Lucy is every single Fallout player, and I can't help but love her for it

When I play Fallout, I embrace the role of a goofball who manages to survive the most extraordinary situations by the skin of my teeth. Whether I'm completing a quest by talking an evil person into killing himself or accidentally arming an entire town, I'm always making mistakes that come to define my flawed but lovable character.

You can play the role of a super serious member of your vault who appears in the world with determination in their heart and murder on their mind, but these games are always the most fun when you react to things instinctively. Yes, you may need to reload a save or complete your goals in the most unorthodox way possible, but that's part of the fun.

Why Lucy McLean is the perfect Vault Dweller

Lucy from Fallout giving a nervous thumbs up while surrounded by members of Caesar's army.

One thing that always amazes me when playing Fallout 3 is how capable your character is, given that they spent their entire short lives raised in an underground vault where most things you could ever want are handed to you on a silver platter. Yes, you're asked to play your part in this strange dystopian society, but otherwise it's a fairly comfortable but ignorant way of life.

But once you leave the Capital Wasteland, you can present yourself as a super capable survivor who goes on to fix society's ills, but also a person who will ultimately save the entire country. The dialogue will occasionally touch on how your character is taken aback by the presence of ghosts or giant insects, but otherwise fails to capitalize on the possibility of being a stranger in an unfamiliar land.

Fallout TV series promo art of the Ghoul and Lucy on the couch in the ruins.

This is something that the Prime Video adaptation expanded upon brilliantly with the character of Lucy McLean. Ella Purnell portrays this bubbly icon of post-apocalyptic Americana with an undeniable pep that makes it hard not to root for her. But when the show first begins, and she's thrust into the California wasteland to fend for herself, she's ultimately useless.

It's only through sheer luck and the rare kindness of strangers that she's able to survive, and even as we head into the second season, she's still learning so much about the world that the Vault once protected her from.

Okey-dokey – Lucy MacLean

In addition to running experiments and plunging the world into nuclear oblivion in search of huge profits, Vault-Tec aimed to one day resettle the inhabitants of its underworld haven into the world. However, it simultaneously wanted to protect them from everything that was going on outside with a constant flow of propaganda.

Fallout - Lucy McLean in her Fallout costume from the TV show

Through no small fault of their own, most of the vault's inhabitants are blissfully ignorant of how horrible the outside world has become decades after the bomb fell, and it's only after she leaves that Lucy is forced to learn such harsh truths. But she takes it all in her stride, and despite everything, remains a lovable dork trying to do the right thing.

Like my character in Fallout, she's silly, kind, unpredictable, and oddly skilled in the art of survival. We get a glimpse of this in a newly released clip from the second season in which Lucy tries to negotiate with a group of raiders in the town of Novak as Ghoul finds himself hanged. She needs to act fast or things are going to go terribly wrong.

Lucy McLean is not a cringe, she's one of us

From the safety of Novak's giant dinosaur statue with rifle in hand and dogmeat at her side, Lucy tries to negotiate with a group of attackers while the ghoul's life literally hangs in the balance. As expected, she handles it like an absolutely lovable dork.

She tells them that she is close to starving to death in the wasteland searching for her father, and so a plan is hatched to hand her over to the ghoul, carry a large reward, and free her before the hammer comes down. job done But things don't go to plan, hence why Lucy tries and fails to talk them out of it. She's basically failing the speech check here, which is a signature fallout.

She says kindly, hoping that politeness will twist the arms of homicidal maniacs who probably eat human flesh for breakfast. This is Jackie Taylor giving.

The clip is great, but unfortunately, some online critics have described Lucy's behavior as written by “quirk chungus female millennials” who have no idea how to write a script and accurately represent video game characters. One – Lucy MacLean is not a video game character, she is original to the TV adaptation. Two – she's acting exactly like me and many others do in Fallout.

Ella Purnell as Lucy McLean in the Fallout TV Show - Vault 33.

Aside from that, I'd describe Fallout: New Vegas as the ultimate cringe-worthy millennial video game, much of its writing is dorky, self-aware, and its dialogue is full of jokes that perfectly mirror the lines spoken by Lucy in this brief clip.

I wonder if certain circles of the internet are just dumping on female characters for no good reason, or if the show's tone and atmosphere hurt that Fallout is allegedly misrepresented in favor of Bethesda's take on the series over everything that came before. Lucy MacLean deserves none of this hate, and I bet she'll be a huge highlight when the second season drops later this month.