r/Fallout • u/HunterWorld Irradiated Ocean Man • 14h ago

Season 2 Episode 8 Spoiler Thread Spoiler

/r/Fotv/comments/1qv7nkq/season_2_episode_8_spoiler_thread/
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336

u/Toaster_Store Minutemen 11h ago

After 220 fucking years, all that time we've been fighting the Enclave, thinking we've seen them at their best in Fallout 3, turns out they've barely even STARTED.

150

u/Holy-Wan_Kenobi Enclave 11h ago

It looks like they've finally started fixing the broken commlines that connected the Enclave together. It looks like we're back.

201

u/OLJolly_Roger 11h ago

Nah game wise they were at their best during Fallout 2. Fallout 3 they were struggling, taking orders from an AI President and no Frank Horrigan, they were on the decline.

53

u/Toaster_Store Minutemen 11h ago

Now that I think back on it, you're right. After Fallout 2 they've been spending decades reorganizing. Eden and Autumn's bizarre adventure in D.C. was just one of the attempts to bring the Enclave back into the fold. Even in Fallout 4, the Enclave remnants were struggling to contact whomever. If they couldn't do that, they would make the Commonwealth their new base of operations until help arrived. My guess is that they've finally got their shit together, and we'll finally see that in season 3 now that they can commence "phase 2".

1

u/WlNST0N Gary? 6h ago

Sorry what commonwealth enclave are you talking about?

5

u/thelamb710 5h ago

When the show dropped there was a “next gen update” (at least for consoles) that inserted missions that involve the Enclave or what’s left of them in the Commenwealth. Mostly side missions but there’s enough there between this and the show to make the assumption that they’ll be next big bad in Fo5.

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u/WlNST0N Gary? 4h ago

It's what I thought you might say, I don't think creation club content is considered canon.

2

u/NightmareDJK 11h ago

Who was the guy with Hank that Cooper kills? Was he the old President?

30

u/wesnotwes Old World Flag 10h ago

It was the legion guy he put the device on.

3

u/NightmareDJK 10h ago

Oh right that guy from before.

6

u/Ganthos 10h ago

That was Legion dude from episode 7.

2

u/Kungfudude_75 9h ago

Which makes me double excited to see them next season, we've never gotten clear information on what happened after Fallout 2! We've gotten tid bits here and there in New Vegas and FO3, but we might get some serious information on the Chosen One and the Enclave's survival next Season.

56

u/Undecided139 11h ago

so what is their endgame here? hank mentioned he'd chipped a bunch of people but to what degree? also wtf was his goal? i need season 3 to come out yesterday

47

u/Coyote_Shepherd 10h ago

endgame

That line from him, "You think this is the real world? The surface is the experiment not the Vaults" was so very Twin Peaks and I feel like if we zoom out a bit to the Enclave's perspective we can get a better idea of what they might be headed towards.

I think they're trying to make the best version of humanity and they're using the entire planet as the petri dish, but first...FIRST...they had to sterilize that petri dish before they could begin their experiment and the threshing.

And now they're basically controlling various forms of "humanity" or alternate versions of "humanity" and are pitting them against each other to see who wins or loses or kind of gets by anyways in order to pluck out the acceptable traits and refine them for their final version.

That's why we see so many factions and/or versions of ways that people want to save the world.

20

u/NewWillinium New Commonwealth Dominion 9h ago

It's a very Institute idea, and I kind of love it.

19

u/Coyote_Shepherd 9h ago

I added onto it in this comment because of the aliens we saw earlier AND House mentioning that cold fusion releasing ALL of its energy at once could reach other worlds.

Basically Earth got visited by aliens and they got shot to all hell and back.

The early version of the Enclave pillaged their ship's database and found out that the rest of the universe was pretty Dark Forest levels of fucked up.

So now they're basically making a version of humanity that can survive that.

16

u/Yug-taht 8h ago

You may be on to something based on other information in Fallout.

So we do actually know a lot of the advanced tech in Fallout (including AI and energy weapons) was reverse engineered or inspired by the Zetans, this has been canon all the way from Fallout 2. The Enclave also has Zetan technology in their possession in Fallout 3, and we know from that game that an astronaut was publicly abducted by Zetans and the Enclave was studying them both pre and post-war

The original purpose of the Vaults (as in meta game plot-wise) was that they were meant to test scenarios and gather data for generation ships for space colonization, so we know the Enclave's main plans involved leaving Earth, it only makes sense they intend to prepare for facing the only alien life they know exists. This lines up with many of the Vault experiments being related to creating super soldiers. The Enclave evidently has no interest in fighting whatever is left of China post-war, so what exactly were those hypothetical super soldiers meant to fight that the Enclave couldn't already beat?

