I know there’s this desire in the YJ fandom right now (myself included at times) for Nat to become more openly vicious or explosive like Shauna, especially after Season 3 (I’ve even seen posts advocating for her to “switch places with Shauna” in Season 4), but I can’t help but feel like that would do a disservice to both characters.
One of the main appeals of Nat and Shauna’s roles on the show is how they contrast in the ways they express trauma and anger. They both have a deep sense of self-hatred and a core belief that they poison the people they love and are therefore undeserving of closeness, but they embody it through completely different survival mechanisms. Shauna externalizes and lashes out until she has destroyed everything she could possibly risk caring about and allowing herself to love. Nat internalizes and drowns in her guilt until she has destroyed herself to the point that no one will come near her. Shauna cannot tolerate her grief and self-blame sitting inside her, so she projects it outward onto everyone around her. Nat turns it inward and lets it consume her. And in doing so, both of them continually recreate the very conditions that traumatized them in the first place. Shauna’s externalization manifests as violence, continually reinforcing her belief that she is dangerous and undeserving of love, while Nat’s internalization leaves her frozen and passive, complicit in harms she can never forgive herself for, trapping her in a relentless cycle of guilt and self-punishment.
That’s why they understand each other so deeply while also constantly clashing. Shauna sees Nat’s moral posturing as hypocrisy because she recognizes the same guilt inside her. Nat sees Shauna’s brutality and rejects it because Shauna externalizes what Nat spends her entire life trying to contain ("Keep the tiger in the cage").
I don’t want to see Nat become outwardly abusive and aggressive in the way Season 3 Shauna was. That trauma response is unique to Shauna, in the same way that Lottie’s religious fanaticism is unique, Tai’s compartmentalization and dissociation are unique, Van’s escapism, Misty’s obsession, Travis’ submission, ETC. Each character represents the many different, complex faces of trauma. The brilliance of Nat’s dark side is that it comes out through manipulation, playing the moral high ground, and remaining complicit. She has brief, fleeting moments when her anger breaks through the surface, and we see her lash out, but she almost always retreats afterward, collapsing inward and resuming her state of passivity and paralysis in the face of her guilt. Nat’s pathology has always been quieter than Shauna's, but it can be equally as destructive.
Nat's tendency to internalize her rage and trauma makes moments like her faking Javi's death and allowing him to die, covering up the truth from Travis, or taking the moral high ground during Ben’s trial so compelling. Nat’s cruelty rarely looks like Shauna’s. It looks like silence, rationalization, letting something terrible happen because intervening would force her to fully confront herself (and the fact that she's benefiting from these terrible acts). The way she drowns in her guilt and wears her remorse on her sleeve creates the illusion of innocence. And that distinction is far more interesting than simply turning her into another version of Shauna.
In Yellowjackets, “The Queen” exists in 2 realms. As the blinded Queen of hearts, and as the antler queen. I believe they exist as symbols of “the victim” and “the perpetrator”, and that their connection links them together as one and the same to serve the narrative.
I can’t recall off the top of my head if the antler queen is referred to as the antler queen in the show itself, but I do believe we are supposed to interpret the antler queen as such, as she wears a “crown”, and in season 2, Lottie makes a comment about how the queen bee needs to kill the other unborn queens to survive. The parallels intended to be drawn are clear enough that even if not directly said, I do think the antler queen is a suitable name to reference for meta analysis purposes.
THE VICTIM:
The victim angle is self explanatory. If you draw the blinded Queen of hearts card, you get hunted next. Nat draws the card and survives, and Mari draws the card and dies, but both were undoubtedly victims in that situation.
However, Nat wasn’t entirely a victim. Following with Lottie’s explanation that queens need to kill the others to survive, and Misty’s own words, she needs to let Javi die in her place if she wants to live (in a previous post I’ve mentioned how the boys are the “stags” that the antler queen needs to rip the antlers off of in order to become the queen, ie, Nat killing a boy is her taking his antlers and becoming the queen.) so yes, Nat was a victim to violence in this moment, but she was also a perpetrator.
Mari on the other hand is more complicated. Her “You deserve everything that’s coming to you” line directed at Shauna makes it clear to anyone that she wishes violence and harm to Shauna in this moment. However, she still dies. To add on, she also led them here by taking “the queen’s” side in earlier seasons. In early season 1, she tried to cozy up to Jackie, and in season 2, she was one of Lottie’s believers, only starting to question the Queen(s) in season 3. Therefore, before then she was passively leading them to this place by supporting the status quo.
THE PERPETRATOR:
The perpetrator is also very self explanatory. The three main antler queens, Lottie, Nat, and Shauna all are perpetuators of violence. I’ll focus on Lottie in her role as queen as I have a separate section for Shauna, and have already mentioned Natalie.
Lottie perpetuates spiritual violence. This type of violence comes off as peaceful but divides people by belief systems, making people feel either pressured to join, or outcasted for refusing. This can also manifest in ritualistic sacrifice.
