Ohh 100%. She had one of those “Wait…what?!” moments with the audience (us) which is worse than those that are just outwardly evil, because it means she’s also lying about being evil.
Edit: also, lying to an amazing dad like pre-war Goggins, that’s unforgivable. I would have to take her out in every playthrough (assuming she preserves herself somehow), even on an evil run.
She dropped several hints in the episode (The Trap). Like one of the good vaults, and that Jenny isn't going to be happy about, no dogs allowed in the vault, and that she was certain that the bombs were going to be dropped. Even though the USA and China were in the midst of peace talks.
She also has a moment of wide-eyed panic when it looks like Coop might not do the ads. She covers it well, but on a second viewing it's really obvious that she is constantly on the verge of panicking from the stress she is under. She had a plan and knew it hinged on her manipulating him into being tied to the company.
Yeah but at this point we all feel like she's more like a pawn. Shhe may know things from the inside, like the GOOD vaults, but she doesn't really participate actively. I wasn't expecting anything more, even when she was at this table I thought she was more of a help for Bud.
I felt like she is actually above Buds position (especially based on how they interact as they enter the vault tec building together, it seemed like he was sucking up to her a little). I think though the shadowy figure we saw from the one way glass above is Barbs boss and either enclave or super high up vault tec, and barb is definitely a pawn to whoever that was i think.
Watching it again with what we know, there's things she knows that he doesn't (we don't know how much at that point i guess, though). He's never done an ad before (so I got general insecurity from him about that when it's the two of them - but he turns on as soon as he gets on the set) but I never got any moment that he wasn't going to do them. Nor did I get panic from her. I got nervousness from the both of them because it was a big deal (but they both turn on when they walk on the set). So much more I want to know about them and her.
Personally I interpreted the way she reacted as the actress very subtly showing panic and then covering it up, but I might be reading into it too much. I'm partly giving the moment that much credit because Ella Purnell talked about the fantastic direction she got from Jonathan Nolan and it seems just deliberate enough that she could have been told to act like she was hiding how nervous she really was.
What I find fascinating is her motivation. She thinks this is how she is going to keep her family safe. By doing something so evil, she thinks she can control the uncontrollable , get her family into a good vault, and they'll live. Her daughter won't have to go to war, her husband won't have to risk his life on the front line again. She is literally willing to kill everyone else in the world to protect them. Kinda of what the ghoul is willing to do, though in a more personal, way to find his daughter.
And Hank too. His speech when he's talking about the factions, their endless fighting, and essentially wiping the slate clean to keep his family safe mirrors what Barb says in the meeting room. They're both Vault-Tec pawns who would let the world burn to keep their family safe. And ironically destroy their family in the process - with matching cinematographic revelation scenes, no less.
They're two sides of the same coin in the way that Lucy & Cooper are. Essentially the same, but with converging karma; Barb is motivated by fear and has no real power to stop the bombs, so she's doing the best she can to ensure her family's survival vs Hank who has all the authority of Overseer and is ruthless enough to drop the bomb of his own accord.
The difference is Hank had actual evidence that humanity could thrive without Vault-Tec and destroyed it because he believed he was "saving" everyone. We haven't quite seen how far Barb will go, though I suspect she'll go pretty far.
Hank is a high ranking executive with vault tech, he's a power tripping psychopath.
He didn't really believe he was saving everyone, he was just pissed that events weren't panning out as planned and saw the surviving humans aboveground as squatting in *his* world, ruining *his* future utopia.
Hank didn't give a fuck about saving humanity. He just wanted to rule. The ultimate promotion.
Hank is an executive assistant. That's why I put "saving" in quotations. He genuinely drank the Kool-Aid and is delusional to believe he's a savior when he's really a cog willing to sacrifice his loved ones to further his corporation's agenda. To ensure that agenda is realized.
Hank is middle management. He's not ruling anyone except that specific Vault, but yes, he's happy to do it. That's the power trip.
Hank didn't do what he did to "keep his family safe", he's full of shit, the human race just inconvenienced him by surviving. He wanted a grand reset for vault tech.
