Please note: major spoilers for Fallout Season 2 Episode 4!

Remember the Operation Anchorage DLC for Fallout 3? Remember how it kind of sucked? Well, it sucks even more for Cooper Howard and Charlie Whiteknife to actually live through instead of experiencing it via a virtual reality machine that will let them take an overpowered stealth suit at the end. Instead, they’re in malfunctioning T-45 power armor (thanks, Bud), fighting on the Alaskan Front with sparks shooting out of their limbs.

Coop radios in to complain about their armor and request a return to base. When that’s denied he creatively reinterprets his orders to send Charlie back, promising he’ll be right behind. As soon as he’s alone though, Coop hears mysterious growling coming from the other side of some mysterious wreckage. We’re finally going to see a living deathclaw.

Walton Goggins spends a lot of time as Coop reacting to things that are shocking and it’s a credit to his acting that, even after so many episodes of seeing him be surprised by awful stuff, he really sells the deathclaw as uniquely scary. But first he has to deal with a trio of Chinese soldiers who get the jump on him. His gun jams and leg freezes immediately, and while he’s lying on his side the soldiers menace him, unaware of the deathclaw approaching from behind.

It massacres the three in no time, but seems to spare Coop after giving him the full Ellen Ripley treatment—is it distracted by gunfire elsewhere, or does it have another reason for sparing an American soldier? Maybe it’s just a big fan of his cowboy movies. As Coop hears congratulations over the radio for victory on the Alaskan Front, he says, “It wasn’t us. It was something else.”

Going from one power-armor casualty to another, Paladin Xander Harkness lies dead on the floor of the Sunset Sarsaparilla plant. The sound of a vertibird outside announces the arrival of the Brotherhood, who Max realizes must put trackers in their armor. If the Brotherhood finds out what happened here they’ll kill the ghoul kids and enlist the rest, a fact Max uses to convince Thaddeus to put on Xander’s armor and impersonate him. What could possibly go wrong?

Lucy wakes up from her ordeal at the hands of the Legion to find she’s in the NCR camp, hooked up to an intravenous buffout drip. Like everyone in TV and movies she immediately rips that needle right out of her arm. Then she thanks the troopers for their help: “Meeting you has been a welcome change of pace.”

Their leader offers Lucy a place in the NCR, but she’s reluctant to team up with people who might change their mind when they find out her father blew up their home. And anyway, she has to get on with tracking him down and bringing him to justice.

Since the NCR is packing up camp and heading out, they offer her a crate of guns and ammo, and she departs with The Ghoul, who gives her a rough time about considering the NCR’s offer. She denies that she was tempted to stay, saying, “All I saw there was more matching jackets.”

Lucy says the air feels heavy and itchy and she’s hungry, but not for food, and also grumpy. The Ghoul diagnoses her immediately: “You addicted to drugs.” She was on that drip for two whole days and has picked up a Buffout dependency. Fortunately, he’s got more. Seeing how close to Vegas they are, Lucy figures spending four or five days drying out would be unreasonable, and since it serves the greater good for her to track down her father before he gets up to any more shenanigans, taking more drugs is the morally right thing to do actually.

While Bud’s Buds eat raw Blamco Mac & Cheese in the ruins of civilization, one of them named Ronnie, who was Bud’s personal assistant and knows more about the secret plans for Vaults 32 and 33 than anyone else, suggests they move on to “phase two”. Norm has no idea what he’s talking about but plays along, telling Ronnie to lead the way.

Water runs low in Vault 33 and Overseer Betty has to institute rationing, while snack club membership continues to grow. Betty and Steph secretly meet to discuss the water crisis and Steph is unsympathetic, but says she’ll consider sharing if Betty brings her a keepsake box of Hank’s that contains something pre-war and “personal”. Nothing suspicious about that. Certainly nothing to upset Woody, who happened to overhear the end of the conversation.

The Ghoul and Lucy arrive at the outskirts of Vegas, where he’s surprised to see the securitrons who normally guard it have been destroyed. Guess they won’t need those 2,000 caps to enter. The Kings are here, however. The Ghoul suggests a half-day detour to the east so they can enter via Freeside, but Lucy’s itchily impatient to get going. “I am done with all of the sidetracks and the detours!”

Turns out these Kings have become feral ghouls in the years since New Vegas, and the newly drug-happy Lucy cheerfully dispatches the lot. It’s hilarious, though if this is the only time we see the Kings this season I can see hardcore New Vegas heads not being thrilled about it. I’m sure they’ll respond in a sensible and restrained fashion.

The plan to have Thaddeus impersonate Harkness doesn’t work on Dane, though nobody else in the Brotherhood is bright enough to see through it. Max brings Dane in on his plan, telling them to take the kids somewhere safe while he tries to stop the civil war from starting by killing Quintus. He’s a direct lad, that Maximus.

The elders of the Yosemite and Coronado chapters have cold feet about this whole insurrection thing. (If you thought the Coronado elder looked familiar, that’s Brian Thompson and you’ve probably seen him in one of many TV roles going back to the ’90s. I know him as an alien bounty hunter from The X-Files and the Brujah primogen from Kindred: The Embraced.) The two elders corner Thaddeus in the mess hall to cut a deal with him, thinking he’s the Commonwealth Emissary. He’s saved when the Grand Canyon elder arrives to announce the relic has been stolen. Dane took it, but since nobody knows this they blame each other and fighting breaks out.

Max confronts Quintus with a pistol drawn, confessing that he killed Xander. Quintus tries to talk him down with a big speech about how order is cruel but necessary, then blows it all when he finds out Max killed Xander to save some ghouls by ranting about how they’re all “Abominations!” This is why all my homies hate the Brotherhood of Steel. Anyway, Quintus grabs his own gun and starts blasting, so Max locks him in and escapes. In the chaos outside, Dane hands him the relic, and Max and Thaddeus flee as a full-on battle erupts, one of the airships crashing behind them.

Back in Vegas, Lucy asks, “Aren’t there supposed to be people here?” Which is exactly what I said the first time I made it to the Strip in New Vegas and saw how underpopulated it was. Heyo!

Beneath the neon signs of the Lucky 38 and Gomorrah, Lucy finds a big egg on the ruined Strip and asks if it came from a real big chicken. Walton Goggins is doing his shocked face again and we know it’s not. The doors of Gomorrah burst open and a deathclaw emerges, making the noise every monster has made since Jurassic Park.

“Okey-dokey,” Lucy says.

Pip-Boy Pointers

🛬Camp McCarren: As the credits roll we see Camp McCarren in ruins, the NCR headquarters having clearly been the site of a huge battle with the Legion. Those credits are accompanied by Betty Hutton singing He’s a Demon, He’s a Devil, He’s a Doll, which is a song you can hear in Fallout 4 on Diamond City Radio.

💊Buffout: Buffout is a steroid, so no wonder it makes Lucy more aggressive. In Fallout 3 you can give it to children. No, really. One of the Little Lamplighters coincidentally named Lucy says she can use it to treat rickets, which the kids are suffering from thanks to malnutrition, and trades it for cave fungus.

🕺🏾The Rad Pack: The neon signs on the Strip include one billing the Rad Pack Revue, who perform at The Tops in New Vegas.

As well as Gomorrah and the Lucky 38, there are glimpses of Vault 21 and the Ultra Luxe in the final scene, and when Lucy fights the Kings the Tops is visible in the background.