The Prime Video show made a big leap with Shady Sands

[Ed. Note: This post contains spoilers for Season 1 of the Fallout show, specifically surrounding the NCR.]

The ghosts of nations haunt the wasteland of Amazon's Fallout. The ruins of once mighty American cities are the background of the series, but we also see crashed Soviet satellites, failed homesteads, vaults filled with the corpses of those who hoped to survive the apocalypse. However, there is one ghost that stands out to me, one that I and other longtime Fallout fans in particular will mourn: the ghost of the New California Republic. Killing off one of Fallout's most beloved factions is a blow to die-hard fans, though perhaps for the best.

Now, I'll admit something upfront: I've never been that big of a fan of NCR. When I first met them in Fallout: New Vegas, they seemed like the usual good guys to me. It is a centrist, pluralist democracy that has become a stabilizing force in the wasteland. It has paper money, an organized bureaucracy and, of course, a standing army. Unlike the brutal authoritarian primitivists of Caesar's Legion or the xenophobic, pseudo-religious technophiles of the Brotherhood of Steel, the NCR is pretty close to a nation in the modern world. Whether human, ghoul or super mutant, all are welcome to the NCR. Pay your taxes, keep your nose clean, and NCR will protect you to the best of its ability. You even get to vote for your leader, instead of just letting the local giant psychopath in a skull mask take the job!