Prime Video is atCCXPin São Paulo, Brazil this weekend and the stars of their much-anticipated adaptation of the Interplay Entertainment and Bethesda Softworks video game seriesFalloutare opening up about what to expect from the series. At the center of the post-apocalyptic story are two survivors and one ghoul who each have a chasm between each other’s worldviews. While that’s easily understandable forWalton Goggins’s cynical 200-year-old mutant,Ella PurnellandAaron Motenwere able to share how and why their respective characters, Lucy and Maximus, approach the wasteland so differently, despite both having survived The Great War that destroyed the world.
During a group interview at the convention, including Collider’sSteve Weintraub,Purnell and Moten, joined by producerJonathan Nolan, were asked howtheir survivors get by in the wastelandand how they’ll evolve as the series progresses. Moten sees Maximus and Lucy as having one major similarity despite their differences. Although Lucy is a relentlessly optimistic vault dweller approaching the wasteland for the first time and Maximus is a militaristic individual loyal to the dogmatic Brotherhood of Steel above all else, they both rely on groups to survive and ultimately further their goals. Maximus especially finds power amonghis power-suit-donning brethrenas Moten explains:
“There’s some similarities, too. I think Maximus, as well, has involved himself in a unit, it’s a military unit, the Brotherhood of Steel, but I think he just gravitated towards feeling more powerful amongst the group as opposed to on his own. I think it’s a real challenge for him as a character to feel like he is all that he should be when it is just him on his own. But I think that vault life has to be somewhat similar to that in that you are a unit continuing to keep a vault running, as well as training for the ultimate mission to come up to the surface and save the world.”
Lucy Will Become a Survivor as ‘Fallout’ Continues
The big contrast between Lucy and Maximus, as well as Lucy and The Ghoul, is that Lucy isn’t a survivor when theFallouttelevision series begins. “I think for Lucy, she’s lived a very sheltered life, literally, and she really has wanted for nothing,” Purnell adds. “She’snever really faced anywhere near the kind of challenges that Maximus or The Ghoul have.” Lucy starts the series asa resident of Vault 33, an experimental underground shelter built by Vault-Tec to house civilians in the event of atomic bombs dropping.
As she was presumably born and raised in the facility while humanity waited forthe apocalyptic world outsideto recover from the war, she’ll be unprepared for her first trip to the surface, not entirely unlikethe player character of the games. Over time, however, Purnell says she takes to the outside well and has to weigh her future in the vault:
“Her survivor identity, I think, is created by her willingness and her ability to adapt when she gets to the surface. The show and the game are all about choices, it’s all about, ‘That’s how you evolve,’ and I think Lucy is faced with so many of those so early on, of like, is she gonna stay in the vault or is she gonna leave the vault? That’s the first big choice. I think her being a survivor is actually something that is formed throughout the season rather than maybe what the audience sees when they first see her.”
Falloutsurfaces on Prime Video on June 13, 2025, in the U.S. Readour guide herefor everything you need to know about the video game adaptation.
In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits.
