Fallout show will reveal Vault Boy’s origin story and count as canon

First pictures of the series released

The Amazon Prime Fallout show launching on April 12, 2024, will feature the origin story for the iconic Vault Boy imagery that’s become something of a mascot for the franchise, according to a big piece by Vanity Fair on the upcoming show. In it, Bethesda’s Todd Howard is quoted as saying that the showrunners did come up with the idea, which is “just really smart.”

This is probably not going to be popular with all Fallout fans, but Howard said the show is going to be canon – in fact, he’s apparently even a little envious of what the show has been doing. For many years the game director resisted any pitches for shows or movies in the universe – until Jonathan Nolan presented his team’s ideas for an original story within the setting.

Men in power armor look impressive in the game as well as on the TV screen / Bethesda

“I did not want to do an interpretation of an existing story we did,” Howard says. “That was the other thing—a lot of pitches were, you know, ‘This is the movie of Fallout 3…’ I was like, ‘Yeah, we told that story.’ I don’t have a lot of interest seeing those translated. I was interested in someone telling a unique Fallout story. Treat it like a game. It gives the creators of the series their own playground to play in,” Howard said.

Vanity Fair’s images from the series show scenes from inside a vault, a lush green forest, and the wastelands the franchise is known for. Warriors from the Brotherhood of Steel in their power armor feature prominently as well.

The Fallout show will follow around three lead characters: Lucy, a vault dweller, the Brotherhood of Steel squire Maximus, and a bounty hunter called Ghoul – a name fitting for an undead without a nose, who Nolan described as “kind of hot.”

For the co-creator of the show, it was most important to find the right balance between darkness and lighter moments, just as the games have: “It’s a dark world in many ways, but the games were fun to play, fun to explore, and I think that was a mandate for us: to make sure that it was enjoyable to spend time in this universe.”

Fallout Amazon Prime show release date revealed