"Okey dokey!"

The two guys in the first part of the clip with the Cowboy fits really look like regular NCR Rangers. And the guy in the Vault suit looks a lot like Norm.

There are also other wastelanders in the full clip that look like they are dressed a lot more like the people in Shady Sands than regular wastelanders.

The two guys in the first part of the clip really look like regular NCR Rangers. And the guy in the Vault suit looks a lot like Norm.

There are also other wastelanders in the full clip that look like they dress a lot more like the people in Shady Sands than regular wastelanders.

Max wouldn't "judge" Lucy for being violent, because he understands that sometimes it's neccesary. Sometimes that's how you survive in the wasteland. He's done so himself to protect his life and even urged Lucy to do the same when they encountered the fiends (and then resorted to violence himself once she wasn't capable). He wouldn't judge her for it.

And Lucy doesn't "like to be violent". She stared at her own shaky hand with eyes filled with guilt after killing the Kings. She cried over having to bash Welch's severed head even when she begged her to. She wouldn't have killed the Kings or killed the man in Sonny's shop had she not been hooked on chems because of her injuries. Lucy doesn't like violence, she's a victim of the circumstances.

Max wouldn't "judge" Lucy for being violent, because he understands that sometimes it's neccesary. Sometimes that's how you survive in the wasteland. He's done so himself to protect his life and even urged Lucy to do the same when they encountered the fiends (and then resorted to violence himself once she wasn't capable). He wouldn't judge her for it.

The times we've seen Maximus go through with killing people were self-defense of himself or another party (which was the case with the fiends and Xander). He also technically killed Titus by refusing to lend him aid, but Titus was also being a big jerk to him. And while he planned to assassinate Quintus to try and stop the Brotherhood civil war, he couldn't go through with it because the process of planning and deliberately confronting someone with the intention of killing them is different from spur-of-the-moment occasions like the other ones.

And I think when I refer to Maximus potentially judging Lucy...

...well, honestly, I don't think Lucy nor Maximus know each other all that well. They didn't spend that much time together in season 1. Seriously, only maybe three to five days tops pass between when she meets up with him in episode 5 of season 1 and when they part ways at the radio station in episode 7, plus their brief interaction in Filly in episode 2, and their brief exchange at the observatory in episode 8 that was cut short when he got knocked out by her dad and she had to abandon him to depart with the Ghoul because she'd be killed by the Brotherhood reinforcements when they showed up.

Given how little time they spent together, well, honestly they're still complete strangers to one another.

The way Maximus talks about Lucy with Dane and Thaddeus, he comes off to me like he's got some idealized image of her in his head. And since they parted ways, Lucy has shown that her morals have started slipping, and she's done things that wouldn't necessarily gel with this image Max has of her (like doing the whole The Good, The Bad & The Ugly "bounty" scam with the Ghoul, taking chems and rationalizing doing so, stealing things because she doesn't have enough caps, or being willing to chip her own father for selfish reasons).

On Lucy's end, well, we don't know what she thinks of Maximus. Seeing as in season 2, she never discussed him onscreen at any point with either the Ghoul or with her dad, and there's no hint that she had offscreen discussions about him with the Ghoul. And she and Maximus weren't reunited until the final scene of the season, at a point when she was also in a bad place mentally due to her father having just effectively killed himself. If anything, I could argue Lucy actually knows more about the Ghoul than she knows about Maximus, considering that she and the Ghoul traveled together all the way to Vegas over the course of several weeks. (I'm not saying that as a Ghoulcy shipper, I'm saying that as someone looking at things with a more analytical perspective.)

Now, since Lucy ended the season reunited with Maximus, season 3 will undoubtedly open with them in some kind of relationship while also dealing with the NCR-Legion conflict and Lucy trying to find out what her dad was up to and who was pulling the strings behind him. And they're probably going to be an endgame pairing (because for Lucy, she'll either end up with Max, with the Ghoul, or single).

