'Fallout' finale gives a major clue to the setting of Season 2

If you've made it through the murderous Mister Handy robot butlers, mutant marine creatures, and major truth bombs of Prime Video's Fallout series, chances are you've seen a major hint at what's coming for Season 2 in the finale.

In the eighth and final episode of the TV adaptation of Bethesda's best-selling Fallout game franchise, created by Westworld's Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, there's an overt clue as to the location of the next installment, and it all comes down to fan favourite game Fallout: New Vegas.

Obviously, we're talking Fallout's season finale here, so the spoiler Rad count is high ahead. No amount of Rad-X will save you.

In the Fallout finale, when the truth about Lucy MacLean's (Ella Purnell) finally-found dad Hank (Kyle MacLachlan) and his involvement in the nuclear destruction of California has been revealed, he escapes the Griffith Observatory wearing T-60 power armour stolen from Maximus (Aaron Moten). Cooper Howard/The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) tells Lucy her father is probably headed to the unnamed person in charge. At the very end of the episode, we see Hank stumbling toward a city in the middle of the desert. Where could you happily walk from Los Angeles in such a suit? It's none other than the dilapidated city of Las Vegas, with the unmistakable spire of The Strat tower jutting out of the skyline. But it's not Vegas as we know it.

Fans of the Fallout games will recognise this location instantly as the setting of the critically lauded Fallout game, Fallout: New Vegas, possibly hinting at the location of the second season of the Prime Video series.

If you didn't get the reference with the final shot, the end credits confirm the clue. The Fallout end credits up until this point have shown various Los Angeles–based locations in the New California Republic (NCR), from LAX to the Hollywood sign. But in the finale's ending credits, we soar along the New Vegas Strip, past a billboard advertising The Tops Hotel and Casino, and the camera zooms past the Lucky 38 casino — two key locations in New Vegas — before ending on a sign quite literally reading "Welcome to fabulous New Vegas."

Considered one of the best Fallout games, it was released by Bethesda and Obsidian in 2020, and set between Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, taking place across Arizona, Nevada, and California. In the game, you play a character known simply as a Courier, whose perilous, resurrection-dotted journey takes you across the Mojave Desert to the titular city — a complete and utter shell of Las Vegas rebuilt post-apocalypse — where factions war for control of New Vegas and the surrounding wasteland. 

The Fallout series bases its character arcs on general storylines from the Fallout game series, so it's possible the series will introduce the Courier to the likes of Lucy, Maximus, and Cooper in the second season, unless they eliminate the character and put our protagonists on their path instead.

All episodes of Fallout are now streaming on Prime Video.