The first season of Prime Video’s Fallout wrapped up most of its storylines quite neatly. By the end we know how the world turned into a post-apocalypse hellscape, we know who was responsible, and we know the terrible secret of the Vaults. But there’s one character in particular who gave us more questions than answers: Sarita Choudhury’s Lee Moldaver.
Spoilers for Prime Video’s Fallout ahead!
Who is Moldaver?
We first meet Moldaver when she attacks the residents of Vault 33 with a group of very unpleasant Raiders. She and the group have been posing as the residents of Vault 32, and they enter 33 by offering up one of their number as a “breeder” for Lucy McLean (Ella Purnell) to marry. Spoiler alert: The result is utter carnage.
But in the seven episodes that follow, we learn more and more about Moldaver, and we learn that she was actually around pre-War, the same time Cooper Howard, a.k.a. The Ghoul, was existing as a regular human. Back then, she was called “Miss Williams.”
But how did Miss Williams end up being Lee Moldaver? Well, the show doesn’t actually explain. The audience can make some pretty plausible guesses—maybe she was cryogenically frozen the same way Hank McLean was—but nothing is actually confirmed. She’s not a Ghoul like Cooper is, we know that much.
I was dying to know how Moldaver made it intact to the present day, but the fact that she died in the season finale means I’m probably not going to find out for a while. Maybe it’ll be explained via more of Cooper Howard’s flashbacks in season two?
Personally, I thought it was a mistake to kill Moldaver off so early. There’s not just the question of how she survived to the present day—there’s all sorts of question marks surrounding her.
What are Moldaver’s motivations with the McLean family?
One of the things I’m most puzzled about with regards to Moldaver are her motivations in attacking Vault 33, and by default the children of the MacLean family, Lucy and Norm. You see, Moldaver knew those children, if one particular flashback is anything to go by.
Here’s the backstory that Lucy was horrified to learn: Her mother, Rose, once left Vault 33 and began a new life with her children on the surface world. She was a resident of Shady Sands along with Moldaver, and the two seemed to be pretty close, maybe even lovers, in the brief flashes we get of that time. But Hank McLean, the father of Rose’s children and the overseer of Vault 33, was furious at Rose leaving because it went against everything Vault-Tec stood for. He took the children back from Rose (they would have no memory of any of this) and then launched a nuke at Shady Sands, destroying it.
Moldaver’s relationship with Rose is what makes her attack on the Vault so puzzling. She kidnapped Hank from the Vault because he had a code she needed, but she surely could have pulled that off without the need for casualties among the Vault Dwellers—casualties that very nearly included the children of Rose, a woman Moldaver clearly loved. And allowing Lucy to be married to a Raider posing as a Vault Dweller also put Lucy at severe risk of sexual violence. If Moldaver was as close to Rose as she implied, how could she have planned something so awful for her daughter?
Then there’s the horrible thing we learn about Rose herself in the season finale. She actually survived the nuking of Shady Sands … sort of. She became a Feral Ghoul, basically a mindless zombie, and Moldaver kept her alive and restrained for years. Lucy is so appalled at seeing her mother in that state that she ends up mercy-killing her via shooting. But that raises the question: Why didn’t Moldaver kill her? Sure, perhaps she couldn’t accept that a person she loved had become a walking corpse, but keeping a human being alive as a Feral Ghoul is tantamount to torture.
I really wish Moldaver had lived so Lucy could ask her some pressing questions about everything she’d done, and how much of it was motivated by blind vengeance against Hank rather than a true desire to make the wasteland a better place. Fingers crossed for a flashback or two. In the meantime, Moldaver stands as a testament to how war never changes.
(featured image: Prime Video)