However, Lottie herself is a victim. She’s shown to suffer from mental illness and have an isolating home life because of it. She’s also treated differently by the group, either seen as crazy or a prophet, both of which are dehumanizing. Isolation leads people to find solace in believing there’s meaning to the unknown or unexplained, leading her here to begin with.
SHAUNA:
If you put the perpetuator and victim sides into one as “the queen”, you can further look at Shauna as a personification of the symbol. For one, she’s the most important antler queen, as she’s the one we’re introduced to in the pilot.
Second, she’s also depicted as “blinded” throughout the series. In season 1 during the seance, she’s blindfolded, and in season 2 when cutting up Javi, she covers her face. This directly links her to the blinded queen of hearts card.
She literally and figuratively has to blind herself to the truth because it’s the only way she can live with herself and her choices. The narrative revolves around these choices. Most notably, the way she reacts to Jackie, or how Jackie influences her, moves the plot forward in some of its most pivotal moments. Some of her choices such as the grief she suffers as a result of losing loved ones, make her a victim. Others of which, such as hurting others, make her a perpetrator.
In every situation, like everyone else, Shauna is both a perpetrator and a victim. She blinds herself to this truth, only allowing herself to believe she is one at a time. Because of this, the cycle keeps continuing, trapping her in its vortex. Therefore, the queen is a symbol for the cycle of violence as both a perpetrator and victim
s3e10 is one of my favorite episodes just for how many little moments Lottie seems in awe of Shauna, especially when she's being cold & cruel (above examples being after threatening Natalie and overseeing Mari's butchering). Despite how fucked up everything is Lottie is completely at peace and happy the entire episode, you can tell she thinks things are finally exactly as they're meant to be.
Through early/mid s3 Lottie was lost and no longer understood what the Wilderness wanted from her, but through looking to Shauna she reconnects with It and seems to feel at one with It more than she ever has.
The hunting competition of 2x04 will always have my heart for the parallels it draws between Lottie and Nat, even at their most divided. They share the same lack of internal self-worth, driven by abuse and neglect in their childhoods, and therefore they seek this worth externally by depleting themselves in service of others (in ways that directly oppose and harm each other). This episode captures that dynamic at one of its most dysfunctional points, where Lottie and Nat’s need to be useful turns actively self-destructive.
Natalie has found a sense of worth and purpose in providing for the team as the hunter, which grants her praise and admiration she has always secretly craved, but when winter sets in and game becomes scarce (and the group’s praise of her is gradually replaced by resentment and doubt), Nat’s desperation to maintain her value leads her to push herself to the brink trudging through several feet of snow in subzero temperatures for miles every single day searching for something to bring back to the group. Every time she returns empty-handed, her sense of failure and responsibility for the group’s starvation grows.
In 2x04, Nat is directly blamed for the group’s lack of food while Lottie is favored as the group’s savior, which is quietly devastating for her (even as she attempts to mask it with defensiveness and anger). It’s reopening this wound of rejection, alienation, and perceived uselessness she has suffered her entire life, and the need to escape this feeling (along with her strong envy of Lottie) pushes her into suggesting the hunting competition, not out of practicality but out of a need to prove her worth to the group again.
Lottie is placed on a pedestal as the group’s savior, and while she’s visibly uncomfortable with their idolization of her, she doesn’t challenge it or defend Nat. Speaking up would risk losing the only thing anchoring her, the group’s belief in her. Lottie has felt the same alienation and sense of inadequacy that Nat is experiencing, and she’s finally found a way to escape that feeling through her role as the group’s prophet. After a lifetime of being seen as “sick,” this is the first time she’s been treated as valuable, even sacred. This is her first time experienced connection and what it’s like to belong. So she protects that role at all costs. Just as Nat is desperate to prove herself, Lottie is desperate to maintain the group’s faith. So she accepts the competition, even though it reinforces a dynamic that’s harming both of them.
During the competition, Lottie nearly freezes to death chasing the Wilderness, and Natalie nearly drowns trying to retrieve the white moose. Nat’s devastated sobs as she watches the moose sink, and Lottie’s gasps of pain as she lays in the snow unable to move show just how far these girls have pushed themselves in pursuit of feeling worthy. The group demands too much from both of them, and they both destroy themselves in different ways in order to fulfill the group's needs. They both act in ways that appear selfless on the surface, but are really driven by self-preservation and fulfillment, and tend to result in the destruction of themselves and those around them.
Lottie and Nat are driven by the same core wound, but their ways of treating this wound will always directly oppose each other. While one is thriving, the other is always suffering as a direct result. They are locked in opposition by the same thing that makes them most similar. It’s one of the most fascinating aspects of their dynamic, and it’s brilliantly shown in this episode.
In the Life Is Strange comics, Rachel lands a role as Ophelia in a Hamlet play. The symbolism of this is relatively straightforward. Ophelia dies young and tragically, similar to Rachel. This is the surface level interpretation of this choice.
