Kyle MacLachlan joins Prime Video’s Fallout TV show

The wasteland just got even more handsome and charming: Variety says that Kyle MacLachlan, who is still best known for Twin Peaks but who has done a lot of other good stuff, has joined the cast of Amazon Prime Videos’ Fallout TV show. We don’t know anything about who he’s playing, as is standard for every announcement about this show’s cast, but we could see him playing some frustratingly likable bureaucrat who stumbles into a position of power after the apocalypse… sort of like his mayor character from Portlandia but with Super Mutants and Power Armor.

Fallout, which is based on the video game franchise now owned by Bethesda Softworks (the Skyrim people), which is now owned by Microsoft (the Space Cadet Pinball people), comes from showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan (the Westworld people). Like the games, we assume it will take place in a ‘50s-style retro future that has been ravaged by nuclear war, with a particular focus on “Vaults”—massive underground survival bunkers that are typically based around some kind of cruel, experimental theme (like “the door doesn’t actually close” or “everyone gets frozen” or “drugs are pumped into the air supply”).

MacLachlan is joining the previously cast Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins, with other newcomers including Xelia Mendes-Jones (from The Wheel Of Time) and Aaron Moten (from Apple’s upcoming Emancipation). We don’t know who any of them are playing, of course, but it’s worth noting that there aren’t really important characters in the Fallout universe that people would need to see in an adaptation… these are open-ended role-playing games that are more about a particular flavor of satire and making your own story in their wacky world. Tone and aesthetics are more important than any specific plot in this case, so maybe that’s why Nolan and Joy are keeping things close to the chest. (Or maybe the intense secrecy around Westworld has broken them.)