Did you just finish the first season of Prime Video’s Fallout? Achievement unlocked! You’re now a warrior of the California wasteland and an honorary member of the Brotherhood of Steel – whether you want to be or not. But putting the finishing touches on your Fallout watch does come with a downside: you’re out of more Fallout to watch, even if you’re still in the mood for more ambitious, post-apocalyptic television.
What next? For starters, now is a good time to dive into the Fallout video game series – especially since Bethesda has announced a next gen update of Fallout 4 later this month. But if you are not a fan of video games – or at least first-person shooters – you may prefer to get your fix elsewhere. Luckily, the past two decades have given us lots of small-screen apocalypses to enjoy, meaning you have plenty of options when it comes to killing time between seasons.
From underground shelters to wasteland warfare, here’s 10 shows to stream after you finish Fallout.
Into the Badlands (2015)
Where to Watch: Hoopla
Given the rise of shows like Warrior and Gangs of London, it’s hard to believe there was a time when television and high-quality fight scenes could never mix. One of the first shows to upend that was Into the Badlands, the AMC series about a bloody war between rival post-apocalyptic factions. Star Daniel Wu – who, for those keeping track at home, would later appear in Season 4 of Fallout producer Jonathan Nolan’s Westworld – is an accomplished martial artist, and Wu leveraged a successful career in Hong Kong into this action-heavy vehicle stateside. And if a show can and should be judged by the quality of its villain, then Into the Badlands earns high marks with Marton Csokas’s Baron Quinn, who has shades of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character from Django Unchained. Adding a Foghorn Leghorn-esque southern drawl to your villain may be a cliche, but when done with panache, it’s still the absolutely correct decision.
Jeremiah (2002)
Where To Watch: Prime Video
If your favorite part of Fallout is the culture of the vaults, then you might be interested in Jeremiah, Showtime’s short-lived series that premiered in 2002. Set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where a mysterious virus kills everyone above the age of 13, Jeremiah picks up years later with a pair of drifters who are recruited by an underground society to help plan their return to the surface. The show was episodic in nature – particularly in the first season – and featured strong performances from Luke Perry and Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who play young adults still reeling from the trauma of growing up in a dead world. Also working in Jeremiah’s favor is its creator, J. Michael Straczynski, who is better known for his work on both Babylon 5 and Sense8. While Straczynski has had a long and successful career as both a television and comic book writer, Jeremiah remains one of his more overlooked titles.
Jericho (2006)
Where To Watch: Paramount+
One of the most appealing parts of the Fallout universe is how it marries 1950s nostalgia with the threats of a post-apocalyptic world. The same could be said for CBS’s series Jericho. Jericho follows the residents of a small town in the days and weeks after a nuclear attack on the United States. As the series unfolds, what begins as a triumph of small-town spirit in the face of disaster takes a darker turn as the town of Jericho goes to war against a neighboring community and resists being occupied by the remnants of the United States military. Jericho has some notoriety as being one of the earliest examples of a successful grassroots renewal campaign – fans sent over 20 tons of nuts to the CBS headquarters as part of their push – but the show also serves as a kind of proto-Civil War in its exploration of fragmented America. Come for Skeet Ulrich but stay for Gerald McRaney, who is the beating heart of the series.
The Last of Us (2023)
Where To Watch: Max
If you’ve watched Fallout, odds are you’ve already seen The Last of Us and are actively debating which television adaptation is a more faithful recreation of its source. But if you’re the one person in a hundred who has yet to check out The Last of Us, well, hey, check out The Last of Us. Max’s adaptation of the popular video game series stars Melanie Lynskey – OK, fine, Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey – and like Station Eleven later on this list, is a horrifying and heartbreaking exploration of a post-apocalyptic found family. It’s also kinda-sorta a zombie show, using the similar concept of infection to create a hellscape of creatures that have overrun the Earth. If you’re a fan of the shorter season run, you’ll be pleased to see that The Last of Us only requires nine episodes to get through in preparation for the much-discussed Season 2.
The Last Man on Earth (2015)
Where To Watch: Hulu
Remember when it seemed like all the internet could talk about was The Last Man on Earth? Consider this a show for all you Maximus fans out there: Phil Miller (Will Forte) is another wasteland asshole only looking out for himself at the end of the world. Like Maximus, Miller undergoes a bizarre post-apocalyptic hero’s journey, but the way he bounces off his fellow survivors is what gives the series its juice. While The Last Man on Earth offers up just a little bit too much fremdschämen (or vicarious embarrassment) for my taste, it remains one of the standouts of the subgenre and easily someone that some Fallout fans can relate to. And given that one of Fallout’s showrunners earned his stripes on Portlandia, adding The Last Man on Earth to the mix just further expands the Fred Armisen Cinematic Universe of Weirdos.