The more nuanced use of this choice is explained by Rachel Amber herself. While reading the script with the rest of the cast, they discuss how Ophelia is defined by her tragedy. Rachel chimes in rejecting that.
Obviously, she’s talking about the Rachel Amber from the events of life is strange 1 (Whose death she had learned about earlier in the issue). She’s asking the audience to not define a tragic character by their tragedy (For example, Rachel and Ophelia are characters described as “worth more to the story in death”) ie, they’re worth more to the story when their death is used as a narrative device.
From a Doylist perspective, this is not really debatable the way Rachel implies. Rachel herself was based on Laura Palmer, another character whose death jumpstarted the story they were in. This isn’t to say Ophelia, Laura, and Rachel are not complex characters in life, because they certainly are. That being said, it’s not reasonable to ask anyone to view these characters outside of tragedy as a whole, because it is their narrative purpose and theme.
However, I do think there’s still substance to her statement. She is a version of Rachel Amber that didn’t die, and was able to survive the many struggles Rachel encountered, as well as become a more functioning human being. She (and the writer) are indirectly asking the audience to not view her as a tragic character just because she originally started out that way. This is a new version of her that’s lived a new, better life, so don’t perceive her through the lens of the girl she just barely missed becoming. This is a version of her that’s not tragic, and has grown to the point you should acknowledge their differences.
I’m wondering what your thoughts are about when the Ghoul looks at himself in the bar mirror after Lucy’s altercation with (and statement about) the Kings as feral ghouls
I hadn’t thought about these two scenes in relation to each other but now that you mention it, it is really interesting. I think it’s without question tied to how the two of them are intentional parallels. Lucy is the good to Cooper’s bad, Lucy is the optimist to Cooper’s cynic. He sees a lot of himself in her.
I think after Lucy’s “They’re just ghouls” comment, it bothered him for a few reasons. On a surface level, this woman he’s grown close to (whether he admits it) Has clearly just admitted she sees people like him as less than. In Lucy’s defense, I obviously don’t think she said it with malice towards him. But that’s part of why it bothered him, because she has no idea what she’s really saying, and she’s almost proud as she says it.
The secondary, implied reason, which I think we see when he looks at himself in the mirror, is what it tells him about himself. He’s directly said that Lucy reminds him of himself (Pre war, specifically) And I think he sees Lucy’s rejection as him rejecting himself. The Cooper Howard in the pre war scenes would hate and be disgusted by The Ghoul he’s become. He would be horrified, not just on a superficial level, but on a moral level.
And just based on how that episode ended, I think it’s safe to say that when he looked at himself in the mirror, he was questioning the kind of man he’d become, and trying to prepare himself for Lucy’s reaction.
The Implications of the “They’re Just Ghouls” Line
Lucy’s “They’re just ghouls” line was one of my favorite moments in all of season 2 because whether they choose to explore it or not, it has fascinating implications for Lucy as a character. I think, if the writers choose to, this would be an amazing opportunity to explore discrimination and its role in the show (Especially in relation to what the show refers to as the war instinct, which I made a separate post about here).
Simply put, the war instinct is where discrimination seems to start. It’s the anxiety that if you’re not on top, whoever is will get the upper hand and hurt you, and you won’t be able to protect yourself. Therefore, you must be the one who hurts others before they can hurt you. We see this with Hank, Barb, Cooper, and frankly every character to an extent.
As of season 2, this includes Lucy. Previously, she attempted to avoid hurting people, and in fact tried to help people, even if she really should’ve focused on herself. The obvious turning point of this was when she was crucified and left to die by the Legion. Had she not been saved by the ghoul, it’s very unlikely she would’ve survived.
This makes it interesting when she kills the kings, saying “They’re just ghouls” to defend her actions. Once she came down from her high, she expressed remorse over killing, so you could argue this mindset was just a result of the fact she wasn’t in the “right mind”.
However, I don’t think that’s the case. For one, it would otherwise be a useless scene to include. Second, it establishes Lucy as a victim of “the war instinct”, something that is again confirmed in the finale when she chips Hank.
I do believe Lucy still recognizes ghouls as a form of human, but I also think this line is setting up that whether she realizes it or not, she’s developing an inherent discriminatory attitude towards ghouls. I think this would be an excellent direction to take her character. Lucy is very kindhearted, but once she is taken out of the vault, a place she is safe and secure, her morals are put to the test. Now that she is in an environment where selfishness and cruelty have benefits, she has the opportunity to take actions that would’ve otherwise been socially reprehensible.
This isn’t to say that Lucy isn’t a kindhearted person, but that her nature has never been challenged at this level before, and it makes it easier to break. At this point in the series, Lucy still seems very kindhearted, but she recognizes, and loathes, that violence is sometimes a necessary action.
I don’t think Lucy is going to start going around killing every single ghoul she sees, but I do think she could begin to dehumanize feral ghouls as a means to protect herself from her own soft heart. We already see with the kings that when she’s free of inhibitions, it’s incredibly easy for her to do.
