“Sometimes, a fella’s gotta eat a fella.”
Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Fallout.
The Big Picture
- Prime Video’s
Fallout
series has a gallery of compelling characters, but none as tragic as Walton Goggins’ The Ghoul. - The Ghoul is a legendary figure across the Wasteland, working as a gun for hire while searching for his family.
- The Ghoul’s backstory as Cooper Howard is integral to
Fallout
‘s plot, as his wife works for Vault-Tec, who is responsible for the apocalypse.
Fallout is full of great characters, but Walton Goggins‘ The Ghoul is the most compelling of this rouge’s gallery of weirdos. The ruthless killing machine is marred by radioactivity, a flesh-eating killer, a withdrawal away from forgetting himself and devolving into an even more terrifying murderous monster. While his badassery abounds, it is the character’s backstory that is so damn compelling and heart-breakingly tragic. Still, it also serves the function of revealing the history of the world to the audience. He represents the corruption of man and the environment, a perfect animal in the radioactivity wasteland with which the series concerns itself. His lingering humanity is a constant struggle for him as he has been stripped of his nose, skin, and family, all the vestiges of what made him human, yet he yearns to find them.
Fallout
In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits.
- Release Date
- April 11, 2024
- Cast
- Moises Arias , Johnny Pemberton , Walton Goggins , Kyle MacLachlan
- Seasons
- 1
- Creator(s)
- Graham Wagner , Geneva Robertson-Dworet
- Producer
- Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan
- Streaming Service(s)
- Prime Video
Who Is The Ghoul in the ‘Fallout’ Series?
The Ghoul, as portrayed by Walton Goggins, is a radioactive mutant bounty hunter who previously was the unlucky guest of the sadistic Dom Pedro. Pedro captured The Ghoul and buried him deep in the ground, keeping him alive with anti-feral chemicals until some bad fellas dug him up to track down a bounty on Sigg Wilzig (Michael Emerson), the man with the secret to cold fusion buried in his neck. The Ghoul is an imposing figure from the minute he steps out of that coffin and onto the screen, terrifying in both appearance and composition as he mercilessly murders the unfortunate crew of baddies. Still, from that moment, he is arguably Fallout‘s best and most important character.
A stone-cold killer, though he may be, The Ghoul is the most noble character in the wasteland. A gun for hire, The Ghoul follows the code of the cowboy: stoic, practical, and skilled in the art of realism because, as he is known to say, “… Cow folk take it as it comes.” And while it is difficult to equate nobility with a man who makes ass jerky from feral ghouls, there is an honesty about that character that makes him so damn appealing. The Ghoul’s cruelty is out of necessity, as he explains to Lucy (Ella Purnell), “Sometimes a fella’s gotta eat a fella,” a fact she comes to understand while slurping radioactive water.
The Ghoul is effective because he accepts things for what they are and, as a result, is not burdened with guilt like a cat holds no guilt for the mouse it eats. It is simply an animal trying to survive according to its nature. To this point, The Ghoul seems never to lie, an observance of most good cowboys made clear when he sees the brutal killer sleeping inside the very sheltered Lucy. He slices her finger off in a gruesome exchange of digits, remarking that the incident is the closest thing that they have had to an honest exchange. So, who is The Ghoul? He is the wasteland’s most perfect animal.
Walton Goggins’ the Ghoul Has an Important Backstory As Cooper Howard
The Ghoul, it turns out, is as old as the apocalypse itself; a Western actor named Cooper Howard turned radioactive zombie and happened to be married to a Vault-Tec employee, the company responsible for the apocalypse. The contrast between his past and present self is a stark one. On the one hand, Coop used to be a loving father and dutiful husband, gentle and fair, but the machinations of Vault-Tec and experiences have made him The Ghoul. He is the fury of the world manifested, driven by a lingering hatred for Vault-Tec. But where does all that hatred come from?
‘Fallout’s Lucy and Maximus Are Unlike Any Other Couple on TV
A series with no shortage of action turns into a refreshing romantic comedy every once in a while.
Cooper Howard was a famous, highly celebrated Western actor known for portraying rugged gunslingers with a moral code. The Vault-Tec brass sees him as the perfect corporate shill for their new underground living facility, and he becomes the face of the brave new world with a thumbs up toward the future. Coop’s wife is among those corporate suits conspiring with the rest of Big Tech to nuke the world and step into place as the rightful masters of humanity with dividends for all (their shareholders). It’s a sick and demented business plan which alienates Coop from his wife when he learns of their awful plan and, subsequently, his daughter, losing them in the chaos of the world burning and transforming him into a nightmare version of the character he once played on the silver screen.
Why Is the Ghoul So Important to the ‘Fallout’ Series?
The Ghoul is such an important character because it is through his character arc that the saga of the Wasteland is revealed. Cooper Howard is connected to all the major players and events of the series, and while the plot doesn’t revolve entirely around him, his story is arguably thestory of the Wasteland. Cooper’s wife is the one who came up with the plan to nuke the world, something which deeply disturbed Cooper — it cost him everything. But what makes this story so particularly heartbreaking is the fact that it is the woman he loves more than anything in the world responsible for all the carnage. So the architect of The Ghouls’ misery, who is responsible for his creation, is his dear wife.
By delving into the history of The Ghoul, the audience is entreated to the secret history of the world of Fallout, a fact hidden from the majority of the Vault-Dwellers but fortunately not for the audience. His story connects all the dots into a cohesive narrative about corporate greed and fiduciary responsibility gone mad and stretched to its most nihilistic ends. Therefore, The Ghoul is the sole bearer of truth in the feral world and the harbinger of justice. A tragic figure who brings a reckoning for the corporate bigwigs who twisted the world into a dark, violent, and inhospitable place.
Fallout is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S.
This article was originally published on collider.com