See (2019)
Where To Watch: Apple TV+
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but you know what never changes? War. So it’s a good thing there’s another post-apocalyptic series out there that captures the faction-on-faction violence of that Fallout finale. See (proper noun) is one of the standout first pieces of original programming from Apple TV+ and takes place far in the post-apocalyptic future. Humanity is now blind and warring feudal factions battle it out for the remnants of civilization using their remaining senses. For all you fight scene aficionados out there, Season 2 and Season 3 of See are showrun by Jonathan Tropper, whose work on Banshee and Warrior have made him a household name in the action community. Who better to harness the talent of Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista onscreen – and remind us that both leading men have always been extremely serious about their craft.
Silo (2023)
Where To Watch: Apple TV+
With all the above-ground shenanigans of Lucy and Maximus, it’s easy to overlook how compelling the Vault 33 narrative is in Fallout. But if subterranean conspiracy theories are your preferred flavor of the apocalypse, then I’ve got great news: the entire first season of Silo on Apple TV+ is about to be your new best friend. Set some years in the future where mankind has retreated underground to survive an irradiated surface, Silo is another series built around untrustworthy administrators and intergenerational secrets. It’s also a huge showcase for Rebecca Ferguson – who remains one of our best movie stars – that promises to only get bigger and better in subsequent seasons. It may lack the humor of the Fallout series, but in a lot of ways, it’s the best pairing on this list. Maybe if you work hard enough, you can squeeze both See and Silon into your Apple TV+ seven-day free trial.
Snowpiercer (2020)
Where To Watch: AMC+ (Coming Soon)
Fallout has always been a franchise about class warfare; as the show reveals, those wealthy enough to buy their salvation often have their thumb on the scales when it comes to reshaping society. So if you want your Fallout replacement to come with a main course of worldbuilding and a side dish of anti-capitalism, you’re probably the perfect audience for Snowpiercer. Like the Bong-joon Ho movie of the same name, Snowpiercer follows the survivors of a global freeze as they circle the globe on a giant train. Given that the cast is headlined by Daveed Diggs and Jennifer Connelly, Snowpiercer probably has as much talent as any other series on this list. Oh, and Snowpiercer also has the distinction of being one of the shows on this list that hasn’t quite wrapped. Despite being canceled by TNT as part of Warner-Discovery’s seemingly endless cost-cutting measures, the show’s final season was picked up by AMC+ and will premiere sometime in 2025.
Station Eleven (2021)
Where To Watch: Max
Given its proximity to the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020, most audiences can be forgiven if they skipped Max’s post-apocalyptic miniseries in 2021. That just makes now a great time to catch up with Station Eleven. Mirroring the then-and-now flashbacks of Fallout, Station Eleven shows what happens before and after a deadly pandemic kills most of the world, circling a small collection of survivors as they converge on the technology-rich Museum of Civilization (Brotherhood of Steel, eat your heart out). Station Eleven is many things – including a sweeping narrative about the healing power of art – but above all, it’s a parable about the importance of human connections. Be prepared to fall wholeheartedly in love with Himesh Patel, who serves the role of an unlikely parent figure to one of the apocalypse’s lost souls. Fingers crossed that we’ll someday get a retail copy of the Station Eleven graphic novel that features prominently in the series.
Twisted Metal (2023)
Where To Watch: Peacock
When it comes to filling the Fallout-shaped hole in our hearts, the hardest part to recreate might be the show’s absurd sense of humor. That’s where Twisted Metal fits in. The series follows Anthony Mackie’s “milkman,” a type of thrill-seeking courier who makes the dangerous drive between cities in post-apocalyptic America. When he’s recruited for One Big Job, he forms an unlikely alliance with a violent drifter – Stephanie Beatriz, shaking off her Brooklyn 99 persona with ease – to leave a trail of carnage across the wasteland. Like Fallout, Twisted Metal leans heavily into the bloodiest parts of its TV-MA rating, especially when it comes to the psychopathic clown Sweet Tooth and his one-man Las Vegas show. And while Twisted Metal doesn’t seem as self-assured in its first season as Fallout – the jokes can be a little sweaty at times – it’s further evidence that video games can be a wonderful sandbox for comedy writers.
