Fallout's Moisés Arias Talks Norm's Arc, The Character's Feelings On His Father's Past & Season 2

Warning: Major SPOILERS lie ahead for Fallout season 1!

Summary Moisés Arias was thrilled to get to work with Fallout showrunners/creators Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner to create his original character.

The star explains he wasn't given Norm's full arc at the start of filming, but that frequent conversations with the creatives behind the show helped him find his rhythm.

Despite being presented with one difficult choice, Arias teases that Norm's intelligence will help him return in Fallout season 2.

The MacLean family is left in shambles by the end of Fallout season 1. Based on the Bethesda video game franchise of the same name, the Prime Video show revolved around Ella Purnell's Lucy as she ventured out into the Wasteland from Vault 33 after her father was kidnapped by the mysterious Moldaver. Along the way, Lucy not only learns the dangers of what the world has become in the wake of the nuclear apocalypse but also the truth behind her father's past and connection with Moldaver.

Moisés Arias' Norm, Lucy's younger brother, is meanwhile left behind in Fallout's Vault 33, in which the interim Overseers try to find a new purpose for the aimless Vault Dweller. In the wake of his father's disappearance, and talking with some of Moldaver's cohorts kept prisoner, Norm does some digging into Vault 32 and 31's pasts and ultimately discovers that his father was actually a Vault-Tec employee who was chosen for cryosleep to survive the manufactured nuclear war and keep the company's ideals alive. Before Norm can fully process the situation, he is trapped in Vault 31, with his only option being to enter his father's cryosleep tube.

Related Fallout Cast & Character Guide The wasteland of Fallout is a huge world, and there's an equally huge cast of unique characters to fill it and give it an offbeat charm.

Hailing from creators Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, and executive producer/director Jonah Nolan, Fallout season 1 garnered widespread acclaim from critics and audiences alike for its faithfulness to the games' tone and worldbuilding. With its premiere weekend also becoming one of Prime Video's most-watched titles to date, the streaming platform quickly picked up the show for season 2, with Robertson-Dworet and Wagner returning.

Following the show's premiere, Screen Rant interviewed Moisés Arias to discuss Fallout season 1, Norm's story arc across the first eight episodes, how his character feels about Hank's past, and what Norm's ending means for the in-development season 2.

Arias Was Thrilled To Be "Stepping Into" The World Of Fallout & Finding Norm's Core

When he was approached with the chance to star in the show, Arias recalled "everything" being presented in Fallout to be a major hook for getting involved in the adaptation, particularly as they were given "freedom" to create their original characters. In regard to finding the core of Norm's personality, the star recalled getting the chance to have "a lot of conversations" with Robertson-Dworet and Wagner to learn more about his character:

Moisés Arias: I think everything. I think the people involved, the story that I was stepping into, and the world I was stepping into, and the fact that it was original, and we sort of had a freedom to create these characters without having to study anything in particular. Well, besides the world we were in. I think it's always a finding, especially jumping into a stage with your fellow actors, and meeting your sister for the first time in her wedding dress, and your cousins and your dad. I think we found it as the audience was finding things. And I think that we had the chance to have a lot of conversations with the showrunners and the creators, and I think that really lended itself to being able to show up on the first day of set and feel like, "Wow, this is special. Let's do this."

The MacLean Family's Past Is Still Being Doled Out Slowly To Norm

For much of the early episodes of the show, Fallout teases some kind of tragedy happening to the MacLean family matriarch, with Lucy being the main one to have memories of her before her unclear fate. It's later revealed that Hank orchestrated her death after she attempted to leave the Vault and live in Shady Sands, which he nuclear bombed and transformed her into a feral ghoul. Though Arias, as a viewer, knows of these threads, he teases that Norm still has a lot to learn about MacLean's past:

Moisés Arias: I was also finding these things as I received the episodes. So, it wasn't like I knew what was happening the first day that I got there. And having that experience to be able to have that unfold also helped me, I think, to answer your question, unravel what it is, and who it is and who it is my dad is. I think that it hasn't been told to him bluntly, but he's definitely using his intelligence to kind of sense, because Norm has to remember his mother, too, and sense what my dad is, and where he's from. I would say that we had [those conversations], and obviously, Ella's not in those scenes with our mother either. So, I'm not sure if she had a different experience, but I think the lack of has sort of helped to be able to ask Betty what had happened to my mom's Pip-Boy, and all these things that we're learning throughout the series, Norm is putting together, as well.

This troublesome reveal of Hank's past Vault-Tec connection has also left Norm in a difficult spot of being trapped in Vault 31 and pressured to enter his father's cryosleep tube to survive. Despite this lack of options, Arias teases that Norm's intelligence will be a key tool for his potential Fallout season 2 return:

Moisés Arias: So I was staring at a blank void, trying to understand what it was I was looking at, too. I don't think there's one option, I think there's multiple. Now, is it on the page, or is it obvious? No. But I guess, like you said, Norm is going to use his intelligence to hopefully not be asleep for 200 years.

About Fallout

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Based on one of the greatest video game series of all time, Fallout is the story of haves and have-nots in a world in which there’s almost nothing left to have. Two hundred years after the apocalypse, the gentle denizens of luxury fallout shelters are forced to return to the irradiated hellscape their ancestors left behind — and are shocked to discover an incredibly complex, gleefully weird, and highly violent universe waiting for them.

Ella Purnell is Lucy, an optimistic Vault Dweller with an all-American can-do spirit. Her peaceful and idealistic nature is tested when she is forced to the surface to rescue her father. Aaron Moten is Maximus, a young soldier who rises to the rank of squire in the militaristic faction called Brotherhood of Steel. He will do anything to further the Brotherhood’s goals of bringing law and order to the wasteland. Walton Goggins is the Ghoul, a morally ambiguous bounty hunter who holds within him a 200-year history of the post-nuclear world. These disparate parties collide when chasing an artifact from an enigmatic researcher that has the potential to radically change the power dynamic in this world.

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All of Fallout season 1 is available to stream on Prime Video.

Source: Screen Rant Plus