Fallout has always made it clear who the heroes are: Cooper Howard, aka The Ghoul, Lucy MacLean, and Maximus. They may not always have the purest intentions, but they’re the characters we’re supposed to root for. But what’s a little harder to parse is who exactly the bad guys are; slowly but surely, all the things the characters held dear, like Vault-Tec, the Brotherhood of Steel, and Hank MacLean, have been revealed to be secretly evil.
But lurking underneath all these minor villains is something huge that is pulling all the strings and, as we learned in Season 2 Episode 7, it goes all the way to the top.
Warning! Spoilers ahead for Fallout Season 2’s “The Handoff.”
At the end of Season 2 Episode 6, we met our first Super-Mutant, and he had a few choice words of warning for the Ghoul. “They call us abominations, but they created our kind,” he says. “They took us to the point of extinction and forgot we ever existed. But, we didn't forget them... the people who set all this in motion: The Enclave.”
The Enclave isn’t new for the Fallout series. All the way back in Season 1, scientist Siggi Wilzig defected from the Enclave’s massive science lab, and his severed head became a key plot device for the rest of the season. But just what the Enclave was, was more or less still a mystery unless fans were familiar with the game, until Season 2.
The flashbacks of Season 2’s “The Handoff” follow Cooper Howard as he tries to deliver the diode that ensures infinite energy to Congresswoman Diane Welch, who ensures him that he can give it directly to the President. However, this ends up being a bad idea: the President is behind the Enclave, and Congresswoman Welch is revealed to be the mysterious “mainframe” powering the Vault that was commandeered by Hank MacLean.
What Is The Enclave?
So what exactly is the Enclave? The Enclave is the secretive faction that sees itself as the continuation of the United States, performing scientific experiments both in labs and in Vaults. It’s the Enclave that developed the nefarious F.E.V., and it’s the Enclave that both created and detests the Super-Mutants. They’ve been operating long before the bombs dropped, so this isn’t just a wasteland development; this is a massive conspiracy.
Clancy Brown’s appearance as the President of the United States is actually a historic first for Fallout. There have been many clues about the last POTUS in the Fallout games, but we’ve never seen him in person until now. However, he has been mentioned in the Fallout series all the way back in the first few seconds of the show. During the birthday party Cooper Howard attends with his daughter, we see a mom turn down a radio saying “negotiations were scheduled to continue today as the White House had no comment about the President's whereabouts.”
So while this may be the first time we’ve seen this President, he’ll go missing once it all starts to fall apart, leaving the Enclave to carry on a mission of strange experiments and “abominations.” But what’s the Enclave up to now — and how will they address the Super-Mutant in the room in the Season 2 finale? There’s only one week left to wait.
