‘Fallout’ Season 2 Episode 4 review: “The Demon in the Snow”

“The Demon in the Snow” opens by reaching far back into the past, and in doing so, it clarifies something Fallout has been circling all season: the wasteland didn’t create monsters. The world before the wasteland did.

“That’s an order.”

The episode’s Alaska flashback shows Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) and Charlie Whiteknife (Dallas Goldtooth) fighting in the Sino-American War against the Chinese alluded to in Season 1, clad in early-model power armor that looks impressive until it fails. The T-45 buckles under real pressure, its flaws exposing the hubris of a government more interested in spectacle than survivability. Cooper lies to Charlie to get him to turn back, choosing a small act of mercy over blind obedience, even though it violates orders.

He survives not because of American ingenuity, but because a Deathclaw appears and kills the soldiers who have him cornered. The implication lands quietly but firmly. This creature is not a product of nuclear chaos as we might’ve otherwise assumed, but of American experimentation. Cooper recognizes it immediately. He understands, in that moment, that he is being used the same way. The title’s “demon” announces itself early, and it isn’t subtle. This is an episode about the monsters we create and then pretend we had no hand in unleashing.

“Sometimes running away is the best thing you can do. Sometimes it’s not.”

That theme of inheritance carries forward into the present through Maximus (Aaron Moten), who spends the hour trying to decide whether running away is cowardice or survival. He needs Thaddeus (Johnny Pemberton) to impersonate the now-dead Paladin Xander long enough to save the ghoul children from slaughter, and he frames the plan as a moral necessity rather than a tactical one. Thaddeus agrees reluctantly, and the kids appear safe for now, though the episode is noticeably uninterested in giving that safety a sense of permanence. Fallout has learned by now that security is always provisional, after all.

Worth noting that the episode’s handling of power armor here is slightly untidy. Xander’s helmet survives damage it arguably shouldn’t (Max smashed it in the last episode with a Super Sledge). Especially in an episode that foregrounds the failures of older armor models, the moment sticks out. Not because it breaks the story, but because this hour is otherwise so careful about connecting physical vulnerability to ideological overconfidence.

“All I saw in there was more matching jackets.”

Lucy (Ella Purnell), meanwhile, continues her slow disentangling from factional loyalty. At the NCR camp, she’s healed and resupplied after nearly being killed by Caesar’s Legion in the last episode. Interestingly, the rangers invite her to join them. They talk about Shady Sands with reverence, unaware that Lucy’s father destroyed it. Lucy listens, then declines. “All I saw in there was more matching jackets,” she says later, and it’s one of the episode’s quiet turning points. Lucy seems to be recognizing and internalizing a pattern. She’s spent enough time moving between groups that promise order to understand what they all eventually demand in return.

The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) notices this. He respects it. The Fallout games have always treated companion approval as a kind of moral feedback loop, and this moment plays like one of those invisible meters ticking upward.

“You’re a snack club!”

Back in the Vaults, the show turns its attention to scarcity and the way community fractures under it. Overseer Betty (Leslie Uggams) discovers that Reg (Rodrigo Luzzi) has been exploiting a bureaucratic loophole to distribute extra rations through his snack club, which has ballooned not because of popularity, but because people are desperate. The Vault is running out of water, so plants are failing, and rations are being cut. Yet Reg refuses to stop anyway. The scene functions as a miniature version of Fallout’s larger argument about institutions. That is when resources tighten, people cling harder to the systems that give them identity, even when their greed only hastens collapse.

I appreciate how the episode makes the point without outright villainizing Reg. He isn’t necessarily malicious or mustache-twirling. He’s just seeking belonging and control in a place where both are slipping away from him. And that’s often how things fall apart.

“I hereby…quit drugs.”

Lucy’s journey grows more complicated on the road, where the show finally introduces a consequence it’s been holding back. The Buffout that helped her survive the Legion ordeal has left her addicted to drugs. The Ghoul lays out the options plainly. She can endure days of sickness and pain, or she can keep moving with chemical help. Lucy chooses the latter and justifies it the same way so many Fallout characters do. It’s yet another temporary measure in service of a greater good. Even Dogmeat seems unconvinced, though.

Regardless, the choice itself matters. Lucy becomes more aggressive, more reckless, and more confident than the situation warrants. When she and the Ghoul reach the outskirts of New Vegas, she pushes straight through feral ghouls tied to the Kings, shooting without hesitation. The episode leans into game language here, slowing time for a VATS-style kill shot, and the effect works on two levels. It’s a fun nod for players, and it doubles as commentary on how power changes behavior. Lucy enjoys this. The Ghoul clocks it immediately. “One addiction at a time,” he says, and the line lands with more concern than judgment.

“Phase 2 was very important to the experiment.”

