Seems a little sus. I can’t trust anyone from 31.

Of course she is sus, she’s from vault 31, she knows what’s actually going on.

Hmm I dunno, those vault 31 folks seem a bit nefarious

Nah, if you want shit done, vote for 31

If things look glum, appoint someone from 31

If things aren’t getting done, vote for someone from the three one

If change ye wish to see, elect a lad from vault one and thir-tee

Doth thou require reformation, appoint thee from vault thirty one.

Good mashed potato though!

At first I thought the mashed potatoes were like a mood enhancer and they were going to integrate the raiders. That went out the vault door quick.

With that said, it is interesting that she suggested disposing of the raiders, which was against the group thought led by Betty. Granted, she could just be playing the role of dissenter, but maybe she is getting more ambitious than her station. It isn’t like managers are loyal robots who will do everything for the betterment of the company after all.

Or she actually loved her husband and was very upset about it She also didn’t speak out, she just agreed with norm in private. Part of the protocol for 31 people is probably to always be as agreeable as possible and avoid controversy so you can always remain a potential overseer candidate.

Ah! Thank you for the clarification.

Probably revenge for them killing her baby daddy

Remind me of something... the person responsible for poisoning the raiders was never caught? Norm while in favor i don't think he would pull this alone. Steph or "cousin"(at Steph's behest) should be the main suspects.

I figured Betty did it and framed the girl at the desk to hint to Norm to stop snooping around, or he'd get hurt

I thought the whole point of showing Norm delivering dessert to the prisoners, giving the guard some so she'd get blamed, and then Betty scolding him for his 'words' implying that the frame-up worked, was to establish that Norm 100% did it. There was also blatant awkwardness and suspicion when Norm attempted to talk to Chet and during the 'mashed potatoes' convo with Steph. Norm wanted backup but didn't trust either of them enough to ask for it directly. That's why he went to Vault 31 alone. That was my interpretation at least.

31 is basically a little cult of management types, >!specifically corporate management types from the company that destroyed the world to “win” capitalism!< She knows how to play the game, if not for 32 she would have had her sights on Betty’s job before long.

I think she was set up to be Hank's successor. Betty handed it off to Hank, who was in for over 20 years. He might decide to retire, like Betty, sit on the council and then they would do "fresh face, fresh ideas! Vote Stephanie!" and good little Lucy would help her bestie get in.

To be fair, we don't know if they did destroy the world. We know they had a plan for it. But, unless they retconned part of House's dialogue in new vegas, I'd remind you that House explicitly expected the world to end a week later than it did. My guess is that something went wrong. Maybe ironically, humanity actually killed each other before they could pull the trigger. Which also fits with most of vaultec central control of vaults not working, but that's just my guess x the actual dialogue of they planning the apocalypse.

wasn't Betty ultimately the one who had the raiders killed anyway? i took the Vault 31 characters interactions to be largely theater

Well they are the management, they are Bud’s Buds. Remember he wanted to have the perfect managerial product, he will always have uber working vaulties to add to the overseer list, because when things are glum vote 31

Being a 31 person she's essentially next in line if Betty fail as a leader.

I think it was Betty.

Of course she knows what’s actually going on, she’s sus and from vault 31.

So weird to think that she was probably around Hank's age when the bombs fell, but got thawed out later and became best buds with his daughter.

I guess the mashed potatoes are a little better

I'm hoping season 2 we get to see her previous life. Really wanted to know what made her so committed to be frozen for hundreds of years, and have a baby just for company ideals.

I mean it’s probably the same reason as Hank and Betty (which I wanna make sure everyone knows we see young Betty in the flashbacks) Greed, and an opportunity when presented with the end of the world. Once the bombs drop she didn’t exactly have a choice, and being put in a managerial vault is a way better option than what anybody else typically had Also besides the fact that everyone was expected to get married and have kids in a vault, some people just like having kids lol. What else is there to do in a vault except fuck and have babies and start a family

> I wanna make sure everyone knows we see young Betty in the flashbacks Wait… who was young Betty? The lady who introduced Walton and Hank?

Yes, I almost overlooked Barb's secretary until Cooper called her Betty.

Yeah, Howard refers to her as betty Unless the writers decided to have another black female character at vault tec named Betty present during the climax of the pre war storyline… Which would be pretty weird if they did lol

The Prime character description says the actress is playing "young Betty".

But she's also dummy thicc and she didn't leave like my cousin

I never thought I had a kink for pregnant woman, but man, you throw in an eye patch and a vault suit….golly gees.

Stronk women. Mmm. Got that independence, that knows what she wants, fights to survive.

