Fallout Season 1’s Ending Was Originally Even More Emotional

The conclusion to Prime Video’s first season of Fallout was dramatic, to say the least, but according to series star Ella Purnell, it could have been even more emotional.

The ending of the series’ first, incredibly successful season sees Lucy realize that her father has been lying to her for years, the vaults are just one big sham, and that her mother has been kept in a zombified state by Lee Moldaver. Purnell turns in an emotional performance as her character shoots her mother, tries to kill her father, and eventually follows Walton Goggins’ Ghoul off into the horizon. It’s a pretty pitch-perfect ending, but the original take on it was a lot heavier. 

“She has to go through the five stages of grief in such a short amount of time,” Purnell explained while speaking to GQ. “We reshot [the scene], because originally we all had a different idea of how that ending was going to go. We originally shot me killing my mum as a really emotional moment; there were a lot of tears and wailing. And it just didn’t feel right. We felt like, if she’s gonna get up and go into the wasteland, she needs to be a changed woman, and maybe her grief needs to give way to something harder.”

Related: Fallout Needs to Get Weirder in Season 2

That ending would have felt out of place within Lucy’s character arc, which sees her go from a happy-go-lucky vault dweller to a jaded killer. Multiple takes and changes in tone happen all the time on set, and it’s a testament to the creative team behind Fallout that they knew what needed to be delivered at that moment. Even Lucy’s now-iconic “Okey Dokey” was tuned to perfection. 

“We tried it so many different ways,” Purnell said when discussing her final “Okey Dokey” of the season. “Heartbroken, emotional, sad, optimistic. We tried optimistic! Didn’t work, but we tried it. Angry. Rageful. Vengeful. What helped was the note that I got from Wayne… it’s just a feeling of giving up. Of just knowing that everything is completely out of your control.”

Welcome to the Wasteland, indeed.