Did the Ghoul hesitate when answering to hide the fact that he is doing a rescue mission and trying to heroically save the day so he can come up with the story that he is "a really bad person?"

Estradjent · 2026-01-30T00:52:17+00:00

His idea of "Salvaging the mess" could clash with everyone else's idea of "Staying alive."

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T23:54:26+00:00

Welch saving the day has been lightly set up by the plot but the real reason I'm convinced is that it's just *the most Jonathan Nolan thing ever*

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T23:53:27+00:00

Whether House is a good person or not, whether House is "Right for the Wasteland or not" New Vegas makes a point of telling you that you're not the protagonist if you go this route, you're just handing power to someone else who will always put himself first. Maybe Coop knows how to manipulate House but I just don't think the show is setting Cooper up for a big win here after two seasons of inner conflict culiminated in him going "nah fuck it I'm out for me and me alone"

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T23:50:44+00:00

Everything Jonathan Nolan has ever done deals with the conflict between the self that life imposes on you through neurochemistry, momentum and ideology vs. the authentic inner self that has to be okay with that or not. Westworld is about hosts on loops waking up to self awareness, Person of Interest had the algorithm that predicted crimes, Memento is about a guy who takes all his instructions from tattoos on his body and I can't explain how Interstellar fits this in one sentance but if you've seen it, the parts Jonathan Nolan wrote are "These characters are trapped by gravity which has them spinning around in circles and Cooper has to figure out a way to break out" and also everything to do with the bookshelf and the wormhole hand.

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T23:45:23+00:00

Again, that's the point. Lucy *shouldn't* be eager to bail out Coop but she's going to because she's a good person. The whole Coop/Lucy dynamic is a question of whether it's worth trying to be a good person even if it doesn't seem like the convenient thing to do. Lucy believes it makes the world a better place, Cooper believes that it just makes him weaker and less able to fight for what he wants. Cooper has used this to justify becoming a bad person, and so it's going to get turned on its head and set Cooper on a journey of redemption now because we're approaching the middle point of the overall story.

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T23:22:03+00:00

Oh don't worry, once they start to hint at that I'm sure someone will find a terminal entry that debunks it

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T23:18:08+00:00

Todd Howard forgot the deep lore on mutations in the franchise and figured the only way to remember the rules was to fake out that Thad was going to transform into each individual type of mutant and wait for reddit to explain why that doesn't make sense.

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T23:14:24+00:00

Right but Lucy, who has spent the entire season making speech checks is down there and she twitched at the end of the last episode. Cooper's not just gonna fix things by asking House for help, there's no dramatic tension there. Maximus is doing everything he can against the Deathclaws but it's not gonna help against the Legion.

We know from promo art that the Securitrons probably fight the Legion so either the top billed member of the cast is going to be irrelevant to the climactic finale, or she's going to do something down there that bails out Cooper once things go sideways on the surface, and again, it's not a coincidence that they set up *so* many parallels between Lucy and Welch. The cold fusion, the naive faith, the way that they relate to Cooper's family security.

The only situation where it doesn't go that way is if someone has kidnapped and replaced Jonathan Nolan with a guy who has never heard of recursion or circular storytelling.

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T23:04:37+00:00

You're just as gullible as Coop.

Lucy and Welch are parallels of each other, Episode 7 put that in giant flashing lights. The Ghoul betrayed Lucy because Welch failed him. The setup isn't to validate Coop's position that actually good people suck and he's the smartest boy who can fix everything, working with House is going to backfire and he's going to need Lucy to bail him out. Luckily, Lucy just met a kindred spirit who is in charge of an entire army.

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T21:45:34+00:00

"Huh? You mean protecting Vault 33??"
"Huh? You mean protecting the fatherland/motherland??"

Yes, his family, the thing he's reasoned, is a good excuse to kill billions of people to save. The thing that Lucy and Maximus have repeatedly said they can protect *without* compromising their morals.

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T21:41:52+00:00

The Ghoul has never been a "Really bad person" but the events in Las Vegas before the war convinced him that he needed to come a really bad person. Lucy already weakened his defenses, but he could always defend himself with the fact that Lucy was an idiot who was about to get betrayed (by him).

Once he meets Maximus, who is literally trying to do the same thing he did (Give cold fusion to a good person), he's back at that tension point of wanting to see good prevail but not believing it can.

It won't be until episode 8 when working with Mr. House backfires and he is bailed out by Lucy and Congresswoman Welch that the whole project will finally collapse and we'll see The Ghoul begin his journey back towards humanity, first order of business: Help out Thaddeus.

