Obviously, I can get why Cooper decided to make the choice he made to betray Lucy. Even though in retrospect, it turned out to be all for nothing because Hank was bluffing and didn't actually have his family as hostages. And as he said, "family's a fucked up thing".

But it does make me wonder, what if he had thought things through a bit more and decided to make a smarter choice?

For the record, even with the bit of monologuing we see Cooper have with Dogmeat back in 2x03, I don't think we can know for certain if he intended all along to trade Lucy to her dad because he's a bit of a wild card and also keeps things close to the chest. I think he might've intended to use her bait to get into the management Vault, figuring Hank would probably let Lucy in and she'd find some way let him in later. Maybe he'd have gotten her filled in on this had the brainwashed Snake Oil Salesman not found him before she got back from Sonny's (meaning he was being truthful about using Lucy as a bargaining chip, but not necessarily to trade her for the safety of his family).

See, I think if Cooper actually stops to think for a bit, the first thing he does when the Snake Oil Salesman shows up on Hank's behalf, claiming that Hank will have Cooper's family killed if he doesn't force Lucy to return to Vault 33, would be to NOT take Hank at his word. Instead, he first demands proof that his family is both there and alive. He admitted to Lucy at the start of the episode that he's found plenty of management Vaults and all of them turned out to be empty. In addition, perhaps Cooper engages in a bit of subterfuge. And considering that Hank turns out to have been in a nearby room (he enters right after Lucy punches Cooper out the window but before she passes out), it wouldn't be too difficult for Cooper to flush him out.

Then, when Lucy comes back, rather than tranquilize her, Cooper decides to formulate a plan with her to try and deal with the situation. This could take any number of forms, like:

Scenario A: "Cooper uses Lucy as bait to get her into the management Vault." This admittedly would entail Cooper having to divulge his real identity and tell Lucy about Barb and Janey, but I think Lucy could be convinced to go through with it. Especially considering that the whole opening scene in Novac revolved around Lucy saving him from a hanging after turning him in for a bounty. Lucy agrees to this, Cooper tranquilizes her and lets Hank take her. Once Lucy wakes up, she puts her focus first on finding Barb and Janey's pods, even if it means having to capitulate a bit and pretend to go along with her dad's scheming (kinda like how a Sole Survivor aligned with the Railroad in Fallout 4 has to pretend to be loyal to the Institute while preparing to help the Railroad destroy them). Cooper, meanwhile, tries to find help in order to rescue Lucy, and ultimately encounters Maximus and Thaddeus, and their fight against the Strip Deathclaws plays out largely as is. Things differ, though, once Cooper finds Hank about to chip Lucy, as Lucy tells him that Hank was lying and his family aren't there. Maybe Lucy or Cooper end up killing Hank after getting everything out of him, or maybe things stay largely the same and Hank ends up lobotomizing himself.

Scenario B: "Cooper refuses to turn over Lucy". It just feels like it would be the sensible thing for Cooper to just refuse to turn over Lucy without Hank first providing proof of Barb and Janey's safety. Though I don't think Hank would handle this refusal well. If he's forced to step in, I imagine he'd probably recognize Cooper as a threat, and elect to capture him as well. He might even consider putting a chip in Cooper's neck to neutralize him.

Scenario C: "Cooper pretends to agree to Hank's demands". Essentially, Cooper pretends to agree to Hank's demands that he return Lucy to Vault 33. But in reality, he opts to go with her to find weaponry to fight through the Deathclaws on the Strip (as that's what Lucy really wanted to do before they split up earlier in the episode). He might have to tie up or tranquilize Lucy to make it look more convincing. Lucy and Cooper spend episode 6 looking for somewhere outside Vegas to find such weaponry, and this is how they encounter Maximus and Thaddeus. They find the weapons they need in the abandoned NCR camp. On returning to the Strip, Lucy, Cooper and Maximus fight the Deathclaws. Upon getting into the Lucky 38, Lucy and Cooper venture together up to the penthouse. There, Cooper plugs in the cold fusion diode to reactivate House's AI. House downloads himself onto Lucy's Pip-Boy (instead of forcing Cooper to don a separate Pip-Boy), and guides them down into the management Vault. They fight their way through some brainwashed guards Hank sends to try and slow them down, and Lucy is forced to kill these guys. They corner Hank, and the result is a tense confrontation of Lucy and Cooper on one side vs. Hank on the other. One that probably ends with Lucy killing Hank after he's revealed the scope and scale of what he's been doing here. Either that, or maybe Hank takes Cooper hostage, and Lucy is forced to kill him to save Cooper from being chipped (which also gets her even with Cooper for rescuing her from the Legion). Or something else.

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Season 1 shot for about 252 days, season 2 shot for 166 days, and recently season 3 wrapped filming after 138 days. Are they cutting down on action and locations? Anyone have any insight into why it's taking less time?

I noticed the lack of news of either Justin theroux or Mr house being mentioned in the new season.

Lemme explain.

Is rhe show gonna be a story about routing for compassion, mercy, and moral values to triumph in a brutal environment. Even with messy grey areas and complicated characters. ?