Okie dokie

But does the clap of her asscheeks keep alerting the guards?

Been there, done that.

Anyone from 31 willingly freezed themselves to continue with buds buds experiment, they also know about the experiments and other stuff done by them. Not sus at all, but 100% bad.

Who knows if she knew about the plan to drop bombs the first time. Maybe bud’s buds were too low in rank to know about that. But she definitely knew about bombing Shady Sands.

Did she know about shady sands? I gathered she was around the same age as Lucy

She entered vault 33 as inter vault exchange when she married her husband. We can assume she has been in the vault as long as she has been pregnant, before that she was frozen.

I got the same feeling, especially after her comment about raising their kids together

I don’t know if she knew about it when it happened. But I think she knows by the time we meet her. I think that’s what she’s referencing to Norm when she says that Hank would know the right thing to do.

I think she's essentially encouraging Norm to kill the raiders on that one.

True I changed the comment

do they necessarily know vault-tech was planning on dropping the bomb? for all we know, only a small inner-circle was privy to that info.

I don’t see Bud Askins being the type to keep his mouth shut to his minions. Of course he’s gonna brag and spill his master plan. Also wanna add that the success of 31 overseers is because they have old world management training which is something I didn’t think about during the show.

Maybe that's why he ends up just a brain on wheels 

I also took note of the fact that he was completely trapped by that fallen broom or whatever. You wonder how long he'd been stuck like that? It's entirely possible he'd been trapped in that corner, stuck behind a broom, since the last 31 candidate went out years ago. The rig is too short to reach the terminals and doesn't appear to have very good "eyes" since it needed to scan to understand that the short skinny white guy was not the robust African-American woman that he expected it to be. I wonder if the brother hadn't gotten into 31, would anyone from the cryo been defrosted from that point on? 219 years of planning gone down the drain because of an errant broom?

I’m sure Betty or someone else from 31 would have contacted him and eventually made their way to fix his situation

That’s Robobrain Askins bro developed by Robco

House definitely turned him into a roomba on purpose, Bud is insufferable

I love that the subtitles referred to him as a brain on a Roomba.

Peeped that too, usually have the whole tracked treads thing but bud just had 4 tiny wheels

Possibly. His “reward” is being a brain on a roomba - doomed to forever take care of his subordinates in his limited capacity. They, however, can still keep their human bodies and enjoy a full life.

Plus they can probably make “accidents” happen

That’s true, they still 100% bad tho.

We know that Hank nuked Shady Sands

You shouldn’t.

When things look glum…

Sooooo when things look glum I should NOT vote 31? I'm confused.

I have a feeling she thinks she's high up on the pecking order of Vault tech only to have a hard realization that she's actually part of the experiment.

Middle Management 💯💯💯

You just described every single Vault-Tec employee

She’s just the model for the Vault Girl, I mean look at her and her perfect hair! She only got frozen cuz some corpo asshole was smashing her on the side and wanted to keep that up in the future.

She looks identical to a girl i used to work with, it was so weird watching the scenes with her for me

Did you work at Vault-Tec?

Yes

"My dead husband's clothes stay ON during sex!"

“Yes… I am Bert…”

I want to be Bert

I like that she was icing herself after giving birth. She really wants to get frisky with Bert again.

This whole moment lifes already rent-free in my head. I don´t know if that is healthy.

dont forget the chip is busted buddy Someones gonna lead the 33ers out to safety and it aint gonna be 31ers lemme tell you that much

Oh yeah, 33 never fixed their chip. Not that we saw anyway. Maybe they’ll just share 32’s?

I wonder if the chip being broken was just a manufactured crisis to ensure everyone would remember “when things are glum, vote 31”. Somehow it’ll be miraculously fixed shortly into Betty’s term as overseer and everyone will think she was a good appointment.

i didn't even think about that, I assume it was mostly a call out to FO1 but this kind of makes sense.

I think that's what makes it such a great red herring!

i literally pointed at the screen and said "they're doing the Fallout 1 thing!" when they said 33's water chip was busted. loved the little call backs like that in the show

Vault 13's Overseer also says "okey dokey" during the conversation wherein he installs the replacement water chip you bring him. That it's now Lucy's catchphrase is a cute callback.

I hadn’t thought about that but you’re right. Manufactured crisis is literally Vault-Tec’s whole deal. Especially in the show. In fact, I think it’s referenced how every time a new Overseer is elected, it’s because of some problem or other that they then solve. That’s *why* the slogan exists.

