Walton Goggins Is the Gunslinging Ghoul ‘Fallout’ Fans Have Been Waiting For

Walton Goggins makes everything better, whether as reckless Detective Shane Vendrell on The Shield, wily criminal Boyd Crowder on Justified, crazy educator Lee Russell on Vice Principals, or wackadoo silver-fox preacher Baby Billy Freeman on The Righteous Gemstones. With a smile that can suggest goofy cluelessness, endearing compassion or scary, snake-like cunning and menace, the 52-year-old actor has a charm that’s equally fit for empathetic dramas and taut genre fare, and as he’s illustrated throughout the course of his decades-long career, he brings an intensity to the screen that’s second to none. Thus, it’s little surprise that he’s the magnetic center of attention of his latest endeavor: Prime Video’s Fallout.

In the retro-futuristic sci-fi series, based on the best-selling Bethesda Game Studios’ video game franchise, he assumes the role of the Ghoul, a radiation-deformed gunslinger in a post-apocalyptic America whose ruthlessness is as great as his skin is charred and his trigger-finger is itchy.

Developed by Westworld’s Jonathan Nolan (who also directs) and Lisa Joy alongside showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, Fallout is the finest game-to-screen adaptation ever produced. Though that triumph is attributable to numerous factors—including an astounding attention to formal and narrative detail, as well as excellent performances from its co-leads Ella Purnell and Aaron Moten—it most fully comes to thrilling life courtesy of Goggins. His 200-year-old Ghoul is the last part of the show’s good/bad/ugly triumvirate, even if he’s more than just a one-note scoundrel. With a twinkle in his eye that portends trouble, Goggins’ desperado electrifies a series whose eight-episode maiden season, which premieres Apr. 11, fires on all cylinders.

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