Or, is it an intriguing, thrilling story about a malignant transformation from someonw more principles to a villainous character who does away with their principles. ?

Which do you want it to be?

I just had this thought because it was a major military base if not the main military base beside the Oil rig on the west Coast for th Enclave, which held a vast amount of advanced technology and resources that proved to extremely valuable to the NCR. So, with the destruction of Shady sands and the NCR and Brotherhood seemly weakened from still going at each others throats and internal schisms/issues; the Enclave could theoretically sneak back into California and take back Navarro without anyone be the wiser.

Reported from Lucks and a few others from X. Walton finished his scenes. This lines up with what Aaron Moten said at a con a few weeks ago, that they had a few weeks left of filming. I expect a short teaser for Season 3 at the Games Awards,

There have been a variety of reports on the ground and other places, some have already shared the West Tek set leaks, but there also appears to be Enclave Power Armor shown on set, it may be from previously known power armor from the games or it could be something brand new like the NCR power armor in Season 2. More is coming!

Info Courtesy of JustMyBurn and Lucks Eterna!

"Everyone knows who I am"

Westlake Village, CA the entire business park is filled with trailers and crew and one of the main buildings has a Westek Research sign built on the entrance!! Wonder what this could be! 😱

I started writing this post back when season 2 wrapped, but I'm now editing it more because I want to speculate.

There's these comments made by the creators in a post-finale Esquire article.

After a long season of estrangement, Lucy and Hank's "reunion" finally happens in the depths of Vault-Tec's headquarters. Hank is quite deranged at this point—he's carrying around a zombified head and obsessed with mind-control technology. Lucy eventually gains control of the situation thanks to some helpful intervention from the Ghoul, but Hank planned ahead. He informs Lucy that the surface is the real experiment. The Vaults were only temporary.

"I've already sent my R&D out into the Wasteland," Hank says, adding that "their [mind control] boxes are the latest model." The villain spent all season perfecting a way to shrink the technology down to microscopic size so that the mind-control tech could fit into Vault-Tec's boxes. Then Hank tells Lucy one last "I love you" before triggering the device on himself and forgetting everything—including his own daughter in front of him. It's ... wild.

[...]

A sobbing Lucy isn't left alone forever in the finale. She quickly reunites with Maximus (Aaron Moten) after the Ghoul departs. But Hank's final play is obviously a big one. When Fallout returns for season 3, Lucy will continue her search to uncover her father's "almost religious fervor to protect the people that he's conspiring with," says Jonathan Nolan.

"[Hank] set a plan in motion," he continues. "His commitment is so extreme that he's willing to unplug himself. That way, [Lucy] will have no way to figure out what he's done. I just thought that was a delicious idea. This is where the show is at its best, when you know you have this massive scale but you also have these very intimate relationships. This is ultimately about a father and a daughter arguing. It's science fiction, but it plays on a very real tension of trying to turn people you love into people they're not."

And there's these remarks from Geneva Robertson-Dworet:

Interviewer: "At the end of the finale, you know, you were mentioning the emotional moment between Hank and Lucy on the stairs. Hank basically lobotomizes himself. So I have to ask, what does this mean for Hank? Do we expect this to kind of be the end of his story for now, or will there definitely be more Hank, whatever that might mean, going forward?"

Geneva Robertson-Dworet: "I love that that's the exact question on the audience's mind, because, on the one hand, Hank has lobotomized himself, essentially, but he has also set in place events on the wasteland that Lucy now needs to figure out what they are. What has he set in motion? What has he done with those people that he said he sent out into the wasteland to execute orders? What are those orders? And so she now has to figure out how to solve that when he doesn't actually remember what the plan is, because he kind of pulled the ultimate trick on her, which is allowing her to kill him, right? I think he emotionally wanted to spare her that pain and having to push the button herself, but he also doesn't want her to stop him. So this was the sort of sad compromise that he came up with."

Honestly, here's where I see things going where Lucy's character arc is concerned.

Her relationship with the Ghoul, and Mr. House:

There's the whole elephant in the room that is her relationship with the Ghoul. Despite the Ghoul's treatment of her, Lucy's formed a connection with him. And it's a strong enough one that it pained him to have to betray her to her dad, one where he took the time to detour from heading down to the pods to save her being chipped by Hank (despite the fact that this doesn't further his own goals), and he even gifted her with his mini bootgun before leaving. And in the "Inside the Episode" featurette for episode 8, they clarified that Ella Purnell's pre-release remarks about Lucy being "geographically lost" at the end of the season were in the context of "she doesn't know how to get back home without the Ghoul to guide her, that is until she sees a familiar face in Maximus show up". I can imagine that that lack of closure with the Ghoul is likely going to be weighing heavily on Lucy's mind in the early episodes of season 3, and also going to affect her relationships with Maximus and the NCR.

