Fallout season 2 stars Kyle MacLachlan and Annabel O’Hagan were just as surprised as we were when it came to Hank and Steph’s surprise, uh, union.
Warning: Major spoilers for Fallout season 2 episode 8 below!
“Well, that’s kind of what we do with the characters for both seasons, really,” MacLachlan explains to GamesRadar+, when asked about playing around with what the viewers thought they knew about Steph and Hank. “There are always surprises, and they keep peeling back these layers. And the writers keep giving us really interesting things that actually make sense for the character. This was one of those situations that we didn’t learn about until we read the script that day. I think, actually, [until] we were shooting the scene in the airport where we’re suddenly eloping, and then we run into Coop, and off we go. And we sort of spill the story. “
“As you look back and think back on it, [and] say, ‘Well, actually, no, it does make sense that they would maybe end up together.’ And then from that night forward, what form has it taken? We don’t really know. We haven’t investigated it yet, but it’s a field that is planted. And we’re waiting to see what sort of sprouts. So what are we growing here? We don’t know yet.”
In Fallout season 2 episode 7, Cooper Howard calls for a hotel maid to bring a passed-out Hank MacLean back to his room. The maid is none other than Steph, who we know as the eyepatch-wearing, morally ambiguous overseer of Vault 32. The season 2 finale takes it a step further, as we watch Steph and Hank head to the airport to elope. Episode 7 establishes that Steph is 200 years old (although the Vault dwellers are much more upset at the fact that she’s actually Canadian), and that she’s a ruthless survivor who doesn’t mind a little violence (which makes her a lot like the Ghoul if anything).
If Hank and Steph were indeed married prior to the Great War, did they separate before or after they went into their cryo-chambers? Was Steph involved with the destruction of Shady Sands? Did she always know that Hank was evil? We don’t know yet, but O’Hagan says, “Time will tell.”
“It makes me wanna go back and rewatch season one, and especially that first episode, where we have a few very small interactions,” O’Hagan tells GR+. Like, I’m watching you give the wedding speech, and what would Steph be thinking in that moment? I think it’s really fun to discover things about your character after the fact because it just adds so much color to the character, but also it makes our jobs way more fun when we know we have a secret, right?”
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Towards the end of season 2 episode 8, Steph calls into Vault-Tec and introduces herself as Hank MacLean’s wife (which means they never legally divorced before the bombs dropped), and calls in to activate phase 2. Phase 2, as per the video game, is what turns the Vault dwellers into super mutants. This act alone makes Steph one of the show’s biggest villains, and we can only infer that she learned from the best.
Adds O’Hagan: “I had a great acting teacher who once said, like, ‘Always act as if you have a secret to share, or that you are withholding,’ and then in this case, we literally did, even though we didn’t know it.”
Fallout season 2 airs weekly on Prime Video. For more, check out our Fallout season 2 release schedule.
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