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This article contains spoilers for Fallout season 2 episode 1.
The first season of Amazon’s video game adaptation Fallout ends on an unsure note for many of its characters. Cheerful protagonist Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) is left reeling from the reveal that her father Hank (Kyle MacLachlan) has secretly been a Big Bad this whole time. Meanwhile, the anosmic Ghoul (Walton Goggins) remains on the hunt for his missing family and young squire Maximus (Aaron Moten) finds himself back in the good graces of the Brotherhood of Steel but separated from his most useful traveling companions.
One character’s fate that seems pretty clear, however, is that of Lucy’s Vault-bound younger brother Norm (Moises Arias). After spending the season investigating a grand conspiracy involving Vault-Tec’s post-apocalypse bunkers, Norm stumbles into the mysterious Vault 31 and makes a starting discovery. Gathered in the otherwise empty silo are cryogenic chambers containing Vault-Tec junior executives from before the nuclear apocalypse. Selected for their loyalty to company sales executive Bud Askins, the frozen folk known as “Bud’s Buds” are periodically revived and clandestinely sent into Vaults 32 and 33 serve as leaders and contribute their superior pre-nuclear Vault-Tec traits into the gene pool.
Norm’s reward for uncovering this conspiracy is death by starvation. That’s because Bud, whose brain lives on in a robotic construct resembling a Roomba, cheerfully informs Norm that there’s no way out of Vault 31 without his help and he sure as hell isn’t helping. As the season comes to a close it seems as though Norm’s only reasonable option is to pry into one of those sleep pods and take a cold nap through Fallout season 2 to come. As Fallout season 2 episode 1 reveals, however, Norm isn’t going out so easily. He resolves to defrost the junior execs rather than join them and together, they will find a way out of this mess.
Norm’s decision is certainly a welcome surprise to audiences eager to dig deeper into the story of Vault 31. It’s also, it turns out, a welcome surprise to the actor playing norm.
“Of course [not being in season 2] crossed my mind but it was definitely something I was hoping not to read in that first script,” Arias tells Den of Geek. “I was very happy being able to discover what he actually does because I also had questions – I also was on the edge of my seat, wondering how he’d survive Vault 31. It’s very exciting that he does the unthinkable and has found a way to, perhaps, get out of this vault.”
Of course, springing the junior execs from their icy slumber now means that Norm has to deal with the most terrifying force in the Fallout universe: middle management. How he will convince “Bud’s Buds” to follow his lead will be one of season 2’s biggest challenges.
“I think he balances leadership and deceptiveness quite well as he goes,” Arias says. “That’s the only way he’s going to convince these ‘super managers’ that he is the hyper, super biological species of a manger that they are all waiting for. Of course, none of that is true. He’s learning on the fly how to lead but at the same time how to balance power.”
With Lucy, the idealist; Hank, the villain; and Norm, the survivor; The MacLean family continues to lead the narrative way in Fallout season 2. Given the show’s new California filming location to affect a New Vegas desert landscape, the actors behind the MacLean family don’t get to spend as much time together. Still, the bonds they built in season 1 continues to manifest in some distinct familiar traits.
“The first season was shot in New York. We all met up a little bit more just because most of us aren’t from there, and we’re in the same general area,” Arias says. “But now with the second season being shot in California, a lot of us are from here and it’s a much vaster city so it was harder to get together. When we did there wasn’t talk about work for the most part. But there was definitely excitement about what we had just read.”
Should Norm and company make it out of Vault 31 intact, a very uncomfortable MacLean family reunion may be in the cards. Until then though, Bud’s Buds will just have to be Norm’s Network.
The first episode of Fallout season 2 is available to stream on Prime Video now. New episodes premiere Wednesdays, culminating with the finale on February 4.
The post Fallout Season 2: Moises Arias on Norm’s Icy Choice appeared first on Den of Geek.