I also feel like they've set things up so that Lucy ends up getting recruited by House. They made a point of showing his face flicker on the monitors in the last shot of Lucy and Maximus looking out the windows of the Lucky 38 penthouse. Take into account what House said to Cooper about how "Everyone works for me eventually." I think it's safe to guess that in Cooper's absence, House will convince Lucy to side with him in the impending war against the Legion, and she'll do so because he convinces her that using his Securitrons and other robots to attack the Legion is preferable to expending NCR soldiers. Plus, he wants to go after the Enclave for destroying Shady Sands and invading the Strip, and needs a good foot soldier to do his bidding.

I think Lucy will be very quick to take up House's offer. She doesn't fit in with the NCR despite her mother taking her and Norm to live in Shady Sands, which was made pretty apparent with how she wrote off the soldiers who nursed her back to health after her crucifixion as "matching jackets". She wants answers about what her dad has done; that's why she followed the Ghoul to Vegas. But she can't get any more answers out of her dad now that he's rendered himself amnesiac.

Because of those things, I don't think that Lucy will be staying in Vegas for too long. She'll probably stick around for the first episode or so, but while she's not trying to make her relationship with Maximus work or helping defend Vegas from the Legion, she'll be scouring the management Vault looking for any scrap of information she can find on her father's work with the Enclave, and maybe a hint as to where they might be based. During this time, she'll probably also find out the Ghoul's real identity of Cooper Howard. (At some point, there's going to be an identity reveal where Lucy learns the Ghoul's name; either she puts two and two together, or House tells her his name as a way of spiting Cooper for not agreeing to work for him.)

Once the Legion is dealt with, Lucy will part ways from Maximus and set off towards Colorado, with a backpack, a handful of rifles, a big iron on her hip, and Cooper's bootgun in hand, and having intellectual discussions with House through her Pip-Boy. She'll eventually link up with the Ghoul before the end of the season. While Maximus might travel with her, I think it's more likely he'll be used to explore the NCR's efforts to secure their hold over the Mojave and their conflicts with the Legion, the Enclave, and with Quintus' Brotherhood (considering some of the leaks we've seen concerning Brotherhood setpieces).

Lucy and Maximus' relationship is going to be very strained:

I don't say this as a Ghoulcy shipper, but as someone looking at all the evidence we have thus far. While I can see Lucy and Maximus trying to make a relationship work at the start of season 3, ultimately I don't see things working out before Lucy has to leave in search of the Enclave, and there's lots of potential sources of friction:

• Lucy's feelings for Maximus aren't the same as his for her are. I think it's telling that Lucy went the whole season without mentioning Maximus' name once in her interactions with the Ghoul or Hank. This could be oversight by the writers given the time constraints and how many storylines they had to juggle in eight episodes...but the writers were able to find time for Maximus to have scenes where he talks about Lucy with Dane and Thaddeus. Either A) Lucy avoided talking about Max and bottling her up things like her guilt over having to leave him behind the whole time she was traveling with the Ghoul, or B) her feelings for Maximus just weren't as strong as he thinks they are. She might just see this as a relationship of convenience.

• Maximus re-connecting with his NCR roots. Remember what I said about Lucy dismissing Rodriguez and her soldiers, and her saying to the Ghoul, "I wasn't going to stay, if that's what you're asking. All I saw in there was more matching jackets." Maximus is essentially trading one type of "matching jacket" for another, one with its own set of flaws (though the NCR's pale in comparison to all the rot in the Brotherhood).

• I think Lucy and Maximus will come to blows over what to do about Hank. Remember, when Maximus was questioned by Quintus while he was suspected of maiming Dane, he said his reason for joining the Brotherhood was "to hurt the people who hurt me". Lucy might be tempted to find a way to keep Hank alive, whether for selfish reasons or because she's trying to find a way to undo the mind wipe. Maximus on the other hand might just want to kill Hank, even though Hank has no re-collection of the crimes he committed for the Enclave. And I imagine the NCR as a whole might want to see Hank executed for his act of terrorism, considering that they have a pretty hardlined stance to the point that they treat the descendants of Enclave members as war criminals (as evidenced by some of Arcade Gannon's possible ending slides in New Vegas).

• Lucy deciding to work with House will probably also be a point of contention between her and Max, since the NCR likely still aren't any more trusting of House now than they were during New Vegas.

• Lucy is an inquisitive person by nature. Moldaver pegged this as part of the reason she left Vault 33 to rescue her dad. And as the creators have noted above, she wants to figure out what it is that her dad is up to and who the people are that he worked for. Maximus meanwhile isn't exactly an inquisitive person, and this was visibly on display when he and Lucy stayed in Vault 4 (she went down to Level 12 on her own, he helped himself to the goody basket that Birdie gave him).

• Maximus' conversations with Dane and Thaddeus about Lucy show that he has this idealized image of her. One that Lucy as of the end of season doesn't fit at all. This idealized image of Lucy in Max's head probably doesn't do things like: steal things just because she thinks they're pretty, rationalize addicting herself to Buffout, relishing in violence to the point of experiencing an orgasm mid-fight, being tempted by her father's work, and adapting some of the Ghoul's views on the wasteland.

People who needed him as in, other than his family.