In the short term, this could merely be an obstacle towards her goal of keeping her golden rule. In the long term, this could progressively get more radical, and be used as a way to force her to reckon with how the wasteland has changed her by the near end of her character arc. Maybe (And if this is the case, likely) Cooper will begin to turn feral. Whether she has to make a choice, or just reflect, will ultimately show us the result of this development.
I’m not absolutely saying this will be explored or that the ideas I bring up will absolutely happen. Honestly, I’m not sure where they’re going with a lot of things. I’m just saying I hope this line was a hint towards further exploration as I think it has amazing potential for Lucy’s character, and the themes of the show.
The finale of seasons 1 and 2 of Fallout both end with Lucy losing one of her parents. Both are lost under very different circumstances. Both Rose and Hank express their love for Lucy in opposing ways, and I think the way Lucy “killed” them is representative of their influence on her.
At the end of season 1, Lucy discovers that despite what she believed, Rose wasn’t dead, and she’d actually been ghoulified in an atomic blast. Lucy intentionally killed her mother to end her suffering.
At the end of season 2, Lucy has complicated feelings for Hank that align more with anger. He had blown up the town of shady sands, leading to her mother’s suffering, and now mind controls people against their will in to a “happy life”. She did threaten to erase his memory (Or at least control him) so she could get the dad she loved back, but Hank erased it himself. Either she was bluffing, or she didn’t fully understand until it happened, because this was incredibly distressing for her. For the purposes of this thread, those specifics don’t matter.
We don’t know a lot about Rose, and a lot of what we do know, at least in reference to her time in Shady Sands, comes from Moldaver. I think what can be agreed upon is that she loved Lucy, and bringing her to Shady Sands was an act of love. Taking her out of the vault and in to the wasteland to find Shady Sands was on the surface a “bad”decision. But with the context that Shady Sands was remarkably safe, and that Hank’s and Vault Tec’s intentions were being rightfully questioned, it can easily be understood as the “right” decision. In other words, the decision itself seems inherently wrong, but the context seems inherently right.
Hank directly expresses his intentions multiple times. He directly states that what he did to shady sands, and the mind control device he’s using, are things he’s doing because he loves Lucy, and he’s trying to create the world he believes she deserves to live in. The context and reasoning of his actions seems well intentioned, but the actions themselves are morally abhorrent.
Lucy as a character presents the question of if she is morally righteous, or if she just isn’t capable of harm (Or harm as she would identify it). In season 1, the answer to this seems obvious. Lucy does not harm until absolutely necessary, and avoids it as much as possible. This is clearly because she is trying to follow the golden rule and be a good person.
This becomes more complicated in season 2, but it started when she killed Rose. For the first time, Lucy is completely under the impression that harming someone is the right thing to do. And in this case, there’s a good argument for it. Rose is a feral ghoul, and doesn’t “live” in any meaningful way beyond sitting in the chair. Lucy’s actions are harmful, but they’re justified, because the good of the action outweighs the bad. (Quick side note, if you mention any moments prior to this in season 1 where Lucy harmed people, those were all self defense.)
Lucy’s actions towards Hank in season 2 mirror this. Lucy is outraged by what Hank is doing with the mind control chip, understanding the action to be wrong. What’s interesting is in the season 2 finale, she puts the chip on him, saying they’ll go home, and she’ll make him the father she wants him to be. This is clearly an entirely selfish action. Lucy has expressed a belief that these chips are morally wrong, yet when given the opportunity to use them for her own gain, she takes it. This doesn’t end up working out for her, as Hank erases his own memory.
This symbolizes the change in Lucy’s morals, as she’s suddenly taking an action for her own selfish gain, knowing she disagrees with it. It’s also possible that while Lucy thinks this is wrong, she doesn’t fully understand why she thinks it’s wrong. This allows for cognitive dissonance, something I expect we’ll see more of from Lucy.
I think this works to show us what Rose and Hank have both taught Lucy. While we would typically associate Lucy with being a kindhearted person the way we likely see Rose, she’s beginning to show cracks. She is horrified by Hank, and yet she is taking the same actions as him when she believes it benefits her.
Lucy’s entire character arc is about pairing her own good nature with what needs to be done to survive the wasteland. While I’m unsure how future finales will continue this, I do believe the finales of seasons 1 and 2 worked to show how Lucy’s upbringing plays a role in her story. Rose and her role in Lucy’s life embody the “selfless” aspects of love, whereas Hank and his role in Lucy’s life embodies the “selfish” aspects of love.
Disclaimer: This is just stuff that seems reasonable to me, or feels like it’s being set up. If you disagree with anything I say that’s completely okay. Also this list is in no particular order other than just the order I thought of them in.
1) It’s going to be a repeat of last season in the sense that this time the ghoul is alone for the first half of the season before Max and Lucy have to meet up with him in the second half.
