Fallout TV series casts Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin for second season — but what role is he playing?

What you need to know

• The Fallout TV series from Amazon MGM Studios, Bethesda Game Studios, and Kilter Films launched earlier this year to critical praise and commercial success.
• A second season of the Fallout TV series is in production.
• According to a report from Deadline, Macaulay Culkin is joining the cast.
• Culkin, best known for his role as a child actor in the Home Alone movies, is reportedly playing a "crazy genius-type" character.

The world of the Wasteland is getting a tiny bit larger.

Macaulay Culkin is joining the cast of the Fallout TV series as a recurring character, according to a report from Deadline on Thursday. Culkin's character isn't named but is described as being the "crazy genius-type" sort.

Culkin was best known for his role as Kevin McCallister in Home Alone and Home Alone 2 before temporarily retiring from acting in 1994. More recently, he's appeared in shows like American Horror Story and The Righteous Gemstones.

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Culkin adds weight to an already-impressive cast

Culkin is joining a strong returning cast. The first season of the Fallout TV series saw Ella Purnell taking up the role of Vault Dweller Lucy MacLean, while Walton Goggins plays the gunslinger survivalist known as The Ghoul.

Rounding out the cast is Aaron Moten as Brotherhood of Steel squire Maximus, while Kyle MacLachlan plays Lucy's father, Vault Overseer Hank MacLean. All four are expected to return for the second season of the series. The series is produced by Kilter Films and Amazon MGM Studios in partnership with game developer Bethesda Game Studios and publisher Bethesda Softworks.

The Fallout TV series, which is available through streaming exclusively via Amazon Prime Video, rapidly garnered acclaim and viewership, quickly becoming one of the top-viewed shows on the service, winning two Emmys, and reaching over 100 million viewers as of October 2024. The series' popularity extended over into the games, resulting in a massive resurgence in players and sales across every single Fallout game.

It's not currently known when the second season of the series will arrive, though it is notable that the series used large amounts of practical props instead of CGI, meaning it's possible we could see it arrive earlier than the usual every-other-year cadence seen in special effects-heavy shows.

In my review of the Fallout TV series' first season, I wrote that "It's the small things that end up mattering the most, and everything here just feels comfortably Fallout, from the set dressing to that uncomfortable first moment where someone gives in to drinking irradiated water. Almost everything on screen showed me that Nolan, Robertson-Dworet, Wagner, and everyone else involved in the creation of this series just get it."

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