This article contains spoilers for Fallout episode 4, "The Ghouls". If you're not caught up with the series yet, check out our article explaining how to watch the Fallout TV show instead.
Prime Video's Fallout TV show brings the hit post-apocalyptic video game franchise to life in a new live-action caper. The series tells an original story involving three core survivors whose quests take place in a version of Los Angeles more than 200 years after the world was ravaged by nuclear war.
Episode 4 temporarily sidelines Maximus and Thaddeus' quest in favor of showing a shift in the balance of power between Lucy and her captor, The Ghoul. He attempts to sell her into the hands of some organ traders in exchange for some life-saving meds. Inside, Lucy proves just how resilient she can be. Meanwhile, Norm and Chet uncover some shocking news about the recent Raider attack. Here's a recap of everything that happened in Fallout episode 4.
Meeting Roger
We pick back up with The Ghoul leading Lucy around the Wastes. As they pass Westside Clinic, they hear someone shouting and grunting, and The Ghoul forces Lucy inside the building. They head towards the noises, finding a Ghoul, whom our gunslinger knows as Roger. Roger is surprised to see The Ghoul, and appear to have run out of a stash of the stabilizing substance; our Ghoul asks Roger how he’s doing; unsurprisingly, he's felt better.
Roger is “turning”, becoming a feral ghoul, and poses a serious threat to them both if they don't leave. Realizing he’s run out of time, he begs for some vials (but The Ghoul's got none left). The gunslinger distracts Roger with memories of Old World food; whilst he’s distracted, he executes Roger and sets about carving up and eating the body, much to Lucy’s disgust.
The Ghoul sees this as a necessity for survival. Lucy offers up a lecture about the Vault suffering through a great plague, leading many of their citizens to starve, before doing something like this. When she asks why he keeps on going and living like this; in turn, he forces her to do some of the butchering for him. Yikes.
We’re back to Vault 33; Woody and Reg are putting up posters for the next Overseer election, whilst watching a Raider (through a window) and discussing what info they’ve tried to get from him, even though they’ve learned nothing. Elsewhere, Betty seeks out Norman. He's the last MacLean in the Vault, and she wants him to realize how much weight his voice carries in here because of that name.
Back to the Wastes; Lucy looks like she’s ready to collapse. They stop next to a trough containing some irradiated water, and she finally gives in to her thirst. At the trough, The Ghoul has a coughing fit, and Lucy takes this opportunity to flee. She runs to a massive hole in the ground just around the corner, and the Ghoul lassos and ties her up from behind. She bites off his finger as tries to tie her up; in exchange (and impressed by her instincts), he repays the deed by severing her own index finger.
The truth of Vault 32
Back to Vault 33. Steph stops by to see how Chet’s doing; not great, is the answer. Lucy’s gone, and he’s lost his job as Gatekeeper. Steph’s brought some of her late husband’s things along, and Chet (awkwardly) tries to comfort her. She tells him it would mean a lot to her if he kept the stuff, dresses him in Bert’s cardigan and scarf and, overcome by emotion, starts to make out with him. But just as things look to properly heat up, Steph starts going into labor.
Lucy and The Ghoul arrive at a Super Duper Mart parking lot. The Ghoul buzzes an intercom and offers the voice on the other end a “near-mint condition” female for two months’ supply of vials. The other voice says this transaction will require a physical evaluation and asks for the girl to be sent inside. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Lucy hesitates, but the Ghoul forces her to go through the door. Just as she enters, The Ghoul keels over, exhausted.
Lucy enters the building, and the doors seal behind her where she’s greeted by a Mr. Handy robot (voiced by none other than Matt Berry). Noting that she’s lost a finger, the robot says it will take care of her and invites Lucy to follow him into a clinic of sorts. The polite robot asks her to take a seat and pulls open a drawer… full of spare fingers… and fixes her up.
The robot asks for her preference for dressing the wound, and it briefly seems Lucy’s fortune has finally turned around. She lets slip just how poorly The Ghoul’s been treating her and admits she thought he’d just sold her into slavery. The robot scoffs, disgusted… and proudly reveals that he’s only going to harvest her organs instead, before shooting her with a tranquilizer dart from one of his arms.
