A spoiler-aware guide to the major Fallout television characters covered by Vault-Tec.com. Each page includes a story summary, actor link and episode appearances.
Lucy MacLean
Vault 33 dweller turned wasteland traveler
Played by Ella Purnell
Lucy begins Fallout believing that good manners, cooperation and the Golden Rule are practical tools for solving almost any conflict. Her trip to the surface forces her to test that belief against raiders, bounty…
Maximus
Brotherhood of Steel knight and Shady Sands survivor
Played by Aaron Moten
Maximus is a survivor who associates power armor with rescue because a Brotherhood knight appeared after the destruction of Shady Sands. That memory helps explain both his attraction to the order and his disappointment…
Cooper Howard / The Ghoul
Pre-war actor turned centuries-old bounty hunter
Played by Walton Goggins
Cooper Howard was a Western star, veteran and public face for Vault-Tec before the Great War. The Ghoul is what remains after more than two centuries of radiation, violence and loss. The series constantly…
Norm MacLean
Lucy’s skeptical younger brother and Vault 33 investigator
Played by Moisés Arias
Norm is the person in Vault 33 least inclined to accept a comforting answer because an authority figure offered it. His skepticism turns him into the series’ principal investigator of the interconnected Vault 31,…
Barb Howard
Vault-Tec executive, Cooper’s wife and Janey’s mother
Played by Frances Turner
Barb is one of the most consequential pre-war characters because the show locates corporate power inside Cooper’s marriage. She is not simply someone he spies on; she is the person whose choices force him…
Hank MacLean
Former Vault 33 overseer and Vault-Tec loyalist
Played by Kyle MacLachlan
Hank is introduced as Lucy and Norm’s dependable father, but the series slowly reveals that he is also a product of Vault 31 and one of the people maintaining Vault-Tec’s long-term plan.
Betty Pearson
Vault 33 overseer with deep ties to the management experiment
Played by Leslie Uggams
Betty represents the continuity of the vault system. She is warm, familiar and politically skilled, qualities that make her authority feel normal even as viewers learn more about the structure she serves.
Chet
Vault resident, cousin to Lucy and Norm, and reluctant participant in the vault mystery
Played by Dave Register
Chet is initially part of Lucy’s ordinary Vault 33 life, which makes his later involvement in the vault mystery particularly useful. He does not begin with Norm’s appetite for investigation.
Reg McPhee
Vault 33 council member and resident
Played by Rodrigo Luzzi
Reg helps make the vault feel like a functioning civic community rather than a backdrop for the MacLeans. He appears in meetings and political disputes where procedure becomes a way of managing fear.
Davey
Recurring Vault resident
Played by Leer Leary
Davey is one of the recurring residents who gives the vault community continuity. The role is less about a single major reveal than about making Vault 33 and Vault 32 feel populated by people…
Thaddeus
Former Brotherhood squire whose body begins changing after wasteland treatment
Played by Johnny Pemberton
Thaddeus begins as part of the Brotherhood’s bullying hierarchy, but the show quickly turns the joke around once he becomes vulnerable and dependent on people he once mistreated.
Stephanie Harper
Vault resident and later Vault 32 overseer with a hidden pre-war history
Played by Annabel O'Hagan
Stephanie initially appears to be one of Vault 33’s most socially confident residents. Her injury during the raid, pregnancy and later move into leadership give her an increasingly visible role.
Lee Moldaver / Kate Williams
Pre-war scientist and post-war NCR leader
Played by Sarita Choudhury
Moldaver is introduced as the leader of the raiders who attack Vault 33, but that first impression is deliberately incomplete. The pre-war Kate Williams was a scientist opposed to Vault-Tec’s acquisition of cold-fusion research.
Woody Thomas
Vault council member and later Vault 32 resident
Played by Zach Cherry
Woody is a civic-minded resident whose seriousness about procedure gives the vault plot some of its driest comedy.
Elder Cleric Quintus
Leader of the Brotherhood’s San Fernando chapter
Played by Michael Cristofer
Quintus embodies the Brotherhood as hierarchy and doctrine. He recognizes Maximus’s ambition and is willing to cultivate it when it serves his own plans.
Janey Howard
Cooper and Barb Howard’s daughter
Played by Teagan Meredith
Janey is the emotional center of Cooper’s pre-war life. Her scenes establish what Cooper is trying to protect before political and corporate events overwhelm the family.
Bud Askins / Brain-on-a-Roomba
Vault-Tec executive and overseer of Vault 31
Played by Michael Esper
Bud is the architect of “Bud’s Buds,” a management experiment designed to seed the future with Vault-Tec junior executives. His post-war form turns that corporate vision into one of the show’s darkest jokes.
Claudia
Vault-Tec employee awakened from Vault 31
Played by Rachel Marsh
Claudia is one of the junior Vault-Tec employees preserved in Vault 31. Unlike the pre-war executives viewers meet through flashbacks, she is forced to discover the consequences of Vault-Tec’s plan in real time.
Dane
Brotherhood scribe and Maximus’s close friend
Played by Xelia Mendes-Jones
Dane is one of the few people inside the Brotherhood with whom Maximus has a personal bond that is not purely hierarchical.
Snake Oil Salesman
Recurring wasteland merchant and dubious healer
Played by Jon Daly
The Snake Oil Salesman is a comic portrait of the wasteland economy, where desperation creates a market for almost any promise.
Robert House
RobCo founder and the calculating power behind the Lucky 38
Played by Justin Theroux
Robert House is inherited from Fallout: New Vegas, but the television series expands his pre-war presence. He is a technology magnate whose obsession with prediction, control and survival makes him a natural counterpoint to…
Lacerta Legate
Legion commander who seeks control after Caesar’s death
Played by Macaulay Culkin
The Lacerta Legate represents one side of the fractured Legion that Lucy encounters in the Mojave. The faction’s imitation of ancient Rome is treated as both theatrical and brutally practical.
Paladin Xander Harkness
Commonwealth Brotherhood envoy
Played by Kumail Nanjiani
Harkness arrives as the representative of a stronger Brotherhood chapter just as Quintus is trying to build an alliance against that outside authority.