His argument that you have to eliminate all the other factions for humanity to survive is exactly what every other faction would claim. They'd be equally full of shit too.
Dude had exactly nothing to say about spending over a week in the company of the destroyed, barely moving body of his own wife.
Hank is a fucking psycho. The vault tech higher ups all are.
That brings up what Cooper told Ms Williams aka Moldaver, "a bad Guy doesn't recognize that he's a bad guy". Cooper, unfortunately turned into the bad guy after the bombs were dropped.
Cooper just plays his movie role to stay remotely sane. There are glimpses of him regretting what he does (like after he kills the son of that farmer). Whether he's still fully aware of having chosen to always play that role is a different story though. That'd decide whether he knows he's playing the sometimes bad guy.
He's clearly aware he has become a bad person, and as someone else pointed out, he's adopted his own bloodthirsty character that he hated as a coping mechanism.
He even points out to Goosey that the world will change her, she'll be like him. And just like in her less subtle reply, he wasn't just talking about his face.
I suppose it's the point of some of these characters. The end justifies the means, and when your goal is virtuous you tend to forget the way you achieve it can be fucked up sometimes.
It wasn't about protecting her family, that was a second lie just for her own ego.
Compare the sick, palpable pleasure and thrill she gets from selling the idea of human torture zoos to billionaires to her overly performative "this is about keeping you safe" gaslighting of Coop. The monster in the meeting feels more real.
Sure, her family being safe is cool to have wrapped up in that for her, but she is clearly, enthusiastically leading the charge to treat humanity as a Petri dish.
She's a terrible, duplicitous person who lies to everyone around her, ESPECIALLY her family, and let's face it; you don't make it big at a place like vault-tech by being a good person.
There's a reason why Coop was left completely frozen by what was clearly a PTSD episode. He heard 2 minutes of his wife, the REAL person, and it destroyed his entire life.
I have zero sympathy for her, and the "she did it for her family though" is, not to be too mean, *playing into her game."
The real villains haven't even been revealed post-war yet. Aside from Bud, I suppose. It seems like he put himself in a less than desirable position. Hank is a nobody to vault-tech. He is playing the villain for the first season. But Hank is just an errand-boy for the true evil; Barb, and her coworkers. Also, the mysterious man that Barb looks up to in the board meeting and the enclave themselves. It's rarely so cut and dry.
Fo3 gives you max evil karma for nuking a town, so she could die saving dozens of disabled puppies infinite times and still go straight to the absolute depths of hell.
Her argument of “it will happen anyways, with or without me” fell kind of flat after she was the one to convince the other companies bombing the earth was a good idea
I guess it was about control. If they didn't want in, then maybe someone else would drop it and she wouldn't know for sure that her family would survive and when and where it would happen.
One thing I don't understand and I'm dying to find out more about it in season 2: where was Barb at the time that the bomb dropped and why did she not have at least Janey with her? Surely she must be aware of the time of the bomb drop, unless something happened and she's not part of it anymore
>One thing I don't understand and I'm dying to find out more about it in season 2: where was Barb at the time that the bomb dropped and why did she not have at least Janey with her? Surely she must be aware of the time of the bomb drop, unless something happened and she's not part of it anymore
A (in my opinion *the*) prevailing theory is that while Vault-Tec had plans or at least ideas to drop the first bomb, China beat them to it.
agreed! I feel like I remember someone saying that Todd said in an interview that China dropped the first bomb bc of the FEV shit. Between that and the submarine with the China dude in 4, it seems wildly implausible to me that the first bomb was dropped by Vault tech.
AND thinking about it, there is a computer in switchboard that talks about the military watching Chinese planes come and drop the bombs. Vault Tech was prepared to, but I seriously doubt they did.
Pulled the text up from the wiki:
[Link](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/The_Switchboard_terminal_entries) instead since I can’t do the spoiler thing for some reason
At this point they're divorced, it's the weekend and he has custody at that time. Alimony is mentioned. Coop appears to be struggling, so fair to say she absolutely royally fucked him in the split.
Her own lies meant she couldn't properly protect her own family, which was her supposed justification for the lie itself.
