Amazon Prime Video’s Fallout Season 2 continues to impress fans with its deep respect for the game franchise’s lore. In a standout moment from the premiere episode, the series restores Vault 24, a mysterious location that was cut from Fallout: New Vegas and left unresolved for more than a decade.
From its opening scenes, Season 2 signals that it is fully committed to canon. Subtle references, background details, and carefully placed Easter eggs reinforce that the show is not just inspired by the games—it is actively expanding their universe. Vault 24 is the clearest example yet of that approach.
What Was Vault 24 in Fallout: New Vegas?
In Fallout: New Vegas, Vault 24 never appeared as a playable location. Instead, it existed only as a footnote in the game’s files, referenced through a Vault-Tec jumpsuit with no explanation of what happened inside the vault.
That absence turned Vault 24 into a quiet mystery within the Fallout community. Players speculated for years about its purpose, its experiment, and whether it had been abandoned during development. Until now, those questions had no official answers.
Fallout Season 2 Finally Reveals the Truth
In Episode 1 of Season 2, Lucy and the Ghoul stumble upon an unexpected entrance to Vault 24 hidden near the Starlight Drive-In, a familiar landmark from Fallout 4. The location suggests that Starlight was part of a wider chain, extending into the Mojave region.
Behind the projector screen lies a cave leading directly into the vault. What the characters discover inside confirms that Vault 24 housed one of Vault-Tec’s most disturbing social experiments.
Skeletons dressed in Communist clothing litter the interior, immediately raising questions. In the Fallout universe, pre-war America was aggressively anti-Communist, making the imagery deeply unsettling.
Vault-Tec’s Experiment Explained
As the episode unfolds, the show reveals that Vault 24 was designed to forcibly convert American citizens into Communists. Vault-Tec subjected residents to psychological conditioning and direct brain-manipulation technology, rewriting beliefs and behavior through invasive mind-control devices.
The experiment stripped inhabitants of free will, turning ideology into a weapon. The result was catastrophic, ending—as with many Vault-Tec experiments—in death and moral collapse.
While Vault-Tec’s cruelty is well established in the games, Vault 24 stands out for how explicitly political and psychological the experiment was, pushing the franchise’s themes of propaganda and authoritarianism even further.
Why This Matters for Fallout Fans
By restoring Vault 24, the TV series does more than deliver fan service. It canonizes previously unused Fallout lore, proving that the showrunners are willing to mine even the deepest corners of the franchise’s history.
For longtime New Vegas fans, the reveal provides long-awaited closure. For newer viewers, it reinforces the central truth of Fallout: the greatest horrors often occurred long before the bombs fell.
With Season 2 already rewriting expectations, Vault 24 suggests that more unresolved Fallout mysteries may finally see the light of day.