For me, I hope that in the early episodes of season 3, the writers will address with Lucy and Maximus the fact that they've changed since the end of season 1 in what they want in life. Lucy's not the naive vault dweller she was when Maximus first met her, and Maximus is no longer part of the Brotherhood of Steel and is trying to forge a new identity for himself, one that's likely with the NCR (a faction Lucy might not necessarily hold in high regard, considering how the Ghoul's ways of thinking have rubbed off on her).

FYI, two things can be true. Cooper has done terrible things to Lucy, yes, and Maximus has an idealized image of Lucy in his head.

Re: Cooper's actions. Uh, Cooper never tried to shoot Lucy. He shot in her direction, but he was clearly trying to scare her. He doesn't shift his gun hand even as Maximus is tackling her out of the way, and based on where his bullet hits Maximus' armor, it was aimed well above Lucy's head and would've shattered the window behind her. And we know Cooper's a good shot because of him being able to precisely shoot the weak spot in suits of power armor.

And for the other stuff with Cooper, well, the guy's a loner who's had to do terrible things to survive, and let's not forget it wasn't until the Super Duper Mart and Lucy gave him the vials that he began to see her as a person.

As for Maximus... well... look at the words he uses to describe Lucy in his conversations with Thaddeus and Dane. Also, in episode 7, look at the facial expression that Cooper makes when Maximus hands him the cold fusion and says he intends to give it to Lucy because she's a "good person" who will "do the right thing" with it.

Obviously, that expression is partly because Maximus' words remind him of why he decided to entrust the President with the cold fusion diode and provides a nice segue into those pre-War flashbacks. But that expression is also that of someone who, after spending weeks traveling with Lucy, knows what she's really like. And knows that this clashes with what Maximus thinks of her. He knows, for instance, that Lucy can easily compromise her morals for personal gain. Even if she disapproved of him killing the Khans, she still went along with his plan because it benefited herself (she needed caps). When he told her that she could deal with her Buffout addiction by either going cold turkey or sustaining her addiction by taking more Buffout, she talked herself into taking more ("Well, I know this isn't good for me, but stopping my dad from doing whatever he's doing is for the greater good, so even though I want it, I'm mostly doing it for other people, so that's what I'd want others to do for me. So give me the drսgs."). And while he doesn't know exactly what went down at Sonny's, let's consider that he only sent her there to get Addictol. She could've easily rationalized stealing the Addictol because she urgently needed it to flush the Buffout out of her body, but she also stole the Power Fist because she liked the look of it and decided she wanted it.

Those are the sorts of things that show that Lucy is someone who may desire to make the wasteland a better place, but also isn't exactly this shining paragon of virtue that Maximus seems to view her as. I think this is likely going to cause conflict between him and Lucy in the first part of season 3. They may try to make their relationship work, but the fact that Lucy's been changed by her time on the surface may lead her to realize she isn't as compatible with Maximus as she thought she was. And I could see Maximus maybe having issues with Lucy deciding to put her trust in someone as shifty as Robert House over the NCR for her own gain (in this case, to get answers on what her father was doing, and "meeting her makers"). It would be realistic for there to be something that creates conflict between Lucy and Max, and this seems like a pretty easy source of conflict.

Another potential source of conflict could arise from what to do about Hank. Maximus may think Hank ought to face NCR justice (after all, it's because of Hank that Maximus lost his parents and his hometown), but Lucy disagrees with him because she doesn't like the idea of her dad getting judged for crimes that he no longer has any recollection of committing.

It's like what Wilzig said when he first met Lucy in season 1. "You are a vault dweller, but if you're going to survive, you need to start acting like a surface dweller. Question is, will you still want the same things when you have become a different animal altogether?"

Random Fallout Season 2 Part 2

“In Close Quarters”

I drew this two months ago and forgot to share it with my Chapter 19 update of Two Parallel Lines. Oops. Only a few days late.