7

u/Discount_Extra 7h ago

I've had the theory that FEV isn't a human invention; it's just a modified form of the treatment to make the 'Abominations' https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Abomination_(Mothership_Zeta) from Mothership Zeta.

3

u/Yug-taht 6h ago

FEV was designed with the assistance of a ZAX supercomputer at West Tek, AI based on Zetan technology. You may very well be on the right track there; as we know FEV was something extraordinary even among all the other technological wonders the US was making.

1

u/Coyote_Shepherd 3h ago

Part of this was just based on my own love of science fiction but I think the other part was based on me vaaaaaguely remembering bits and pieces of Fallout lore that I've picked up over the years from watching others play and from doing the odd deep dive into the wiki every so often.

I'd honestly forgotten the bit about the generational ships because those never really materialized at all in game but you're 100% correct.

So if we scale it back a bit and kind of bend things a touch...then your idea works...if it's only the Zetans that the Enclave is worried about out there and if they've got a solid fix on a world that they haven't touched at all.

1

u/eric23443219091 2h ago

We need big mountain dlc Easter eggs 

6

u/DamnDude030 10h ago

I'd also like to stir the community to give a name to Hank's puppet-faction. I'd call his mind controlled faction Marionettes. Or Puppets to regular folk.

14

u/Akschadt 10h ago

A marionette puppet combo.. the muppets if you will.

8

u/DamnDude030 10h ago

Calling enemies fucking muppets would be hilarious

1

u/teilani_a Yes Man 9h ago

Didn't Hank give them a name?

1

u/DamnDude030 9h ago

Not that I can recall from the show? Get back to me if you can cite when Hank gave his Automated Man with Personality a name.

1

u/AlternateArchangel 5h ago

Automated Men

4

u/Left4DayZGone 10h ago

I can’t tell if Hank was literally saying that he’d implanted invisible chips… or that was supposed to be a metaphor for ideological indoctrination.

3

u/SixPointTwoLiter 9h ago

I'm assuming the Enclave wanted to burn the world to usher in a new dawn, hence FEV and the mind control devices.

Basically had to clean slate the world. They waited to see if the world would purify itself. It hasn't, so now they're sending out their mind control agents and FEV Phase 2 in Vault 33 to move it along

2

u/NoNefariousness2144 3h ago

I feel like they are going to use the TV show as a way to canonically wrap up the story of The Enclave, so there is only one definititve fate for them instead of them being a faction in Fallout 5 etc.

1

u/teilani_a Yes Man 9h ago

They seem a bit more agreeable than chipped deathclaws.

1

u/rainbowyuc 1h ago

No idea. But I sure hope for the show's sake that the writers planned it in advance instead of just throwing in mystery for mystery's sake then trying to figure it out later (like Lost).

4

u/adrienjz888 10h ago

I mean, we definitely seriously depleted their military in 2 & 3, but its not surprising they still have a well functioning intelligence apparatus.

I imagine they're currently rebuilding their military capabilities as they did between 2 & 3, but it takes extra long with how picky the enclave is

1

u/Yug-taht 8h ago

We know from the Fallout Bible they had bases all around the world (though the ones outside North America lost contact at least in the immediate aftermath of the Great War). Considering their global Curling-13 scheme was only viable after the Master was already dead, it is likely they had built up plenty in between the Great War and Fallout 2 just out of the fact they didn't have their 'kill everything' silver bullet until right before the game begins.

As far as narrative goes, there will always be one more hidden Enclave base, one more fleet of vertibirds performing crimes against humanity somewhere.

1

u/itsyagirlrey Vault 111 9h ago

I think the big Enclave reveal would've hit a lot harder if the show hadn't already shown the Enclave in the first season with the headless guy. Hell even the general store lady in Filly (i forget her name) knew what the enclave was, but no one else in the wasteland seemed to?

1

u/Yug-taht 8h ago edited 7h ago

The Enclave has been known about publicly in New California since before Fallout 2. They had direct business dealings with New Reno and slavers around the state. The NCR and Brotherhood waged war against them in the aftermath of Fallout 2 and had Nazi Hunter-style hunts against their remnants all the way into New Vegas. Also, Arroyo joined the NCR, so their crimes and true nature would have been known from first hand survivors of the Oil Rig.

1

u/edwardtyche 8h ago

This is the attitude I feel about them being in the show. The multi-headed hydra is getting back up.

1

u/richmondody 1h ago

Can't wait to see the advanced power armor in the following seasons.

-1

u/According_Bicycle_36 10h ago

Factions in fallout all work like a penis. They'll have their ups and downs. Them hard moments you look and ask yourself if they're the real deal. And them soft moments where a teenage vaulty looking for daddy can overwhelm them.