Back in Vault 33, Norm brings dessert down for the prisoners. The other Vault Dweller stationed there is disappointed. Norm lets her take it away, as no one will know. Then, he looks through the slot in the door at one of the prisoners, admonishing them for what they did to the ‘innocent’ people of Vault 33. The Raider stops him shutting the slot, retorting ominously that the Dwellers were up to something that was ‘anything but innocent’.
Later, Norm cycles through Vault 33’s comms logs. He finds he has been denied access to Vault 32’s records, for some reason and seeks out Chet to ask why. Chet opens the door and is thrilled when Norm invites him out of the house whilst Steph’s giving birth in the background.
The pair pick through the rubble in the inter-Vault doorway (leftover from Moldaver’s bomb) and arrive in Vault 32. Chet’s stunned by the burned fields of crops and Norm declares that whatever happened here happened a long time ago. The pair continue to explore other parts of the Vault by torchlight and come across another dead Vault Dweller. That victim’s Pip-Boy last picked up a biosignal over two years ago… so what’s been happening since?
Things only look worse as they continue to wander Vault 32’s halls. The grim feeling is that the denizens of Vault 32 took one another out, but why? And as Chet asks the question, Norm sees a terrifying message scrawled on the wall: “We know the truth”. The truth of what?!
Lucy's transformation
At the store, Lucy wakes up to find herself strapped to a gurney being pushed past the store’s refrigerator units, which have been repurposed to contain humans and ghouls. Mr. Handy pushes the body in front of two random survivors sitting on a sofa and watching cartoons. They accept The Ghoul’s trade for 60 vials. They tell “Snip-Snip” to crack on with the procedure ASAP, so things are ready for the next pick-up.
Snip-Snip’s buzzsaw arm spins up over Lucy. She kicks the arm with one of her legs, and the blade luckily swings out and strikes the restraints, allowing her to slip away. As the robot bears down on her, she grabs the paddles of a nearby defibrillator unit and fries the robot’s circuits, stunning it.
Lucy returns to the two goons and orders them to surrender, threatening to hurt Snip-Snip if they don’t. They’re hardly moved by her threat… until she reveals she’s filled the bot’s syringes with Abraxo drainage fluid. The Wastelanders are suddenly willing to let Lucy walk out of the Mart scot-free, but she orders them to release their other prisoners. The two guys open most of the units and the survivors scramble out of the store. The units containing ghouls remain closed. Lucy, annoyed, demands they’re all freed, and fires off one of the poisonous darts as a threat. Seeing she’s serious, they do as asked, reluctantly.
Lucy turns and tells the remaining prisoners to not be scared and to leave. Unfortunately, these were ghouls who’d turned, and they rush, zombie-like, towards the live survivors. Lucy ducks into hiding as the ghouls attack the other survivors. The two guys manage to take all but one of the ghouls out but are killed in the process.
Lucy stands up from her hiding spot and lays eyes on a twitching ghoul called Martha, who is on the cusp of turning just like Roger did. Lucy unsuccessfully tries to reason with her, calling out her name and trying to reach the person inside. Walking backward, her foot nudges a pistol on the ground, and when Martha ends up lunging right for her, Lucy’s left with no choice but to defend herself, swinging the pistol up and firing off a shot.
Back in Vault 32, Norm and Chet crawl into an Overseer’s office, finding the place a mess, and a decaying body strapped to the chair. Norm logs into the Overseer’s terminal and learns something truly shocking: the Raiders got in because Vault 32’s entrance was opened from the outside. Worse, they used his mother’s Pip-Boy to open it!
Back on the surface, Lucy emerges from the store, sporting a new and improved armored Vault-suit look. She finds The Ghoul on the ground and asks him if he’ll turn like them without any of the meds. Lucy pronounces that she’ll never be like The Ghoul (even if she ends up looking like him), leaves him a handful of the stabilizers and walks off into the Wasteland, alone.
The episode ends with The Ghoul back on his feet in the store, loading up his back with as many vials as he can carry. The episode then ends with him sitting down on the sofa to watch a recording of a Cooper Howard show… the same one he was seen recording earlier in the series.
All eight episodes of the Fallout TV show are now streaming on Prime Video.
