Surprise! Amazon's putting out the Fallout TV show a day early as a 'thank you' to fans, and a second season seems guaranteed

A jumpsuit-clad Lucy, played by Ella Purnell, emerges from a vault in the Fallout TV series.
(Image credit: Amazon Prime Video)

The hands on the doomsday clock are closer to midnight than ever now that Amazon has announced that, actually, it's gonna put its upcoming Fallout TV show out even earlier than it promised. That means all eight episodes will drop tomorrow, April 10, at 6 pm PT / 9 pm EST / 2 am BST. That's still technically April 11 for those of us in Europe, but why split hairs? None of us will be up anyway.

The news was announced via a short trailer featuring Fallout actor Walton Goggins, who announced that—as a "thank you" to the fans—the full 8-episode run of the show would be dropping on Prime a day early.

That's a full day earlier than the April 11 date it was previously sticking to, which was itself a full day earlier than the April 12 date it originally announced. Bad luck if you booked time off work to watch it, I suppose, but I'm kind of enjoying Amazon's sheer, arbitrary disregard for everyone's schedules. Perhaps the company can reschedule it for today at some point, then continue to retroactively reschedule all the way back into the past as the weeks drag on. I won't be satisfied until Wikipedia says it aired concurrently with the Dreyfus affair.

Amazon had previously announced that the first episode of the show would air free on Twitch (which it owns) on April 11, in partnership with various co-streamers. I've reached out to ask if the reschedule affects that air date at all, and I'll update if I hear back. For now, I think it's safe to assume the Twitch air date is staying where it is, and it's just Prime subscribers that will get earlier access to the show.

Will the show be good? Will it please fans? Will it attain Last Of Us-like success? Well, it's impossible to say right now. Also, it doesn't really matter in the short-term, because Variety reports a second season for the show has already had $25 million of tax credits greenlit by the state of California, suggesting the show will relocate shooting for this hypothetical (but surely inevitable) second season to the home of the NCR. Ain't that a kick in the head?

Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.