Fallout season 3 could bring back Clancy Brown's US president with a shocking twist

Not from a pineapple under the sea, surprisingly

Fallout season 2 is over, wrapping up with an explosive finale that sees some characters cutting ties, others dealing with what looks to be an upcoming war, and some leaving New Vegas entirely to journey elsewhere. Moreover, the Prime Video show’s season 2 finale answered plenty of questions, all while revealing a handful of new ones that we’re looking forward to Fallout season 3 answering.

One big question at the front of our minds is this: Is the U.S. president (Clancy Brown, aka Mr. Krabs in SpongeBob SquarePants) who Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) met with in the lead-up to the Great War of 2077, still alive? And if so, where is he? After watching the finale and looking for clues and direction across the vast web of the internet, I think I finally have the answer to both those questions.

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for Fallout season 2, episode 7 and episode 8.]

The final U.S. president's first and only appearance in Fallout so far occurs during the pre-war era, when Cooper presents the cold fusion device to POTUS in the hope that he’ll do what’s best to share its potential for unlimited, clean energy with the world, thereby averting a resource-driven nuclear war. Considering the history of U.S. presidents in real life, and the hope that they’ll do the right thing, Cooper’s decision reeks of naivete. He quickly pays the price for trusting the president in episode 8, where Cooper is arrested by the House of Un-American Activities Committee and whisked away from his family. Thanks to a brief phone call Cooper receives from billionaire Mr. House (Justin Theroux) before his arrest, we get further confirmation on who stitched Cooper up.

“I told you, there are far worse people than I, Mr. Howard.” House tells Cooper over the payphone. “I commend you for trying to play the hero. I really do.” As foreboding music begins, Fallout cuts to an earlier scene in which Cooper hands over the cold fusion device to the president.

After that, we don’t see the president again in Fallout season 2. But we do get a soft confirmation that he’s either working with or for a Deep State organization known as The Enclave. And because of his connection with that shadowy organization, I have a gut feeling that this won’t be the last time we see the president.

Throughout Fallout season 2, Colorado has been mentioned repeatedly. Cooper and his wife, Barbara (Frances Turner), mention the mountainous state, and when the Ghoul finally finds Barbara's cryotube, there’s a postcard from Colorado indicating that’s where she and their daughter, Janey, are located. We also see what looks to be the Enclave HQ in Colorado, nestled among the snow and the mountains. All roads, it seems, lead to Colorado, and the Ghoul will likely head there in Fallout season 3. However, I have good reason to believe that it’s not just his family and the Enclave we’ll find amid all that snow, but the president of the United States as well.

As pointed out by PC Gamer, season 2 wasn’t the first time the series has mentioned Colorado. In a Prime Video feature released before Fallout season 1's debut, titled “A Special LIVE Report from Galaxy News”, a sales pitch is given from Vault-Tec about the benefits of living in vaults. The hour-long special might seem like a silly, fake pitch to promote the show ahead of Fallout’s first season, but 12 minutes in, the Vault-Tec spokesperson mentions something off-handedly about the U.S. president.

“Vault living is living the dream, and it’s the only way to safety, unless you’re the president of the United States or something like that, and you have a mountain in Colorado to go under and direct the events of the world,” the spokesperson says. “Not many of us are that. There's only one of those. And his various and sundry advisers, I'm sure they'll be fine. But you won't! You won't be fine if a vault is out of your price range.”

During Fallout’s initial release, this was a tongue-in-cheek one-liner that was easy to forget. Now it might just spell out exactly what we can expect to see in Fallout season 3. Revealing what the president is up to before the TV series even aired its first episode would certainly be a bold move.

The president being alive, in a secret bunker underground, and controlling the events that occur in the Wasteland sounds comically evil. But as a franchise, Fallout has never shied away from criticizing the people in charge of America — and how organizations like the Enclave and the government are the reason why the Wasteland even exists.

As Fallout’s showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet put it in an interview with Polygon: “When we started working on this adaptation, we were really interested in the corporatization of America, and corporate monopolies as villains. But given what's going on in the world around us, it seems like it is The Enclave, and the idea that people in government might be misusing power for personal gain and for their own ends, that's increasingly interesting.”

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All episodes of Fallout season 2 are now streaming on Prime Video.