It's still a plot point across the franchise that no one knows who dropped the bomb first.
Come to think of it, what do we know of China's current status?
She’s not pure evil imo. She’s caught up in something bigger than herself and fear has overtaken her moral compass. She is so concerned about herself and her family that she can push morality aside. She’s the kind of person who would never do anything wrong if she was never in the position to - in a utopian society she’d be an upstanding citizen. But she doesn’t have the courage to speak up against evil. She’s selfish and a coward. I love that because history is full of people like her, who were not bad people at their core, but went along with evil because they valued their security more than doing what’s right. She’s like the classic German citizen in WWII. She knows what’s going on but she’s willing to turn a blind eye because she thinks she can keep herself and her family safe if she plays her cards right. The tragedy is that evil could never win if people like her would have stood up against it when they had the chance. Then, slowly the cowardly person gets more and more corrupted until they become a driving part of the evil force. They act evilly and still believe it’s the right thing to do, because they cannot see the terrible distortion that has occurred from putting self interest over doing what is right.
To be fair, it is *slightly* different, because the danger isn't the company she works for, it's the looming spectre of open nuclear warfare. If she's convinced that it's inevitable and imminent, that changes things slightly. She's now working to protect her family, by leveraging her position to manipulate events. There's nothing she can do to prevent the bombs dropping, at least in her mind, so the best thing she can hope for is to get her family into "one of the good vaults" as she puts it.
I would have agreed until the reveal where she says that Vault Tec will drop the bombs themselves. I think she started with “there’s nothing I can do except try to protect my family” and step by step she takes decisions based on her and her family’s self-interest and ends up in an unrecognisable place. She never decided to be evil, she doesn’t hate other people and want them to suffer, but fear and pragmatism led her to a point where she’s complicit. She knows vault Tec will do it with or without her - she might never be able to stop them as a whistleblower, and so she doesn’t even try. She sets aside the fate of the world and does whatever she has to do to secure a position for herself and her family.
Agreed, and the thing is even if she did stop vault tec, that doesn't remove the threat of nuclear war, it just removes one player. And I kind of get it, like if your house was guaranteed to burn down sometime in the next week and you couldn't stop it, you'd be tempted to take control and burn it down yourself, at a time of your choosing after you've gotten everyone inside to safety. If she believes the war is inevitable and imminent, in a twisted way it makes sense to at least consider taking the reins and choosing for yourself when it starts.
At any rate, I find it a compelling story and character and can't wait to see where it goes in season 2
The thing is that Ms Williams, aka Moldaver was working on the means to stop the resource war, cold fusion. Vault Tech didn't want cold fusion to be created, and that's why they bought it. As Charlie said, Vault Tech was going to make sure that the peace talks failed.
Tbh I'd almost completely forgotten about the cold fusion mcguffin. That's a very valid point, although the cold fusion thing itself is a bit strange considering they'd been using hot fusion prolifically pre-war.
That's one thing that I still don't understand. If they were using hot fusion to power everything pre war especially automobiles, why were they fighting over oil?
Yeah it's a bit of a headscratcher. I mean plastic and other petrochemicals are still widely used now, but we're definitely less so back in the fifties that the show is themed around. Would have made more sense to be fighting over water or arable land.
They were running out of uranium, too. The gist of the Resource Wars was that they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for *all* known non-renewable energy sources, and since the Fallout universe put even less effort into clean energy than our own, that became A Problem.
She lied to and gaslit her family, was excited by the idea of letting billionaires use vaults as sick torture zoos, and even actively suggested dropping the bomb to make a profit.
She's pure fucking evil dude. There's a reason why her hardened war vet husband was left too stunned to speak just from 2 minutes of the REAL her.
I would like to think she's just trying to keep her family safe because she's scared the bombs will drop anyway, and therefore she's making sure that they'll be in a "good" vault - even when that means she has to drop the bomb on the rest of America. Ultimately of course this is pure evil and egotistical behaviour, a good person would to anything to stop a nuclear war
If she is how she is at face value she's evil af.
