Prime Video
This article contains spoilers for “Fallout” season 2, episode 8.
“Fallout” season 2 has introduced us to the feared Deathclaws. It has introduced one of the franchise’s most notorious factions, Caesar’s Legion, and set up the even more terrifying Enclave as the shadowy Big Bad of the show. The season finale continues to bring in new threats in the shape of a very particular annoyance from the video game series: The eternally disgusting bloatflies.
Moisés Arias’ Norm MacLean has spent much of the season in a right pickle. He starts out trapped in Vault 31 without water or food. While he manages to stage an escape by awakening the Vault-Tec execs from their cryo-sleep, they soon find out that he’s not one of them and turn on him. In the season 2 finale, it seems that Norm’s game is finally over as the executives prepare to prosecute (and eventually execute) him. Just then, fate intervenes in the shape of a bloatfly swarm that attacks from a nearby elevator shaft. The executives have no answer to the massive insects’ attack, and the bloatflies make short work of them.
Bloatflies taking out the executives seems like a very deliberate choice
Bethesda
Bloatfiles are a disgusting but common staple of post-apocalyptic life in the “Fallout” universe. These massive flies are an abundant presence in several “Fallout” games. While they’re creepy and hard to hit with firearms, they’re also extremely weak. As such, the fact that the “Fallout” season 2 finale chooses these exact irradiated critters to bring down the Vault-Tec executives seems like a bit of a commentary on these characters’ general uselessness in the post-apocalyptic setting.
Then again, it must be noted that “Fallout,” the show, has made a point of showing just how awful even the most “harmless” creatures in the Wasteland can be in the right circumstances. In season 1, radroaches — the giant irradiated cockroaches that tend to be fairly harmless in the games — are a viable threat, to the point that a large enough group of them can break through a power armor. Likewise, the show’s bloatflies seem to be considerably more dangerous than the game series’ assorted versions, and the way they take down the Vault-Tec execs in a closed space is a scene that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror movie. It just goes to show that when it comes to the Wasteland, nothing is as safe as it seems.
“Fallout” season 2 is streaming on Prime Video.
