If you were surprised by Cooper Howard/The Ghoul’s wife Barb being one of the key members behind the bombs being dropped in “Fallout” Season 1, you weren’t the only one.
“Frances Turner plays my wife and she is just an extraordinary actor. I so enjoyed their relationship as it was revealed to me over time,” star Walton Goggins told TheWrap. “We didn’t get all the scripts at once. I think we got the first three or four. There were conversations about where that relationship was headed, but I didn’t see it going there. I had an idea that something nefarious was afoot, but I didn’t realize that my wife was going to be the one who architected the ending of the world.”
Howard learned of the plot while spying on his wife through a listening device planted on her Pip Boy. Barb suggested dropping the nuke while meeting with Robert House, Frederick Sinclair, Bud Askins, Julia Masters and Leon Von Felden in a flashback shown in the Season 1 finale.
“If you really listen to what she says and the conversation in that room, as diabolical and Machiavellian as it is, it does make sense on some level from their strange, demented, capitalistic point of view. Let’s just wipe out the competition. And it was so horrific to hear the woman that you love, that is the mother of your child, your keeper of secrets, speak about destruction and in terms of winning. I still am wrapping my head around it. I’ve seen it a few times just because I wanted to see what Frances was doing and what Ella [Purnell] was doing, what everybody was doing, but specifically that moment between the two of them.”
Ultimately, Howard falls victim and becomes deformed by the blast’s radiation, transforming into the zombie-like bounty hunter known in The Wasteland as The Ghoul.
“I love how complicated their relationship was. I’m so curious where that relationship picks up [in Season 2] and how you begin to talk about the elephant in the room and, subsequently, what that means for the world that we’re living in,” Goggins continued. “The first scene in episode one of Season 1 takes place after he hears that conversation. I have my version of how much earlier that conversation took place, but I’m curious what happens between that conversation and when Cooper is at the children’s birthday party. I want to know that story. I mean – I know what happened – but I would think the audience would want to know that story.”
Another relationship Goggins also enjoyed getting to explore in “Fallout” was the dynamic between Howard and Lee Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury), a scientist working on cold fusion before the nuclear apocalypse who pushes back against Howard’s ideology who later leads the raider attack that ends in the kidnapping of Hank MacLean.
“I had such a great time telling that story with her. I liked the dynamic between two competing ideologies about the world and I like to be proven wrong,” he said of working with Choudhury. “Personally, I like to have my beliefs shook up from time to time. And that’s exactly what Moldaver does for Cooper Howard.”
“I don’t know how that story is going to unfold, but I would imagine that the layers will be peeled, and you will understand the origins of that relationship,” he said of the two characters’ relationship. “That’s all I can say.”
In addition to being on his own journey to find his family, The Ghoul became a major influence on the series’ protagonist, Lucy MacLean, pushing her from a naive Vault Dweller who has ventured to the surface to rescue her father and Vault 33 Overseer, Hank MacLean, to a hardened survivor.
“In some ways, The Ghoul to Lucy is just the person who delivers her on the other side of the Rubicon, the person who just bursts her bubble,” Goggins said of the pair’s relationship. “The Ghoul is a person that takes no prisoners. He’s not there to teach her a lesson until he’s there to teach her a lesson. He didn’t see her as a human being until he saw her as a human being. So in some ways, she has brought the Ghoul back, redeemed him on a human level. And in some ways, he has radically and fundamentally changed her view of the world and the way that she moves through the world. So, in some ways, they’re helping each other to survive life the way that it exists. It’s a three-dimensional relationship, and I really don’t know where it’s going to go, but I have my own ideas about where I hope it goes.”
The end of Season 1 sees Lucy MacLean teaming up with the Ghoul to go after her father, who escapes Griffith Observatory in Power Armor and is headed to New Vegas. Shortly before his escape, Lucy learned that Hank was responsible for the bombing of Shady Sands, which turned her mother Rose into a ghoul.
“Lucy and The Ghoul are — I don’t know if they’re a team — but I think they’re beginning to understand each other and whenever anyone sets out to define the truth, it’s never going to be easy, is it?,” Goggins said. “It’s going to be difficult, but it’s going to be a lot of fun and it’s going to resonate with people. I certainly hope so.”
“Fallout” Season 1 is available to stream on Prime Video.