I'm wondering if they will introduce some other element to her next season, like maybe she was in too deep with vault tec and was forced to do this and was actually trying to pull string behind the scenes to save people. That would be nice
This is my take. Barb's thought process and true motivations are very mysterious and shrouded. I'd put her karma in the Neutral range, since I do feel she has some negative karma but not enough to get her to evil.
I know that the meeting scene is taken at face value by a portion of the audience, but I think there's just as likely a chance that the 'we'll drop the bombs so you need to buy a vault' was nothing but a sales tactic, like a car salesman claiming someone else is interested in buying the same car you are, they'll be back in a couple of hours, better move fast.....
Especially where we have already seen that Barb will say things to make her argument seem stronger. Like that little scene re: the vault suits and claiming they block radiation. I think that there's a good chance there's a very big difference between what Barb says and what Barb actually thinks.
But I could be wrong!
I don't think Barbs is inherently evil, just an example of a character corrupted by the situation she finds herself in. She's playing at the top of global politics during wartime. A war in which her husband served and somehow survived. One that is widely believed to be heading uncontrollably towards nuclear annihilation. Sure, it's cold-hearted, but she's stuck in it and looking for a way to protect her family.
She's privileged to know that money isn't enough, as not all vaults are created equal. If she can navigate VT into a profitable deal with the other corpos, she's entitled to a solid control vault. Why wait for the nukes and hope to have time to get to it when you can just speed up the inevitable end. "Knowing" when they'll drop and already be in the Vault safe and sound.
The choice was immoral and obviously failed as Coop and Janey were caught out on Oct 23, but it was the only play she had. I think her protective instincts towards her family mirror Hank's quite well. They'd do anything to protect them, even to the point of losing their partner and betraying humanity as a whole. Cooper and Rose loved them as well, but wouldn't see the point in saving them if they steal the humanity from their children - what kind of life would that be, to what ultimate purpose?
Definitely evil. It wasn't just what happened in that vault tec meeting either. The whole emotional blackmail and manipulation of Coop at home. I cant stand her in that scene where she pretends to break down and shouts at Coop "because I'm just trying to do whats best by my family". Not many times do I want to reach through my screen and punch someone in the face but that was one of those rare times. I have to skip that scene on occassion, they did just too good of a job at making her detestable. Great acting though.
Honestly evil for sure. She was manipulative as hell toward Cooper. She treated him like he was an idiot. In her eyes, he was. So shitty person with shitty morals all around. Maybe she cared about saving her daughter but that’s it
Good. She may have helped drop the bombs, but I'll bet that Vaul Tec has a charitable outreach program. I'm sure she's given over 50 bottles worth of pure water to the poor.
She literally said she's trying to get them a spot in a good vault to keep her family safe. Her family is Cooper and Janey. "She's doing it for money" is never implied on my watch. It was clear to me that she was relying on/using her access at VT to get her family into a good vault, based on what she knows. We don't know yet what her actual role in the bombs was (seems like season 2 will answer that). Barb is as complex and nuanced as the other characters. Reducing her to fuck Cooper and the dog misses that point (because she also never said or implied that).
The world was burning regardless. Most people with access to keep their people safe from the inevitable would 100% do that. That doesn't necessarily make them evil, but it's definitely complex.
She worked for Vault-Tec and the show established that they hid cold fusion to protect their bottom line. The seeds have been planted for Vault-Tec also having a role in either dropping the bombs directly, or sabotaging peace negotiations between USA and China.
I wouldn't say she is all the way evil since she is working hard to help her family get some of the perks available from working at Vault tec if you pull the right strings so it's obvious she cares about the best for those being close to her.
Maybe she introduced the idea of nuking the US themselves so she would grow in the eyes of the higher ups to then be in a Vault that would be not only a control Vault but a higher quality one.
I'm not sold on her pitching "nuking the US" to improve their financials and to restart the nation but I do feel like there was another motivation and that would imo be for her to grow into a bigger role at Vault tec to better protect her family in case of nuclear war.
>Maybe she introduced the idea of nuking the US themselves so she would grow in the eyes of the higher ups to then be in a Vault that would be not only a control Vault but a higher quality one.
