Vault 33: Lucy's Home and the Secret of Vaults 31 and 32

Vault 33 is the vault under Los Angeles where Lucy MacLean grows up, and the place the Fallout TV series starts. It is one of three linked vaults, 31, 32 and 33. The dwellers of 32 and 33 think they're three neighbouring democracies keeping civilisation alive, but Vault-Tec built them as a single experiment run from Vault 31. (Fallout, "The End"; Fallout, "The Past"; Fallout, "The Beginning")

Life in Vault 33#

The vault runs on committees and cheer. Lucy's marriage application to the council lists the Young Pipefitter's Association, fencing, riflery and a family book club. A council of residents, Betty, Woody and Reg among them, makes decisions, and a Gate-Keeper, Lucy's cousin Chet, minds the doors. Dwellers believe they share a duty to keep "the candle of civilization lit" until Reclamation Day, when the next generation can go back to the surface. (Fallout, "The End"; Fallout, "The Past")

Small populations bring problems. Lucy jokes about ten years of "cousin stuff", and the vault keeps rules against marrying relatives. That is why it holds a Triennial Trade with Vault 32, swapping seed and machine parts for a spouse. When Hank is taken, the council refuses even to open the outer door to send a search party after its own overseer. (Fallout, "The End")

Vaults 31, 32 and 33#

Betty sums up the official story: "Three democracies in three vaults", kept apart so threats can't spread but connected to help each other. Vault 31 is the respected neighbour. It supposedly has more resources and better schools, and dwellers repeat the slogan "When things look glum, vote 31." (Fallout, "The Past")

That slogan is the clue. Norm notices that Vault 33 always elects an overseer from Vault 31, and that Vault 32 did the same. Hank MacLean told Lucy he never set foot outside Vault 31 until he met her mother, and Betty and Steph Harper also came from 31. (Fallout, "The End"; Fallout, "The Past")

In 2077, Vault-Tec's Bud Askins pitches "three interconnected vaults" at a meeting of corporate leaders. Inside Vault 31, his preserved brain explains the rest to Norm. The vault holds "Bud's Buds", junior executives from his assistant training programme, frozen and woken one at a time. Vaults 32 and 33 are "our breeding pool", dwellers genetically selected to breed with his Buds and create "a class of super managers" who will inherit the Earth. (Fallout, "The Beginning")

What happened to Vault 32?#

In season 1 the 32s are a front. Lee Moldaver introduces herself as Vault 32's new overseer, and her raiders come through for Lucy's wedding. They kill many dwellers, are beaten back, and take Hank. Sixteen captured raiders are kept in Vault 33's reading room. (Fallout, "The End"; Fallout, "The Head")

When Norm MacLean and Chet climb into Vault 32, they find its people long dead. The last bio-signal was two years earlier, and they seem to have strangled each other. The overseer's terminal shows the outer door was opened from outside with Rose MacLean's Pip-Boy. A captured raider tells Norm the people of 32 were "anything but innocent", and Norm finds they died trying to get into Vault 31. (Fallout, "The Ghouls"; Fallout, "The Past")

Betty cleans 32 up and announces a resettling campaign. A group of 33 dwellers moves in, and Steph Harper, who lost her husband Burt in the raid, becomes its interim overseer. (Fallout, "The Past"; Fallout, "The Radio")

Vault 33 after Hank#

After the raid, with the vault's water chip destroyed, Betty Pearson wins the overseer election with 98 percent of the vote. She tells Norm she buried Rose's Pip-Boy with her, though Rose is alive on the surface. When the raider prisoners are poisoned and Norm slips into Vault 31, Betty tells the vault he's gone on a "leadership exchange program". (Fallout, "The Head"; Fallout, "The Past"; Fallout, "The Radio"; Fallout, "The Innovator")

Season 2 shows how thin the democracy was. Betty, who says she was woken from Vault 31 forty years earlier, finds the pods empty and Bud Askins upside down in a mop bucket. She tells Steph that "the company we work for isn't coming to save us". Steph, now in charge of 32, will only share water in exchange for a keepsake box Hank brought into Vault 31 before the war, and Betty hands it over. Back in 33, showers and flushing are banned and Betty shuts down Reg's snack club. (Fallout, "The Demon in the Snow"; Fallout, "The Other Player"; Fallout, "The Handoff")

Steph and Phase 2#

Steph's story turns out to be the vault's darkest. At her wedding to Chet in Vault 32, he accuses her in front of everyone: Woody has vanished, his glasses were in her garbage disposal, and Steph is 200 years old and Canadian. Pre-war flashbacks confirm she escaped an internment camp in Canada, met Hank in Las Vegas and married him. (Fallout, "The Handoff"; Fallout, "The Strip")

In the finale, with Vault 32's dwellers banging on her door and chanting "Death to management", Steph uses a Pip-Boy from Hank's box. She identifies herself as Hank MacLean's wife and asks whoever is listening to "initiate Phase 2". Meanwhile Vault 31's thawed executives have escaped through a hatch to the surface and been killed by radroaches at Vault-Tec's old headquarters. Only Norm and one new hire, Claudia, survive. What Phase 2 means for Vault 33 is left for season 3. (Fallout, "The Golden Rule"; Fallout, "The Strip")