New Fallout trailer gives us our best look yet at Walton Goggins’ fascinating Ghoul

07.03.2024 - 14:25 / polygon.com / Walton Goggins / Jonathan Nolan / Ella Purnell

A new trailer for Prime Video’s Fallout TV series released Thursday gives us our best look yet at show’s grim post-apocalyptic story — and all the funny shit that’s going to happen amid the suffering. We also get a better sense of who Walton Goggins’ Ghoul character is, both before and after the nuclear apocalypse that establishes the foundation of Fallout.

The new Fallout trailer reveals that Goggins’ Ghoul was seemingly a happy family man before the nukes dropped, and a slick salesman that sold space in the vaults in which survivors took refuge. The Ghoul may also be an uneasy ally of sorts to Lucy, Ella Purnell’s happy-go-lucky Vault Dweller character who’s getting a harsh dose of reality on her journey across the wastelands of Los Angeles.

Lucy also gets some face time with Maximus (Aaron Moten), a young soldier in the Brotherhood of Steel, in the new Fallout trailer. Like Lucy, Maximus appears to have no shortage of optimism, but his is channeled toward the brotherhood’s mission to bring law and order to the wasteland. Thursday’s trailer also offers the first glimpse of characters Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury) and Ma June (Dale Dickey).

In a preview of the new Fallout trailer shown to press on Wednesday, Goggins said in video remarks that his Ghoul is akin to the poet Virgil in Dante’s Inferno. Goggins said his bounty hunter character serves as a “guide through this irradiated hellscape,” and is pragmatic, ruthless, and wields a wicked sense of humor. Before the war, when his character was named Cooper Howard, he was “a vastly different person” and serves as the “bridge between the worlds” of Fallout’s pre- and post-nuclear holocaust.

Fallout executive producer/director Jonathan Nolan said in a press conference on Wednesday that the tone of the TV series was the hardest thing to get right about the adaptation — right behind making the Brotherhood of Steel’s Power Armor suits look good in live-action. He said that the TV series, like the Fallout games, explores the end of the world with a sense of humor. “There’s a thread of optimism woven into the show,” Nolan said. Co-showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet agreed, calling Fallout a “fun post-apocalyptic story” that will explore the various factions of the retro sci-fi world.

Robertson-Dworet also called the Ghouls of the wasteland “the most empathetic” faction, so expect to see plenty of Goggins and his irradiated mutant pals.

Fallout premieres on Prime Video on April 11 — a day earlier than previously announced. All episodes will drop at once.