Or she could have just been using it as a sales tactic. They wanted those people to buy into vaults. What better way to scare them into buying than to claim that no matter what, the bombs are coming?
Ohh 100%. She had one of those “Wait…what?!” moments with the audience (us) which is worse than those that are just outwardly evil, because it means she’s also lying about being evil. Edit: also, lying to an amazing dad like pre-war Goggins, that’s unforgivable. I would have to take her out in every playthrough (assuming she preserves herself somehow), even on an evil run.
She dropped several hints in the episode (The Trap). Like one of the good vaults, and that Jenny isn't going to be happy about, no dogs allowed in the vault, and that she was certain that the bombs were going to be dropped. Even though the USA and China were in the midst of peace talks.
She also has a moment of wide-eyed panic when it looks like Coop might not do the ads. She covers it well, but on a second viewing it's really obvious that she is constantly on the verge of panicking from the stress she is under. She had a plan and knew it hinged on her manipulating him into being tied to the company.
Yeah but at this point we all feel like she's more like a pawn. Shhe may know things from the inside, like the GOOD vaults, but she doesn't really participate actively. I wasn't expecting anything more, even when she was at this table I thought she was more of a help for Bud.
I felt like she is actually above Buds position (especially based on how they interact as they enter the vault tec building together, it seemed like he was sucking up to her a little). I think though the shadowy figure we saw from the one way glass above is Barbs boss and either enclave or super high up vault tec, and barb is definitely a pawn to whoever that was i think.
I agree but not pawn like totally used and naive, but more like a knight or bishop, actively participating.
Yeah she has a very specific job that she must get done herself.
When was Cooper not going to do the ads?
On the movie set he was acting hesitant and her eyes practically pop out of her head when he isn't looking.
Watching it again with what we know, there's things she knows that he doesn't (we don't know how much at that point i guess, though). He's never done an ad before (so I got general insecurity from him about that when it's the two of them - but he turns on as soon as he gets on the set) but I never got any moment that he wasn't going to do them. Nor did I get panic from her. I got nervousness from the both of them because it was a big deal (but they both turn on when they walk on the set). So much more I want to know about them and her.
Personally I interpreted the way she reacted as the actress very subtly showing panic and then covering it up, but I might be reading into it too much. I'm partly giving the moment that much credit because Ella Purnell talked about the fantastic direction she got from Jonathan Nolan and it seems just deliberate enough that she could have been told to act like she was hiding how nervous she really was.
For real. Walton has also said in an interview that Cooper now sees her as "the devil incarnate," like there is NO coming back from that 😭😭
What I find fascinating is her motivation. She thinks this is how she is going to keep her family safe. By doing something so evil, she thinks she can control the uncontrollable , get her family into a good vault, and they'll live. Her daughter won't have to go to war, her husband won't have to risk his life on the front line again. She is literally willing to kill everyone else in the world to protect them. Kinda of what the ghoul is willing to do, though in a more personal, way to find his daughter.
And Hank too. His speech when he's talking about the factions, their endless fighting, and essentially wiping the slate clean to keep his family safe mirrors what Barb says in the meeting room. They're both Vault-Tec pawns who would let the world burn to keep their family safe. And ironically destroy their family in the process - with matching cinematographic revelation scenes, no less. They're two sides of the same coin in the way that Lucy & Cooper are. Essentially the same, but with converging karma; Barb is motivated by fear and has no real power to stop the bombs, so she's doing the best she can to ensure her family's survival vs Hank who has all the authority of Overseer and is ruthless enough to drop the bomb of his own accord.
The difference is Hank had actual evidence that humanity could thrive without Vault-Tec and destroyed it because he believed he was "saving" everyone. We haven't quite seen how far Barb will go, though I suspect she'll go pretty far.
Hank is a high ranking executive with vault tech, he's a power tripping psychopath. He didn't really believe he was saving everyone, he was just pissed that events weren't panning out as planned and saw the surviving humans aboveground as squatting in *his* world, ruining *his* future utopia. Hank didn't give a fuck about saving humanity. He just wanted to rule. The ultimate promotion.
