‘Fallout’: Vault 31, explained

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Fallout TV series

The Fallout TV show has landed, and to glowing reviews as well. The only downside is that it’s already over; all eight episodes dropped on Amazon last night and that wait for the next season is going to be tough especially considering how the first season ended.

Initially fans suspected that the series would be a re-telling of Fallout 3’s story, and whilst it does share some elements with the 2008 game, like a young vault dweller leaving the vault in search of their father, it’s mostly a wholly original adventure. Our protagonist Lucy comes from vault 33, a vault that seems pretty normal at first. Of course, if you’re familiar with Fallout lore, you know there’s no such thing as every vault is secretly an experiment on the unsuspecting inhabitants.

We quickly find out that Vault 33 is connected with two other vaults, 31 and 32, in order to share resources. It’s even possible to apply to marry someone from another vault if an individual is incapable of finding a partner in their own vault. This is exactly what Lucy does, however, things have gone horribly wrong in Vault 32 resulting in Lucy’s father, Hank, being kidnapped and brought to the surface which kick-starts the whole adventure.

So what is Vault 31?

We know of Vault 31’s existence in the very first episode, as Hank mentions that’s where he came from, but the truth about it isn’t revealed until much later. Whilst Lucy continues searching for her father in the wasteland, her brother, Norm, who stayed underground, starts to uncover the awful truth about the three vaults.

Upon entering Vault 31, Norm meets a Brain-on-a-Roomba, (that’s literally what the Amazon Video X-Ray calls him) although he’s later revealed to be Bud Askins, a Vault-Tec executive tasked with guarding the secrets of 31. It turns out that everybody in 31 is an employee who was loyal to Vault-Tec and has been cryogenically frozen. The plan is that they would be woken up 200 years later to breed with the residents of the other two vaults and then take control of what’s left of the U.S.

The truth about Hank

Of course, Hank came from that vault, so that means he’s a part of Vault-Tec. In flashbacks we see him as an assistant executive going by the name Henry, as he nervously asks Cooper for his autograph. He was woken up and brought to Vault 33 to ensure that it survived at any cost, even if that meant dropping a nuclear bomb on Shady Sands with Lucy’s mother still there.