2) The comic relief of this season will be memory wiped Hank being taken care of by Lucy, but it will (hopefully) turn in to an emotional exploration of her upbringing and trauma since she’s learned the truth about both Hank and Rose. To add on, maybe Lucy’s relationship with Hank is paralleled to Janey and Cooper? I think when (and I hope this isn’t next season) we find out what happened to Janey post war, we’ll eventually switch from Cooper to Janey’s point of view in the pre war years.
3) Phase 2 is to FEV the vaults, though I think the fact it was left on a cliffhanger as opposed to showing it in the finale means it’ll be a longer process than just instantly mutating them. We might see gas seep in to the vaults and watch them slowly mutate as Steph watches from her office
4) Norm and Claudia romance will parallel Lucy and Max’s, and Lucy and Norm will be reunited. Or at least, have some form of communication.
5) Lucy and/or Max will find the enclave pip boy and have access to Mr House
6) Max will join the NCR (Going back to where he started as the ghoul implies) but like the brotherhood he’ll find his own issues with it
7) Through Lucy and Cooper’s separation, we will see them take on aspects of each others personality to show their growth but this will cause friction (Max might think she’s changed too much from the ideal he had in his head, and Cooper will be vulnerable enough to cause more roadblocks for himself)
8) Thaddeus will transform into something. Not sure what. Some people think centaur. I’m not sold on that personally.
9) I think we’ll see all three main characters take on new uniforms. The ghoul will wear his Cooper cowboy outfit, Max will have NCR gear, and Lucy will either change something about her vault suit, or get a new one entirely
10) Im genuinely not sure how the next season will go storyline wise but I think by the end they’ll have set up all three main characters being together and phase 2 of the vaults being major players in the 4th season
Something I find so interesting about Yellowjackets is the use of passive violence as a gateway in to real harm. Both in the show and in real life, people often express their disdain indirectly as a way to preserve peace among the group, and this rarely if ever works out well.
There’s many examples of passive violence in Yellowjackets, but Shauna’s journals is an interesting symbol because of its role in the story. We are introduced to the journals as Shauna’s means of “making sense of the world”. Journaling is a real, and helpful coping mechanism. The issue comes from what we later learn about it, that she’s been using these journals to complain about her best friend Jackie.
What’s helpful about journaling is that it helps you get down to the real problem. When you don’t understand, you just keeping writing the most honest, and often harsh things you can until you realize what’s going on. This is what Shauna likely started off doing, and technically, it’s what she is doing. However, she is only going so far as acknowledging the problem and taking no productive action towards fixing it.
An often used retort to this is that Jackie’s behavior indicates that she doesn’t listen and just bulldozes Shauna. Which is true, but we still don’t see Shauna take a productive approach. Rather than stand her ground, she allows herself to be bulldozed. They talk about the problem, but never any solutions. This leads to further resentment, which when left unchecked, will boil over and explode, scalding everyone involved in the process, leading to what can be (and in this case is) irreparable damage.
Often, people express feelings to everyone except the one person who deserves to hear it. In reality, telling that person could be the right thing, and maybe exactly what they need to hear, even if they don’t listen. While I don’t want to pretend Shauna and Jackie’s situation could’ve easily been solved with communication, I do believe Shauna’s journal is one of the symbols used to show how passive violence and a refusal to change a harmful situation leads to real harm.
I know this is mostly used as a comedy device, but there's something to be said about the vault-dwellers' disproportionate responses to almost everything bad that happens: most recently, the fact that their Overseer has potentially murdered a man under her care and stuffed him in the garbage disposal is brushed aside, but the fact that she is Canadian causes general outrage. Norm (the black sheep) and Steph (the most recently defrosted manager) are the exceptions to this. For example, in s1, when the only cause for debate is whether they should teach the raiders Shakespeare or Marlowe first, Steph and Norm are the only ones who seem to respond in an expected way (i.e. with anger towards the intruders who brutally killed like half of their population, and demanding for some kind of justice to be served).
We see these disproportionate reactions in Lucy, too. It's somewhat unpleasant for her to saw off Wilzig's head, and to make jerky out of human flesh, but it's not shocking. After she and the Ghoul have maimed each other, an event that would reasonably be traumatic for someone with almost no experience of having either inflicted or experienced that type of extreme violence before, Lucy complains to Snip Snip about the Ghoul's rudeness. Not the harm he has subjected her to, personally, but the way he deviates from the mandatory politeness that structures her vault. When the Legion raises the question of who will get to rape her first, her first complaint is that they're being indecent (and that the notion of prima noctis isn't even historically correct!!). Similarly, she's upset about what Hank has done to Shady Sands, but she has so far not even alluded to the things he has done that affect her personally (like purposely bombing the place where her mother lived and effectively killing her; lying to her and her brother their entire lives; being complicit in the destruction of the world when they've always been told that they're the saviors of the world, etc.).
