[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Fallout Season 2 Episode 5 “The Wrangler.”]
In the action-packed fifth episode of Fallout titled “The Wrangler,” audiences finally get the confrontation they have been eagerly anticipating ever since the real Robert House (Justin Theroux) made his debut in the opening minutes of the series. In this pivotal installment, Lucy (Ella Purnell) and the Ghoul (Walton Goggins) arrive in New Vegas in search of Lucy’s father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), who was last seen en route to the management vault. The Ghoul, however, has an additional motive for pursuing Vault-Tec’s classified facility: It is where his wife, Barb (Frances Turner), and daughter, Janey (Teagan Meredith), are being held.
New Vegas does not hold many pleasant memories for the Ghoul. In the episode, the undead bounty hunter recalls his pre-apocalyptic life as Cooper Howard, when he visited the city with his wife and a young Hank on a business trip. During that excursion, Howard was approached by Lee Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury), who attempted to recruit him to assassinate House to prevent him from securing cold fusion, thereby enabling Vault-Tec to acquire the bombs. “It’s the only way to stop it,” she urges Cooper.
Cooper, however, has his own methods, and they don’t involve taking human life.
Lorenzo Sisti/Prime
At the Lucky 38 Casino, “Robert House” approaches Cooper with the cryptic message, “Mr. House would like to see you,” letting the audience know that Cooper is about to meet the REAL House, and not the actor who pretends to be him for the press.
In the swanky penthouse of the Lucky 38 Casino, Fallout fans get their first meeting between two titans of the series: Cooper/Ghoul and Robert House. Well, not really their first. “From the f**king toilet?” says Cooper, recalling that their actual first meeting was in a bathroom, but he was not aware of House’s identity.
“I know you came to Vegas to kill me. Did you not?” reveals House, piquing Cooper’s interest.
It appears House has a keen interest in Cooper, as their destinies are “mathematically intertwined.” He explains that he was with Cooper in Alaska when he was attacked by the “demon in the snow” and it is connected to the future…and to Barb.
He explains that he needs cold fusion to stay alive indefinitely and protect Vegas from the upcoming nuclear war. As a man whose job it is to know everything, he is still unclear who will start the war. While Cooper believes it might be Barb or Vault-Tec, House is ambiguous on the matter. He doesn’t know who, but he knows when. “I routinely design and run mathematical paradigms based on global political and socioeconomic conditions in an effort to predict future events,” so House knows when the world will end down to the exact moment: April 14, 2065, 5:17 am…
Janey’s birthday.
Curious. More curious is that when Cooper decided to join his wife in Vegas, the date changed. So somehow, Cooper figures into the end of the world. But House doesn’t understand how.
House assures Cooper that he will not drop the bombs that will destroy the world, nor by “any of the idiots at those meetings.” He believes there a mysterious other player at the table — the same person responsible for Cooper’s “demon in the snow” that attacked him many years ago when he was a mere soldier.
House is vexed by the idea that there is something he doesn’t know, while Cooper regards him as a lunatic. “I would encourage you to gaze inward, Mr. Howard,” threatens House. “To your small life. Spending your days pretending to be a cowboy while your wife is making apocalyptic proposals at board meetings, and I’m building a missile system to defend this glorious city from what’s coming! But from whom, Mr. Howard? From whom? WHO ENDS THE WORLD!? IS IT YOU!?”
YouTube/Prime Video
As Cooper fled, House labeled him a killer, abruptly ending a meeting between the two that raises serious narrative questions for the series while offering viewers the first substantive glimpse of Robert House they have been waiting for.
Using House sparingly through the season until this unveiling in Episode 5 is a masterclass in character building. And according to actor Justin Theroux, it is all part of his charm.
“I think that’s part of the enigmatic charm of House is that there’s proxy House,” explained Theroux when he sat down with TV Insider. “There are other Houses out there, but there’s only one real House. And I think that’s partly out of necessity, and also because he’s just so weird that he can’t really afford to go into the real world.”
“Even when he meets Cooper Howard in the bathroom, it’s sort of like he’s hiding beside the urinals. It’s incredibly odd,” explained Theroux. “I’ve sort of compared it to the movie The Godfather, where it’s like, Marlon Brando sort of only shows up when he’s really necessary. But Al Pacino is really the one pushing the plot, and the Godfather at a pivotal moment shows up to just show you who’s pulling the strings.”
The exchange between Goggins and Theroux plays out like a clash between two rivals, with the tension arising from one man’s conviction that the fate of the world depends on the other, while that same man is viewed in turn as a dangerous madman. It is a scene that rests heavily on the actors’ abilities and their grasp of the characters’ underlying complexity.
“I essentially summon Cooper Howard to my own home field, and I bring him up to where I live. And just that penthouse above Las Vegas is so intimidating that that does a lot of my work for me, as far as telling this person I’m in charge and this is what I believe,” explained Theroux. “It’s sort of an acting exercise where you give two people two different playing cards, and you tell them to play the value of that card. I just always saw myself as the ace of spades in that scene. And I always saw him as the six of clubs.”
“I just played it just forward, leaning into him. And Walt did such a beautiful job of sort of being made unsteady by that. And then that switches. Eventually, he, at some point, becomes the king, and I become the nine,” he continued. “It was a great scene that way, and it had a lot of movement, sort of forward and backwards to the point where it sort of drives House nuts. And he sort of shows himself to be the lunatic that he is.”
“It’s one of those delicious pieces of writing where you just kind of go, ‘Oh, this is going to be really a fun day,'” said Theroux. “Me and Walton really just wanted to make sure that we found every note in that scene and hit it at the right time.”
Fallout, Season 2, Wednesdays, Prime Video
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