The first season of Prime Video’s Fallout gleefully detonated our expectations of what an open-world video game adaptation could be. Set centuries after nuclear annihilation, the show dropped viewers into a garish, atompunk wasteland where retro-futurist Americana rubbed up against desert-dusted violence, warped humor, and deeply human stakes. Produced by Westworld’s Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, the show overflowed with unhinged characters – sheltered do-gooders, undead ghouls, power armor outfitted opportunists – and even more bizarre worlds – vaults, wastelands, and techno-religious cults, just to name a few. The result? A post-apocalypse that was weird, funny, brutal, and, crucially, unburdened by the genre’s usual self-seriousness.