brotherhood of Steel is back in a big way after sitting out the season premiere. But don't worry, even while Episode 2 spends a lot of time catching us up with Maximus (Aaron Moten) and his armor-loving pals, it doesn't neglect any of the other main storylines. Lucy (Ella Purnell) and the Ghoul (Walton Goggins) in the desert, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan) in the big Vault-Tec vault, and Norm (Moises Arias) back in Vault 31 all have big moments this week. 

Warning: This article contains many spoilers for Fallout Season 2 Episode 2. 

Since the events of Season 1, Maximus has settled into his job with the Brotherhood, serving Elder Quintus (Michael Cristofer) in his quest to restore genuine civilization to the wasteland by gathering old technology. He's become an extremely capable fighter, as we saw when he took down a much larger member of the Brotherhood who challenged him to a fight. 

But Elder Quintus' plans for restoring civilization involve starting a civil war within the Brotherhood in order to dethrone the ruling faction from the Commonwealth. Quintus summons several other regional leaders of the Brotherhood from the Mojave Wasteland, and proposes an alliance in exchange for some of the first new power cells anybody has produced in centuries, as far as they know — a consequence of the Brotherhood gaining control of Moldaver's cold fusion technology. 

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At the very end of the episode, though, a representative from the Commonwealth (Kumail Nanjiani) shows up with some questions. We'll have to wait another week to see how that conversation goes, but in the meantime we can shed some light on what the Commonwealth Brotherhood's deal is, since we know all about these guys from the games.

What is the Commonwealth in Fallout?

In the Fallout universe before the nukes fell, the United States was split into 13 commonwealths. This is why the U.S. flag on the series has a circle of 13 stars, like the flag did in our world when the United States was new and only had 13 states. But when folks talk about "The Commonwealth," they're referring specifically to the New England Commonwealth, which includes Boston — the setting for the video game Fallout 4, which takes place about a decade before the TV show. In the game, the Brotherhood fights a war against The Institute, a group of scientists who had developed all sorts of advanced technology, including robots that could pass as humans.

If the Commonwealth Brotherhood is now the dominant faction in the Brotherhood of Steel, that would probably mean that they defeated the Institute and obtained their advanced technology — the Institute was tough to defeat because of their tech, but they weren't real fighters. None of the other branches of the Brotherhood, or anybody else in the Wasteland, could compete with that stuff when it's in the hands of actual soldiers. But now that these West Coast factions have cold fusion, the odds that they could win a fight with the Commonwealth Brotherhood improve greatly.

What's up with those folks dressed like Romans?

This week's episode introduced a major new faction in the Mojave Wasteland: Caesar's Legion. These folks were major players in the video game Fallout: New Vegas, set 15 years before the show, so it's no surprise to see them here. We have absolutely no idea what they've been up to or if they've changed any from the way they were in New Vegas, but if they're still the Caesar's Legion we know from the game, the Ghoul was absolutely right when he told Lucy not to help them — these barbarians love nothing more than committing crimes against humanity as they conquer settlements around the wasteland, and they're pretty much the most awful faction in Fallout. 

This episode didn't shed any real light on what Caesar's Legion is currently like, though, so we'll have to wait at least another week before we see if their current iteration has changed for the better. But in the meantime, Lucy has plenty of reasons to be worried.

What is Hank MacLean up to at Vault-Tec, exactly?

Last week, Hank swung by Vault 24 to pick up some of those mind-control devices we saw Mr. House (Justin Theroux) use in the season premiere. This week, he's been at an underground Vault-Tec building testing them on mice, and then people — seemingly with the aim of making a smaller version of the device that doesn't make everyone's head explode.

But why? The season premiere implied he's doing this so that Mr. House (who we're assuming is the one he called, since those devices belonged to him) would "beg" Hank to work with him. But what's the specific endgame? A bid for global domination? An army of mind-controlled slaves? We don't know, but we suspect it's something a little more pointed than generic visions of grandeur.

Norm's army of Vault-Tec managers

Norm, who's been at risk of starvation in Vault 31, thawed out all the Vault-Tec middle managers, none of whom had previously been awoken — so they seem to have absolutely no idea what's going on. Norm, smart guy that he is, takes on the role of a corporate boss and sets the group on an important team-building exercise: find a way out of the vault. The team succeeds, and now Norm and all these folks are wandering around the ruins of Los Angeles, a new wild card in all this.

It's more than possible that at least one of these folks knows more than they claim to, or are involved with Hank's scheming. We don't know any of them well enough to make any guesses about that yet, but we're expecting some big surprises from this group.

Area 51 and aliens in Fallout

Area 51 has been referenced a number of times in the Fallout video games, but this episode of the series is the first time that the franchise has actually visited it. So we don't actually know much about it, other than that it's a storehouse for advanced technology — including technology created by space aliens known as the Zetans. In this episode, a couple members of the Brotherhood of Steel open a working ice box with an alien body inside, the first time the show acknowledged the Zetans.

That scene could just be an Easter egg — the Brotherhood soldiers are much more excited about the ice box than the alien cadaver, so the alien corpse may just have been included as a joke. But it could also tease active alien involvement in the series. While the Zetans aren't usually involved in the stories told in the games, Fallout 3 had a downloadable episode called Mothership Zeta in which the player is abducted by some of these aliens and has to team up with other abductees to escape back to Earth. So it's possible some living aliens might pop up.

Fallout Season 2 is now streaming on Prime Video. New episodes drop Wednesdays. 

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