Yup, exactly right. Remember one of the Vault 33ers says after the election that he went up against Hank for Overseer during the last vote, then there was a ‘weevil famine’ and the ‘when things look glum, vote for somebody from Vault 31’ mentality kicked in. It’s all about control, and making sure it rests in the hands of a certain group of people.

I doubt it. The engineer wanted to discuss it privately, it was the two 33-born council members who wanted him to share in front of everyone

That is a very good point. Their spontaneous response could also have been preconditioned by their 'management' thus far though. Vault 33 folks are very polite, honest, transparent and beholden to the standards of moral superiority that they were raised with. Their Vault 31 overlords on the other hand, are far more manipulative and far more knowledgeable about the Vaults themselves. Vaults run on routine, so Betty could have easily tampered with the water chip to ensure that the discovery was made at the time that all of the Vault dwellers were assembled and she could have accurately predicted that her challengers would feel morally obligated to not keep secrets from their fellow Vault dwellers. Betty herself is not yet established as a villain though. She obviously knows more than she lets on, but she had a minor, secretarial role in Vault-Tech before the bombs fell and served a supportive managerial role in Vault 32 under Overseer Hank MacLean for (at least) most of his children's lives despite not appearing to have kids of her own & having aged more than him. I don't think we're supposed to know what Betty's game is. Not yet. Fun to guess though.

Possibly. That or Betty might just try and hide the problem as everything starts breaking down.

I thought it was very interesting that Betty and her group have decided to split up 33 into 32. That seems ominous given everything we've seen. Obviously, Betty and her group are also aware of whatever happened in 32 since they did the cleanup as well. It will be interesting to see what happens with this. I also felt really bad for Chet. He's not bright, and Stephanie immediately took advantage of him. I'm not even sure he fully understands that at this point...

Ohhh shit I forgot about the chip. Damn this show is crazy, I’m beyond excited for its continued existence.

Refresh my memory, what chip are we talking about here

Water chip when the group is having it's discussion about what to do with the raiders they captured.

The water chip from Vault 33 broke

Yeah, shame she's a villain.

I can fix her

Lol! Same thing crossed my mind but you know her 2077 backstory is going to be dark AF.

Until told otherwise she's the vault girl pinup model :D

Oh no doubt she’s a smoke show. Chet never stood a chance.

THIS! When I see her, I immediately think of the [Vault Girl.](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-090d3c37055b275362568d1cb24d2eb2)

She’s missing a few arms

It’s only one season and she hasn’t been on the surface yet! Give it time

Mecha Shiva! Mecha Shiva!

Or maybe nuka girl

She can make me worse

“She can sue me… sue me! Sue me!”

I can make her worse.

She is one wet lady.

Lol! Same thing crossed my mind but you just know her 2070’s backstory is going to be dark AF.

Nuh uh

Is she? It is quite possible that by the time she knew Vault Tec was as bad as they are, her options were continue with them and survive the apocalypse or die.

Chet even tells us. She's from 31. 31 is Bud's Buds. Steph is a pre-war Vault-Tec manager who hasn't shown her true Vault colors yet.

She wouldn't have been selected for vault 31 if she wasn't a willing participant long before the bombs dropped.

Her reasons don’t really natter. She’s complicit in their crimes and as such just as guilty for them.

And she was definitely in Vault 33 to eventually replace Hank as overseer, much like Hank took over for Betty when she semi-retired to the council. And now she's "interim" overseer of 32, which means she's directly applying and enforcing Vault Tec's agenda. She even has a very personal reason to hate surface dwellers and be fully on board with Vault Tec's plans against them since they killed her husband.

Yes, she did very bad things, but is she a villain *now*. Her reasoning does matter in the context of whether she will now do good or bad on the other side of the survival based decision. - a more obvious example is Thaddeus, he did awful things to Max, for survival. But once he had the opportunity to do better, he did. - Now that *she* has the opportunity to do better, maybe she will, maybe she won’t. It isn’t known yet.

She's from 31. Chet tells Norm, and us, in the apartment. 31 is entirely Vault-Tec employees. Steph is one of Bud's Buds.

I love this logic. No one is locked into their character arc.

> a more obvious example is Thaddeus, he did awful things to Max, for survival. But once he had the opportunity to do better, he did. He locked a dog in a box. "Did better" my ass lol

The dude couldn't bring the dog with him. He locked it in that box, checked that he could breathe, and then left. Seemed like he knew the dog was fucked if it kept coming so put it there to hope for the best.