This is why Lucy sometimes feels a bit cartoonish to me still. It's one of the funny quirks of her character, but I had hoped that s2 would let her begin to express more "natural" emotional responses (anger and fear when people threaten or hurt her, for example). The first time she does this is when Cooper betrays her, and that's why I like it so much: they both expressed very human and intense emotions in that scene, much more so than Lucy's typical Now That's Not Very Nice, Sir! reactions. I hope that the finale will move her even further in that direction, for example if she finally kills Hank (instead of insisting that he needs to stand trial back in the vault, where he will be sentenced to, idk, community service for 2 weeks? Forced Marlowe lessons with Marianne the Vault Scholar?)
While a lot of people, fairly, found season 2 episode 6 to be an episode they didn’t really care about, I found it to be a very fascinating one. It explores a topic that I’m unsure how to word, but Hank refers to as “The War Instinct”. It’s the idea that people have this innate desire to be on top. Hank generalizes it more as a desire to go to war, but I personally think it’s more complicated than that.
First, let’s establish some other things that happen in this episode that I believe are also related to “the war instinct” that Hank describes:
- Barb saying she’s doing what she’s doing for Janey. Cooper asks her if she’s really willing to end the world for their daughter, and she responds “Wouldn’t you?”
- Reg arguing that they deserve to have whatever they want, because their ancestors were selfish, resulting in him and the other vault dwellers living comfortably. Therefore, they should also be selfish in order to continue to live comfortably.
- This happened in the episode before, but Cooper sacrificing Lucy if it meant he gets to see his family (Possibly worth noting that Lucy is, at least in her own eyes, and embodiment of goodness).
To be clear, what Hank calls the war instinct is less an interest in causing conflict, but rather a fear of conflict, and a fear of loss of control. The desire to be a top dog comes from the fear that, if you are not in control, you will be left behind. The only way to protect you and yours is to ensure their safety yourself.
A theme Fallout is keenly aware of is the idea that the victor writes history and controls the direction the world goes while they’re in charge. Even after an empires death, its philosophies and politics will set the stage for where the next era starts, ensuring their legacy is engrained in history. Hank directly says that the reason he destroyed Shady Sands was because of its success. It threatened his vision of the future because it proved another vision could take over.
This is even more direct with Barb’s reasoning of why she works for Vault Tec. As someone on the inside, she knows their real plans. She knows that the plans they have for those “below” them are sinister. When you are low on the hierarchy, even something like a vault, an attempt to be saved from the destruction out of your control, is just caging you into an even worse fate. By getting as high on the ladder as she can, she has the greatest chance to save herself and her family. Ultimately, the war instinct is an act of preservation in the face of fear.
This ties us into Reg’s club and its meaning in the episode. What would otherwise be seen as something out of place, or maybe something put in for the sake of having nowhere else to put it, actually does have a thematic purpose. Though, rather than being the cause of the war instinct, it is the effect.
When someone seeks preservation the way Hank and Barb do, their ultimate goal would be a comfortable life. A comfortable life guarantees that any worries or concerns don’t feel life threatening. The war instinct, in both Hank and Barb, causes them to dehumanize those that would suffer at their hand. This denial acts to help them cope with the harm they do onto others. They become selfish and think of their life as a strategy game, because it’s the only way they can guarantee their survival.
Reg’s scenes act as a way to show the audience that the war instinct and the selfishness it requires doesn’t go away once it has succeeded. Instead, it evolves, and to an extent becomes unsustainable.
To be clear, both Reg and Betty are displaying “the war instinct”. Both want their side to come on top, and both are doing it out of preservation. Betty has more of a “good of the group” mindset, wanting everyone to make sacrifices to sustain the group as a whole while she figures out a solution. Reg on the other hand acts selfishly. He portrays his interest as for the support group, but it’s clearly him realizing that he will be liked if he gives this group what they want. Both Betty and Reg act out of a fear of losing control, but Betty’s is more tied to needs, and Reg is more tied to wants.
The war instinct is portrayed in a nuanced manner throughout the show. It is portrayed as both the problem, and the solution to the problem. Acknowledging it will never go away and will likely be the doom of humanity is the broadest way to explain its thematic role.
What I find interesting about it is that it leads to a philosophical question about what’s right and wrong when it comes to this instinct. I’d say the show distinguishes right and wrong through selfish vs selfless. Almost all displays of the war instinct have both aspects, but one noticeably outweighs the other. Barb is trying to protect Janey, but as Cooper points out, she’s willing to kill other mothers and daughters to do it. Betty is trying to take away Reg’s offerings to his community, but it’s because it will only serve to shorten the chances the vault has of surviving while she works to get Steph to give them more water.
But again, it’s not that easy either. The show also portrayed selfish and selfless and the deciding factor of who lives and who dies. The ghoul has survived in the wasteland so long because he actively makes a choice to be selfish. Lucy has nearly died a multitude of times because she has tried putting others over herself.
When Hank tells Lucy that wars are fought over nothing, he’s really telling us the conclusion of the themes of the show. Selfishness and fear are a conundrum that locks its victims in. When you’re born into a world ripe with selfishness and fear, no matter how much selflessness could theoretically free you, continuing the cycle is the only realistic way to have a chance of making it out alive on your terms.
