For decades, Fallout treated the Great War like a big mystery. Who were the ones responsible for dropping the first bombs?
The second season of Fallout just finally gave us an answer: the Enclave did it. The same fanatical faction that once tried to “purify” the wasteland were the ones who lit the match.
Who Are The Enclave?
The Enclave are the remnants of the pre-war U.S. government and corporate elite. The self-declared last “pure” Americans. Their goal is simple: reclaim the Earth by wiping out everything irradiated, mutated, or simply inconvenient. They’ve got the science, weapons, and just enough patriotic rhetoric to justify genocide.
They’re the ultimate villain for a world built on hypocrisy. In the games, they unleash FEV viruses, hijack radio networks, and weaponize nostalgia. Yet the show’s revelation moves them from fascist wannabe rulers to mythic-level monsters.
The Retcon Changes Everything
Until now, the Great War had no clear culprit. Just mutual destruction in the name of deterrence. By naming the Enclave as the perpetrators, the show confirms the Great War was an engineered apocalypse. Every Vault-Tec experiment, every ghoul, every mutant ever created are the consequences of one master plan.
In “The Other Player,” Barb Howard’s flashbacks are chilling. Vault-Tec were collaborating with the Enclave from the very beginning. One of the Enclave’s representatives, Dr. Siggi Wilzig threatens Barb’s family if she doesn’t suggest that Vault-Tec drop the bombs themselves in a board meeting. The corporation also reached an agreement with Robert House to trade cold fusion tech for his mind-control devices.
The implication is clear. Humanity didn’t fall because it was reckless. It fell because its so-called saviors wanted a clean slate.
The Fallout for the Show’s Story
This reveal doesn’t just raise the stakes. It personalizes them. Lucy’s struggle with her father Hank now mirrors humanity’s struggle with its own creators. Both are wrestling with authoritarian visions sold as “peace.” Cooper’s moral reckoning hits harder too. His pre-war ties to Barb and Vault-Tec make his existence a direct product of the same rot he now fights.The Enclave’s emergence unifies the show’s scattered conflicts under one theme. Every survivor is living in the controlled chaos of someone else’s design. Suddenly, the wasteland turns into a lab experiment that refuses to end, with the scientists ready to resume their work.
