After being featured prominently in promotional material for season 2, the Kings finally appear in the Fallout episode “The Demon in the Snow.”
Unfortunately for fans, they’re wiped out in less than five minutes. The scene says a lot about how the show is treating the factions from Fallout: New Vegas.
Who the Kings Were in New Vegas
In Fallout: New Vegas, the Kings are a gang based in Freeside. They can be found in the King’s School of Impersonation just outside the Strip. Their entire identity is built on a half-remembered version of Elvis. The pompadours, the leather jackets, the confident drawl, yet they don’t remember his name and think he’s a fictional character.
They are rough, but they’re not written as simple thugs. The Kings function as Freeside’s unruly sheriffs. They’ll charge for protection while actually trying to keep their neighborhood safe.
The King himself, with his cyberdog Rex at his side, is one of the game’s most decent characters. He’s actually capable of empathy and compromise if you bother to talk to him.
How Season 2 Paints the Kings
When Lucy, the Ghoul, and Dogmeat finally make it to New Vegas in “The Demon in the Snow,” they run into a group of feral ghoulified Kings loitering near the Strip gate.
We don’t know why these Kings are ghouls (you need to be exposed to radiation to become a ghoul), or why they’re not in Freeside. We never get a chance to learn more about the Kings’ situation.
Lucy is high as a kite on the Buffout the Ghoul gave her following the events of the previous episode. When she sees the ghoul Kings, she reads their movements as hostile. She tears through the group in brutal fashion while The Ghoul watches. The battle ends when Lucy shoots one final ghoul King in the head as he’s retreating. He’s never identified in the show, but many fans fear the ghoul Lucy killed was the leader of The Kings (aka The King) himself. He was dressed in a distinct white coat, black trousers, with a guitar strapped to his back. That outfit is considered to be The King’s signature look.
Why This Hurts So Much
While the sequence itself is funny and even awesome, for Fallout fans it’s actually devastating.
The Kings are well-liked for being a faction for trying to do the right thing and protect Wastelander. The King, in particular, is a fan-favorite character. Seeing the minor faction being unceremoniously slaughtered has been upsetting for many New Vegas fans.
It also hits at Lucy’s characterization. The show wants the scene to be a darkly humorous, drug-fueled rampage, but it’s hard not to see it as out of character.
She’s written as someone who clings to empathy even when the world gives her hell for caring so much. Watching her blow away the Kings, cuts that image in a way that some find difficult to ignore.
Overall, fans are not pleased with how the New Vegas factions have been treated by the show. Each one has been depicted as being past its prime, barely hanging on by a thread.
Are the Kings Really Gone?
Thankfully, this doesn’t mean the Kings are done for.
In an interview with IGN, executive producer Jonathan Nolan said that only some of the Kings became ghouls between Fallout: New Vegas and the events of the show. That matters.
There’s still a chance the faction still exists in some form somewhere in the Mojave, just like the Legion and the New California Republic (NCR). It’s possible the group Lucy killed were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