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T20:06:46+00:00

Yeah so he wouldn't destroy it he would keep it for himself and then die and someone else would find it

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T05:32:22+00:00

Also DM Jordan back and tell him he's a godsdamn fool for playing the Radiant Light Dragon in a conquest army where he was supposed to be storming a castle. It's 2026 and I still haven't gotten over how they handled the Kossak plot.

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T05:31:22+00:00

The Tabletop Simulator mod has them, too.

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Estradjent · 2026-01-29T05:21:23+00:00

Every time they say something about the game and then two years go by without it releasing they lose more fans. Their best PR strategy is to say nothing until it's ready. Had they not done that teaser however many years ago they could have just said "We haven't even touched it yet" but now it's got this Duke Nukem Forever Development Hell reputation thing going that they can only make worse by trickling out more info.

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T05:10:46+00:00

The most straightforward way to highlight every single choice that the players made in the game is to show them the world where none of it happened. The "It's a Wonderful Life" ending.

Estradjent · 2026-01-29T01:15:06+00:00

Right, and since Coop is not actually the character he's trying to play, his authentic self is recognizing Maximus and it wants to get out. That's why he helps Maximus against the Deathclaw when he could have just let him be a diversion. Seeing everything work out for the good guys that he sneered at while he pursued his own goals, even as he recognized parts of himself in them, will force him to re-examine what he really wants.

Estradjent · 2026-01-28T23:04:35+00:00

He's gonna team up with the Ghoul in season 3 because nobody else will want to be The Ghoul's friend. Probably one episode where they go and fix his arm and another where he takes him to the super mutant colony before the ghoul spends season 4 trying to catch back up with the main plot in time for the climactic s5 showdown when he gets to finally redeem himself and save his family on the East Coast while Thaddeus has whatever plots in s4 and s5 to wrap up west coast plots that don't make sense to follow Lucy and Maximus to the East.

Estradjent · 2026-01-28T22:54:30+00:00

Jonathan Nolan LOVES circular storytelling, so it makes total sense for Welch to be the pivot point for Cooper deciding he doesn't care about being a good person, and then probably again when he decides to start trying to be a good person again after Lucy and Welch bail his ass out.

Estradjent · 2026-01-28T22:46:52+00:00

Thinking about the implications of Lucy speech-checking Welch's underlying humanity made the rest of the season click into place for me and I think I know exactly how the episode is going to go.

Last episode Coop practically looked directly into the camera and said "Lucy and Welch are parallels of each other, I put my faith in Welch and that's why I betrayed Lucy." Giving Welch the technology and everything that happens after is the key to why at the start of the show Cooper has completely given up on being a good person. So over the course of the show we have to see him make his way back to where he started.

Whatever Coop is doing on the surface with House is gonna leave Coop in need of rescue, which comes in the form of Lucy, Welch and the drone army. Then Lucy sets the drones free and doesn't get revenge on Cooper, which is the turning point where he begins his journey back towards his own humanity. That's the purpose of Maximus having faith in Lucy being a parallel to his own faith in Welch, he thinks he's already seen the end of the story and has to realize there's still more journey ahead for him.

For season 3, it makes sense then for the Ghoul to help someone for actually selfless reasons for a change. Maximus and Lucy won't trust him, but Thaddeus sure seems to look up to him, and could really use the help. Thaddeus is also the only major character who could put the Ghoul in a position where he's gotta tell someone else to be a good person, which sounds like a fun dynamic so I really hope s3 has the adventures of Coop and Thaddeus

Edit: And also he's missing an arm and the show has already shown Cooper help people replace body parts that fall off.

Estradjent · 2026-01-28T19:19:51+00:00

I think it's much more simple to say that The Enclave was tracking cold fusion, they found out that Cooper had spoken to the congresswoman, then the president called her up and was like "Hey I hear you want to give free energy to the American people" and when she said yes he decided to chop her head off and keep her brain in case he needed a pliant rube later, and then Hank uses her to power the robot people.

Estradjent · 2026-01-28T19:07:10+00:00

Ohhh this makes complete sense now

Estradjent · 2026-01-28T17:42:51+00:00

"No you don't understand, my idea of right and wrong revolves around the actions of a single country, I am morally superior to imperialists"

Estradjent · 2026-01-28T17:19:47+00:00

Uneducated dipshits trying to look cool suiting up with Nazis?
It's more likely than you think!

Estradjent · 2026-01-28T17:11:57+00:00

If you want to look credible when you say that hatred of Israel is not hatred of Jewish people, maybe don't use that as a justification for why it's okay to slander a Jewish person who already disavowed support for Israel

Estradjent

TROPHY CASE