What Happened to the NCR in the Fallout TV Show?

War.. war never changes. But Amazon’s Fallout series did signal some big changes for the NCR, the New California Republic. So if you’re wondering what happened to the NCR in the Fallout TV show, I’ve got the answer.

The NCR’s Role in Fallout Season 1 Explained

In the Fallout TV show, it’s revealed that the NCR’s capital city, Shady Sands, was nuked. All we see of the NCR is a splinter group, under the command of series antagonist Lee Moldaver.

The NCR, the New California Republic is a massive faction in the Fallout universe, the closest you can get to an actual government. They appear in Fallout 2 and also play a major, major role in Fallout: New Vegas where you can choose to side with them or, should you so choose, assassinate the NCR’s president.

So where are they in the Fallout series? We first see what appear to be a couple of NCR Rangers, but it’s revealed they’re just using the armor on their farm, suggesting they’re former rangers who walked away from the NCR. However, we don’t get the ‘proper’ NCR until the final episode, when we see Moldaver’s forces fighting under an NCR banner, from a building labeled as the NCR Headquarters.

Why the quotation marks? Because it’s unclear what ties, if any, her forces have to the NCR fans will be familiar with. They appear to be a ragtag bunch and relatively poorly equipped, and their tactics invading Vault 33 aren’t exactly disciplined. It might be that the cry of “Raiders!” was right, that many of Moldova’s group are just raiders who she supplied with armour from the old NCR HQ.

Whatever the case, by the time the credits roll, the Brotherhood of Steel has annihilated many of this faction’s members.

Is the NCR still out there in the Fallout universe?

If you take the Fallout show as canon, the New California Republic is in serious, serious trouble, especially if you consider that Fallout: New Vegas’s Lonesome Road DLC also lets you nuke a chunk of NCR territory.

If there was any real chain of command left, the NCR could have retreated away from LA, perhaps towards New Vegas. Or it all that’s left of the NCR could be splinter groups like Moldaver’s may well be.

So the answer to what happened to the NCR in the Fallout TV show is that the NCR’s capital was nuked and the NCR is fragmented at best, at worst, gone.