Norm’s (Moisés Arias) story continues to evolve in quieter ways. We just get one quick scene with him as he scavenges with the Vault 31 group. At first we get a nice moment where he bonds with Claudia (Rachel Marsh), who’s still processing the reality of the wasteland. She crossed the bridge they’re staring at “just a week ago” and now it’s barely standing. It isn’t long though before Ronnie (Adam Faison) slyly confronts Norm about what they’re doing next for Phase 2. Through a suspicious smile he makes it clear that he knows Norm is lying about everything, as he was apparently Bud Haskin’s assistant (he took the lunch orders, you see) and overheard the real plans for the experiment.

As these cracks form in Norm’s authority, the show establishes that many of these people were hired shortly before the war and have no idea what Vault-Tec’s long-term plans were, save for Ronnie apparently. What makes it tricky now is that Norm seems to finds himself caring about them (or Claudia at least) even as his deception deepens. Just another moment in the series when leadership becomes morally complicated the moment empathy enters the picture.

“This community and how we conduct ourselves in it…that’s all we have.”

Back in the Vaults, Woody (Zach Cherry) provides one of the episode’s most effective illustrations of institutional blindness. Lost in Vault 32, he overhears Betty pressuring Steph (Annabel O’Hagan) to cooperate on water distribution. Betty’s line—“This community and how we conduct ourselves in it, that’s all we have”—functions as the episode’s moral thesis. Steph agrees the experiment is over and uses that realization to justify looking out for herself. Betty responds by accepting reality and trying to preserve something human within it. The contrast is sharp and unsettling.

Woody, loyal to procedure to the point of self-endangerment, begins to ask questions he doesn’t understand the consequences of asking. Chet (Dave Register) notices details that don’t fit, including Steph’s pre-war Canadian ID. “Wherever you end up, it’s where you belong,” he tells Woody, a line that sounds comforting until you realize how little agency Vault life allows. The episode leaves Woody exposed and vulnerable, and it’s hard not to worry about what that means moving forward.

“I don’t choose to do the things I have to do. They just keep happening.”

Maximus’s storyline reaches another huge breaking point when he confronts Elder Quintus (Michael Cristofer). He hesitates and admits he doesn’t choose the terrible things he does, they just keep happening to him. Quintus responds with horror at Max’s refusal to kill the ghoul children in the last episode, and the Brotherhood finally turns on itself. While trying to broker deals with Thaddeus in disguise, the other Elders start trying to kill each other, and the Yosemite Elder successfully takes out the Coronado Elder in the process.

In other words, the supposed structured and rigid ideology of the Brotherhood has finally given way to panic. Max and Dane (Xelia Mendes-Jones) flee as the institution collapses in real time. Dane’s parting affirmation—that Max should not feel guilty for choosing not to kill—lands as one of the episode’s clearest moral statements.

The Demon in the Snow.

The hour closes in New Vegas, now a hollowed-out shell. Deathclaw eggs litter the ruins, though Lucy dismisses the threat out of both ignorance and drug-fueled confidence overtaking her usual caution. The Ghoul freezes when the Deathclaw finally emerges, a direct echo of the episode’s opening trauma. His guns-blazing approach has finally failed him, as the monster he helped create, in one way or another, has come home.

Overall, “The Demon in the Snow” argues that Fallout’s central conflict isn’t between good and evil, but between accountability and denial. Every system in this episode was designed to solve some kind of problem, after all. And fittingly, every system has outlived its usefulness. The people who survive are the ones willing to admit that their solutions created new disasters, and the people who refuse that admission are already halfway to repeating history.

By the end of the episode, Fallout has made its own position clear. Monsters never appear out of nowhere. They are built, justified, deployed, and eventually unleashed on everyone else, both innocent and guilty. The real test is whether anyone is willing to stop calling them demons long enough to admit where they came from.

Stray Thoughts

• Real Jurassic Park vibes in that final scene, and my goodness the production design for New Vegas is immaculate. It’s like staring at a newly-rendered version of the game. That said, there’s a weird continuity issue here where the scene right outside the gate is showing us full daylight, but then once they’re inside the walls it’s the dead of night?
• It absolutely makes sense even in the game universe for Deathclaws to basically destroy New Vegas considering there are so many of them hanging around right outside. Well played.
• No Hank again this episode, which makes me wonder if we’ll get a whole bunch of what’s going on with him in Episode 5.
• Are they setting up a romance between Norm and Claudia? I think they’re at least trying to make it clear that he has some emotional investment in these people, so he can’t easily just run away if Ronnie exposes him to the others.
• Speaking of Ronnie, I like how the show implies that his plan from the start has been to bide his time. He’s likely known Norm is lying the entire time but immediately saw a way to use that deception for his own means.
• Liked seeing so many moments in this episode where the Ghoul shows some actual admiration toward Lucy, similar to how taking drugs in the games makes some characters “like” you more.
• If not for some of the continuity goofs, this would be my highest-rated episode of the season, but it’s still my favorite one so far. It’s especially nice seeing Thaddeus back in the mix, and paired with Max again as they run off into the desert together with a whole civil war behind him.

Fallout Season 2 is available to stream on Prime Video.