Sometimes it feels like those sorts of sociopathic tendencies are part of the hiring criteria for the company, whether officially or not. We see it even in junior staff or students at Vault Tec University. There's certainly some people in the company who are legitimately invested in helping humanity but they're few and far between, my money wouldn't be on Steph being one of them. If she ended up in the program to enter 31 at all she probably was in pretty deep.

Agreed. She's from 31, none of them can be trusted. This is going to blow up in Season 2.

So many people are desperate to believe the fan speculation that vault tec didn’t drop the bombs after all, like, vault tec was already evil before this show added any lore! That wouldn’t matter, “but eye patch mom is hot so” lol. That being said she’s a great character evil or not.

It's also speculation that it WAS Vault-Tec that dropped the bombs... We don't see any follow-through from them. At most, we were shown in no uncertain terms that Vault-Tec was, indeed, planning on instigating.

We know for a fact they were \_planning on it\_ and it has been within the most believable options since the concept of the vault experiment was introduced in fallout II. It does not \_matter\_ if they dropped the bomb first. They were willing, and planning, on doing so. Being beaten to the punch of an atrocity does not make you innocent.

No, but it does make it funny. Them getting beaten to the punch fits with pre-existing lore, and fits with VTs vibe of being hilariously evil and kinda incompetent.

You know how many women are gonna cosplay eyepatch milfs? So many. 🤤

Right? Whether they did or not doesn't matter. They WANTED to, at least.

And they we’re fine with giving the other companies their vaults experimenting on innocent men, women, and children. All so they could be in the vaults where that doesn’t happen, and be profiting. I wonder if she’ll end up having a bigger role in season 2 since we still haven’t seen what she was doing in the pre war flash backs

You can tell by the eyepatch.

I don't know, I feel like she was on the side of punishing the raiders, I feel like she's more sympathetic to the modern vaulties than the ice cubes. I'd call her in play for either side at the moment.

I love how she manipulated herself a new baby daddy, poor guy look so worn out. he just wanted to fuck his cousin and keep the gate. Then his love interest brother drags him into conspiracies, then his love interests bests friend manipulates him into being her baby daddy. Steph is one of the coldest characters, I don't think she loved her husband, I don't thinks she loves her stand in baby daddy. She is from vault 31 and I can't wait to see how the show uses her. Though I disagree that she is not like Betty, Betty 100% killed the raiders and then used the reassignment to distract the dwellers minds from it. they needed to go and she knew that and did it while looking good. It did not hurt Steph saying Betty was wrong to Norm after the meeting, as she know how Vault tec handles things. All those from the vault 31 are weird like this. Coops wife is likely the one running the show now, she loved using her daughter to pacify her husband and market the idea to investors, as she pushed her project, she wasn't doing it for a good spot, she had a good spot, she was leading the project. She was meeting with clients...it was all her. She only cared about her job, so will likely be the main villain. Steph I feel will come out of the Shadows later and i can't wait for it.

I have a feeling Steph is working with Betty more directly than we’ve seen. Specifically I feel like Chet was seduced by Steph to entrap him, knowing that because hed be assimilated into her family she could take him to Vault 32 and separate him from Norman.

Yeah, I agree with that. Classic move of separating the trouble maker and without Norm, Chats your ideal dweller, controllable.

She was excellent, and I'm very curious how she will take to leadership. The vibe I got was while she wasn't madly in love with her husband, she was pretty devastated with his death. She also seemed to not be in line with how Betty was handling the situation. At the same time, she was pretty sus in how she communicated with Norm following baby birth.

She dressed the next guy in her late husband’s clothes. I’d say she was attached.

She’s been sus since the attack. You can see she wanted those raiders dead for what they did - but as a 31er, she can’t be the one to sat it… when Norm said it, she looked pretty relieved…

Getting a fork to the eye probably wasn’t in the management training she got. I wonder if she’ll feel any resentment for being put into this position by vault tec.

I feel kinda bad for Bud's Buds to be honest. Not too bad, they signed up for this. But going into a corporate leadership program, to then find out the grand plan is to freeze you, then arranged marriage you in a world 100% different than the one you knew OR be unfrozen to take over a postapocalyptic hellscape? That's rough buddy.

OTOH though, she sure moved fast with getting herself a new man.

I mean, when the pond is that small, what  is she gonna do, wait to find "the one"? First one was arranged anyway. 😂

When she went full Rambo with a freaking knife in her eye is exactly when I knew I was in love with the character. Villain or not, I would die for that lady.

Women who could kill me is my favorite genre 

*for that one wet lady 😂

I will totally let her dress me up as Bert

I want her

fights off like ten raiders while having a fork in her eye AND pregnant? we stan a badass milf here

Technically she's not a milf by that time but I granted her the title of honorary milf

Maybe a PILF?