Uggggh, crazy how the controlled people in Hank's evil little factory have the exact same mannerisms as the vaulties from Vault 33. Like this is fucking horror movie grade shit for Lucy, because yes, part of her sees how all these people are forced to contort themselves into whatever shape Hank wants them to be, but part of her is just seeing HOME. Which she misses, despite knowing it was never real. And now she is presented with the same choice as the controlled people: don't you want things to be simple and safe (again)? And, just like the controlled people, the only way she can say yes is by forgetting everything she came to know.
I find the difference in how Max and Lucy approach ethics and empathy to be interesting in eps 3 and 4 this season.
For Lucy, it feels like her morality is largely based in rules and logic. She grew up in a very structured environment so for her being 'good' was much easier. There were established ways to handle disagreements that culturally everyone was already aware of and participated in.
One of the biggest adjustments she's had to make in her thinking as she has explored the surface is that no one else has the same HR handbook she's playing from.
However, her approach to ethics means she is able to shift her logic around and justify things to herself because it still fits within her rules. Like how she justifies both her continued use of chems and delight in destroying the ghouls outside of New Vegas.
Maximus, on the other hand, seems to have a much more innate sense of morality and empathy. He was raised in the Brotherhood which means he's also been conditioned his entire life, but for him he has been taught to use violence to exert control.
And yet even in season one he sees the truth of the world, everyone is trying to 'save' the world, they just disagree on how. In other words, all of these factions think that they are at least in pursuit of an ultimate good. But really it's more of the logic gymnastics that Lucy tends to employ, people able to justify things by convincing themselves they are doing it for the greater good.
That's why so many of things he does are snap decisions made when there is an immediate problem or threat. Giving Lucy Wilzig's head and going back to the BoS with a decoy, killing Xander when he threatens the Ghoul children.
Lucy and Maximus were both indoctrinated, raised to be tools within the power structures they served. Lucy has rigidly adhered to that indoctrination however, even knowing that the well of knowledge she's drawing from is poisoned. Max hasn't sat down and examined things, but he consistently makes decisions that are outside of the programming he's been given.
I don't know exactly what this will mean or how things will change as the season continues, but I'm definitely intrigued.
Something I immediately locked on to in the latest Fallout episode was when Norm was asked about Phase 2, “Future Enterprise Ventures”. I think it’s no coincidence this happens to have the same initials as FEV, the Forced Evolutionary Virus. I don’t think we have enough information to come to a sure conclusion, but here’s my presumption on what I think it is.
Something I found odd about the residents of Vault 31 is that they seem more naive/well intentioned than say, Steph or Hank, despite all being meant to serve the same purpose. I think some, like the man who asked Norm about phase 2, know more than they’re letting on. I believe he likely meant FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus) but coded his language to determine whether or not Norman knew.
The forced evolutionary virus was originally created as a way to make a superhuman, which instead created super mutants. We know Vault Tec experimented with FEV (Players of Fallout 3 will recall Vault 87). So, pre war humans wanted to experiment with FEV to create super humans, and the triad of vaults experiments’ is intended to create super managers. My theory is that after the vaults experiment is considered over, phase 2 is to subject vault residents to FEV to “perfect” them.
I’m hesitant about this theory because there’s a lot of factors we don’t know, such as where they would access FEV, especially if other vaults tested it and failed. Or even alternatively if there was a possibility of a vault that “perfected” it, how would they get access to that strain? I’m not positive I’m correct, but I am positive that Future Enterprise Ventures is intended to be code for FEV.
If you have any thoughts, feel free to share. I was going to wait until the next episode in hopes we get any more clues, but I decided to just mention it now instead.
When I first watched season 1 of Fallout, I had a fan theory that Lucy was a descendent of the ghoul, which I kept to myself. Since starting the second season, I’ve tried to make an effort to take glimpses in to the fandom, and was shocked to learn that my theory was not only unpopular, but assumed to be completely ridiculous. Since then I’ve seen other things that lead me to believe it could be possible, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to put it out in to the world.
Something I strongly want to clarify before I say anything is that this theory is in no way intended to invalidate people who ship the ghoul and Lucy, nor is it meant to claim there is anything morally wrong with doing so. I say this because through my brief glimpses in to the fandom discussion, I’ve seen people under the impression this theory is meant to do so. I can’t speak for anyone else who believes this theory, as I haven’t actually seen anybody else support it, only mentions of it. But it’s not my intention to do that. If anything, this post is intended to at the very least explain the reasoning behind it, and at most convince anyone it’s plausible.
So, the theory is that Lucy is a direct descendent of the ghoul. Or more specifically, that she’s a direct descendent of Janey, the ghouls daughter he’s searching for. So, here’s my various reasons I think this is plausible:
“I have worked hard to make sure we go in to a special vault for management where we will oversee all of the other vaults”.
