From the moment we meet Lucy MacLean, the cheerful and precocious inhabitant of Ella Purnell’s shelter in main videoThe new series of apocalyptic adventures. Fall, sells us her CV as an action heroine. She’s got toned arms, gymnastics skills, fencing credentials, experience in hand-to-hand combat, firearms training, and a strong desire to please. However, it’s not until we move forward to her pre-arranged wedding night that she truly proves that she has the bravery and courage to guide us through hell and back. When she confronts her new husband Monty (Cameron Cowperthwaite) in all her glory, she doesn’t flinch or blush. She smiles and says, “Okie dokie!” before pouncing on him. It’s a moment she tells us that despite her excellent upbringing, Lucy is no shy violet. She’s a young woman who will take on challenges with as much enthusiasm as possible, meaning Lucy could venture to wander the post-nuclear hell on the surface without becoming a damsel in distress.
**Spoilers for the first two episodes of Fallnow streaming on Prime Video**
Fall is Prime Video’s brilliant television adaptation of the popular Bethesda Game Studios game. Fall video game series, produced by Western world students Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, and the show directed by co-EPs Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner. The series follows three main characters from wildly different worlds. First, there’s 21st-century Western series star Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins), who survives the nuclear apocalypse of 2077 only to remain on Earth centuries later as the chemically reanimated zombie bounty hunter known as “The Ghoul.” Then there’s Maximus (Aaron Moten), a young squire of the Brotherhood of Steel whose chivalric ambitions belie some deeply buried darker impulses. However, the impeccable protagonist FallThe first few episodes they focus on the most are none other than Lucy MacLean.
We learn that Lucy is one of the lucky descendants of 21st-century people rich enough to buy a home in one of Vault-Tec’s coveted underground bunkers to wait out the literal consequences of a nuclear apocalypse. Lucy’s good luck is not without complications. Sure, she grew up in the utopia of Vault 33, especially with her doting father Hank (Kyle MacLachlan) as overseer of the idyllic community, but her only marriage options are her cousins. (A cousin, Dave Register’s Chet, hilariously holds a torch for her despite her warnings that cousin-on-cousin procreation isn’t healthy in the long run.) So she submits to an arranged marriage with a “breeder” of her neighbor. Vault 32, fully prepared to hug whoever her boyfriend is.
When Vaults 32 and 33 are finally introduced, it soon becomes clear that Lucy’s boyfriend, Monty, comes from a harsher background than her. The new supervisor of Vault 32 (Sarita Choudhury) attributes this to the “pest” that devastated her crops. In fact, wedding guests seem eager to scrape their plates and grab food out of their neighbors’ hands. However, nothing seems to go wrong until Lucy and Monty’s union is sealed with much more than a kiss.
Lucy accompanies Monty to the couple’s new house, an adorable retro apartment with an Atomic Queen oven and a fake patio to enjoy. Instead of bothering with small talk, Monty immediately gets down to business and strips naked for his girlfriend. As we already said, Lucy doesn’t seem terrified or even nervous. She’s quite delighted with this new chapter in her life, summed up with a cheerful “Okie dokie!”
The reason I loved this moment so much is that it really sums up Lucy’s character. In fact, at the end of Fall In episode 2, he will once again give a difficult situation the old “Okie dokie!” (Although in that case, he has to decapitate a scientist recently killed by suicide in order to transport his skull across a wasteland in exchange for his kidnapped father… we’ll get to that.) While other inhabitants of the Vault fear not only the surface, but any discomfort, Lucy is open to new experiences. And if she is not completely enthusiastic, she will muster all the courage she possesses with that “can do” attitude.
And so, when Lucy wakes up from the hustle and bustle of her wedding night and begins to notice that several things are wrong (her new husband’s scars and his unquenchable thirst, the sound of screams from other bunkers) she wastes no time checking the levels. Monty’s radiation. When she realizes that he is a surface raider, she calls on all of her training to fight for his survival. Although Monty manages to stab her in the side, Lucy is still able to hit him with a broken blender, briefly knocking him unconscious.
From there, we watch as Lucy bravely joins the battle unfolding in the cornfield of Vault 33. Using nothing more than the tranquilizer darts the raiders left in the armory, she is able to protect some of her neighbors. However, in the end it is her father who comes to rescue her from her. When Monty returns for one last attempt on Lucy’s life, Hank beats his traitorous son-in-law with a shovel, hinting at a much different backstory for the mild-mannered scientist than we, or Lucy, had been led to believe.
This culminates with Hank and Lucy walking into the trap of the vile surface raider Moldaver (the true identity of Sarita Choudhury’s character). Hank saves Lucy, sacrifices himself, and leaves the surviving residents of Vault 33 to his fate. Moldaver brings Hank to the surface, triggering Lucy’s intrepid journey to the surface to retrieve her father and explore the madness that unfolded outside the vaults.
And the reason I’m so happy to follow Lucy on this journey? That “Okie dokie!” It shows that Lucy has the personality of an adventurer, willing to take on whatever her life throws at her, much more than a montage of her spinning around on gymnastics mats. Those skills of hers will only take her so far; That attitude of hers will take her to the end.