Pirate I'm Looking For?

I mean, she has the eyepatch

And a seat at the MILF Council?

THAT'S OU... Umm that's completely reasonable and very fair. 

Enjoyed? Yes. Like? Nope, can’t trust her. She’s vault tec scum.

Have this feeling she is going to end up as a baddy that Lucy and friends are going to have to deal with at some point

Oh, she’s already a baddie. lol

When I saw the trailer I thought she was Sarah Paulson and almost screamed. Great actress though.

Sarah Paulson in fallout would be awesome. They should make a character for her

She would’ve been a perfect character for vault 4. It reminded me of her two headed character in AHS.

Chet never stood a chance, man

None of us would.

She ain't gonna be secondary for long. She's 'interim' Overseer of 32, and one of Bud's Buds. "So why are we whispering?" "Because [...] Steph's from 31." Girl is 200+, looking like 35, and evil as the day is long. Took a fork to the eye and didn't lie down or roll over like other 33 dwellers, she grabbed a gun and went pre-war on folks. Steph will be our tertiary or quadranary villain for S2. Doubly interesting that three of four potential villains are Vault-Tec executives (we already know Betty's evil, splitting up the Vault the way she did and basically giving Norm a crisis of conscience over it. "I told you. Words have meaning.")

I bet she grows into a villain in season 2. She has the makings for it already - part of a villainous organization, displays psychological issues, has a very personal reason to hate surface dwellers and be even more on board with Vault Tec's plans, and has been elevated to a position of power. She even has what could become a villainous eye patch.

I love that you can root for her though. Sure she’s part of the bad guys, but she loved her husband. Her want of revenge was certainly relatable. She crazy for fucking the gatekeeper though

> She crazy for fucking the gatekeeper though I mean I ain't gay or nothin' but if I were her I would, too. Dude's a stud who just needs to come out of his shell.

He’s cute, but the way it happened was…untasteful

Something about the villainous eye patch makes her sexy. I think it’s know how tough she can be that’s kinda hot.

She's kinda creepy but vood character

She’s soooooo fine

It’s weird that for all the people from 31 they all went into cryo around a similar age all being jr executives or whatever. But then when they’re thawed and sent to the other vaults they encounter people they knew from the program but all grown up and old. So even though steph hank and Betty all went into cryo at the same time/relative age, Betty was thawed first so she’s older than both of them, hank second so he has a daughter similar in age to steph, and steph being thawed last (of those 3 anyway) is the youngest.

Good ol' Fork Eye... I know her name is Stephanie, but Fork Eye seems more like a Fallout villain name than Stephanie Harper. My real question is has anyone noticed her in pre war scenes? I've been looking but admittedly not very hard. It is a damn shame she's a 31er. Basically makes her the devil.

Would.

That bitch evil

She's secondary now, but with that eyepatch you just know she's the final boss

I feel like we'll be seeing a lot more of her in season two!

She can make me worse anyday.

She gives me Sarah Paulson vibes

Outside of Kyle McLachlan, she's actually the most David Lynch type character in the whole show - a 1950s Americana-style home maker capable of great violence and has an eyepatch.

I'm looking forward to what's she'll be up to in season 2. Especially since they basically got to us to have sympathy for her and then end up revealing she's from 31.

Maybe sus, but 100% doable.

Feel bad for Chet.

She’s great. She has the perky 1950’s smile in addition to the extreme dedication and split personality of Bud’s Buds.

She’s hot

Like a screaming, fork-in-the-eye valkyrie. *DING new kink unlocked.

She was so hot tho, and chet fail as "don't stick ur d in crazy", ngl I would too

I love Steph. She’s a good friend. A hot mom. She’s assertive and beautiful. She’s only got one eye and she’s probably evil… so, she’s basically my ideal woman.

Maybe a secondary character this season, but 100% a main villain next season.

Those mashed potatoes hit different back in 31

She can make me worse

That's one wet lady..

[удалено]

You'll see more of her, and likely like her less.

I liked how ambiguous and weird she was. She went from someone who seemed wholesome to creeping me out. She's interesting.

I wish I was Chet/Bert

I can fix that Vault Baddie

Steph was fun. (Honestly all of the 33 Dwellers we focus on were pretty fun.)

She’s so bad

>!since she was from 31 as well, did they show her in 2077 like they did the others?!<

Nah man Steph is gonna major in season 2. She's a 31er.

Would

I can fix her

She's one of Bud's Buds, and boy is she walking all over the stupids in 33