In the “No dogs in the vault” scene, Barb tells Cooper that she’s working to get them in to a vault for management that oversees all the other vaults. Now, the most direct understanding of this is that the vault she’s working to end up in is a vault for Vault Tec higher ups that oversees all other vaults. Though, later in this season, “management” becomes an important word used in reference to the vault(s) Lucy and her family are from. This could indicate the vaults she’s trying to get in to are the super manager vaults.
A fair rebuttal would be that she specified it looks over all vaults, and not just two others. Fair. However this happened before the bombs dropped, and clearly they’re still in the process of trying to figure out exactly how they plan on making the vaults work. It’s possible that at the time, Vault 31 would’ve also been used to monitor other vaults due to their unique circumstance of having guaranteed managers in cryo stasis, making them more likely than other vaults to have living residents further in to the future.
I can’t find the interview, but I recall at one point Walter Goggins said that in fallout season 2, we learn something about his relationship with Lucy that he didn’t see coming. Initially, I assumed this would mean they’d go in a romantic direction with their relationship, as that’s the only thing I could think, besides being related, that would be considered hard to see coming.
What changed my mind is that Ella Purnell revealed she’s annoyed that she gets asked about Ghoulcy, and it doesn’t seem like a ship she personally likes. I think if the ghoul and Lucy had any explicitly romantic scenes, or any clear indication that’s where their storyline was going, Ella wouldn’t be allowed to be so forthcoming with any dislike she has towards it. Celebrities are media trained to try to avoid upsetting fans, and I’d be shocked if this was something she was willing to say while knowing it’s not only popular, but going to be canonized as soon as by the end of the season.
And- This will come up later in the post- I think it’s possible the jokes about incest and how so many of the vault residents are related could possibly be a subtle attempt to hint that everyone in Vault 33 is related to one person, in this case, the ghoul. I’ll address this point when I get to the section on how I think this theory could fit in to the ghouls narrative, but just keep it in mind for now.
For my last direct point, in the most recent episode, Steph wanted Betty to get a box from Hank’s room as it has something personal in it. Recently, we saw a flashback of Barb packing a box with things to take to the vault she intends to go to. It’s possible this is a situation where we were introduced to something that will be important later in the story. It’s the only notable box we’ve seen so far, and Steph needs a box that’s notable. If it is Barb’s box, it would support my theory that her and Janey did live in this vault.
A fair argument to this would be that she says it’s in Hank’s room, and doesn’t say it’s not his. Fair, however if Barbara and Janey are no longer living there, then somebody would’ve taken their belongings, and it’s possible that’ll be Hank, especially if something of Barb’s is significant. Therefore, it would be Hank’s box now.
I would also like to take a second to bring up a point of criticism I’ve seen against this idea, which is that Walter Goggins confirmed in an interview that, “I don’t have father-daughter energy” when referring to the dynamic between the ghoul and Lucy, as Cooper only sees Janey as his daughter. I don’t think this disproves anything, as even if the theory is true, there’s currently no reason for him to believe Lucy is descended from him. And even if she is, being related doesn’t mean you have to have a familial relationship with that person, especially if it’s distant, as they would be.
So, what exactly I think will happen is that the ghoul will turn Lucy in to Hank in exchange for information of where Barbara and Janey are. We will learn that Hank knows about their whereabouts because they were in the same vault as him. We will learn that because Janey was only related to and not a Vault Tec employee herself, she was put in Vault 33 (or 32). She had a child, maybe more. They, and by extension Janey, are part of the small family tree that makes up the vaults. Janey is dead. But Barbara had been cryogenically frozen, and maybe moved to another location (Or otherwise, still alive).
How I think this will fit in to Cooper’s story: I think learning one of the people he was looking for (And talked about as if he’d find them) will cause him to go through grief in the next season. Upon discovering Lucy and the rest of her vault are his descendants, he’ll question what family means to him. This could incentive him to help Lucy and her vault in the future (But first he would need to develop that affection for them- he doesn’t currently view Lucy as a daughter. Will that change, or will he view his descendants as something else? Perhaps a season of character development will tell).
I think this would also change what family means to Lucy. We see with her “They’re just ghouls” line that she’s developing a prejudice for them, and she already has complicated feelings for her father. The antagonization she would feel for both ghouls and her family could lend to further develop her relationship with the ghoul as something more antagonistic, swapping the dynamic they had in season 1. In this case, the ghoul would seek her companionship, and she would view him as a means to an end. This would be an excellent way for them to grow, and continue to see themselves as parts of themselves they hate, as they will now have disdain for the parts of the other that mirror their former self.
This is just a theory and you by no means have to agree with me, but if you read this entire thread I at the very least hope that if you don’t agree, I’ve convinced you this idea has some level of merit. I plan on making some other fallout threads, so I hope you’re willing to hear me out on those, if not this one.
Hello there 🐻 this is my first time posting art on Tumblr( some of you might know me from the Lottieshauna niche on that god forsaken platform ) and prob I'll keep posting my stuff here since now it's an rlly bad idea to upload it anywhere but here
Blazing in Squids @blazinginsquids - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