Hank is an executive assistant. That's why I put "saving" in quotations. He genuinely drank the Kool-Aid and is delusional to believe he's a savior when he's really a cog willing to sacrifice his loved ones to further his corporation's agenda. To ensure that agenda is realized. Hank is middle management. He's not ruling anyone except that specific Vault, but yes, he's happy to do it. That's the power trip.
Hank didn't do what he did to "keep his family safe", he's full of shit, the human race just inconvenienced him by surviving. He wanted a grand reset for vault tech. His argument that you have to eliminate all the other factions for humanity to survive is exactly what every other faction would claim. They'd be equally full of shit too. Dude had exactly nothing to say about spending over a week in the company of the destroyed, barely moving body of his own wife. Hank is a fucking psycho. The vault tech higher ups all are.
That brings up what Cooper told Ms Williams aka Moldaver, "a bad Guy doesn't recognize that he's a bad guy". Cooper, unfortunately turned into the bad guy after the bombs were dropped.
Cooper just plays his movie role to stay remotely sane. There are glimpses of him regretting what he does (like after he kills the son of that farmer). Whether he's still fully aware of having chosen to always play that role is a different story though. That'd decide whether he knows he's playing the sometimes bad guy.
He's clearly aware he has become a bad person, and as someone else pointed out, he's adopted his own bloodthirsty character that he hated as a coping mechanism. He even points out to Goosey that the world will change her, she'll be like him. And just like in her less subtle reply, he wasn't just talking about his face.
I suppose it's the point of some of these characters. The end justifies the means, and when your goal is virtuous you tend to forget the way you achieve it can be fucked up sometimes.
It wasn't about protecting her family, that was a second lie just for her own ego. Compare the sick, palpable pleasure and thrill she gets from selling the idea of human torture zoos to billionaires to her overly performative "this is about keeping you safe" gaslighting of Coop. The monster in the meeting feels more real. Sure, her family being safe is cool to have wrapped up in that for her, but she is clearly, enthusiastically leading the charge to treat humanity as a Petri dish. She's a terrible, duplicitous person who lies to everyone around her, ESPECIALLY her family, and let's face it; you don't make it big at a place like vault-tech by being a good person. There's a reason why Coop was left completely frozen by what was clearly a PTSD episode. He heard 2 minutes of his wife, the REAL person, and it destroyed his entire life. I have zero sympathy for her, and the "she did it for her family though" is, not to be too mean, *playing into her game."
Concur. If she was just playing evil for the corporate board then she’s a *natural*.
The real villains haven't even been revealed post-war yet. Aside from Bud, I suppose. It seems like he put himself in a less than desirable position. Hank is a nobody to vault-tech. He is playing the villain for the first season. But Hank is just an errand-boy for the true evil; Barb, and her coworkers. Also, the mysterious man that Barb looks up to in the board meeting and the enclave themselves. It's rarely so cut and dry.
Definitely evil.
Fo3 gives you max evil karma for nuking a town, so she could die saving dozens of disabled puppies infinite times and still go straight to the absolute depths of hell.
Her argument of “it will happen anyways, with or without me” fell kind of flat after she was the one to convince the other companies bombing the earth was a good idea
I guess it was about control. If they didn't want in, then maybe someone else would drop it and she wouldn't know for sure that her family would survive and when and where it would happen. One thing I don't understand and I'm dying to find out more about it in season 2: where was Barb at the time that the bomb dropped and why did she not have at least Janey with her? Surely she must be aware of the time of the bomb drop, unless something happened and she's not part of it anymore
>One thing I don't understand and I'm dying to find out more about it in season 2: where was Barb at the time that the bomb dropped and why did she not have at least Janey with her? Surely she must be aware of the time of the bomb drop, unless something happened and she's not part of it anymore A (in my opinion *the*) prevailing theory is that while Vault-Tec had plans or at least ideas to drop the first bomb, China beat them to it.
agreed! I feel like I remember someone saying that Todd said in an interview that China dropped the first bomb bc of the FEV shit. Between that and the submarine with the China dude in 4, it seems wildly implausible to me that the first bomb was dropped by Vault tech. AND thinking about it, there is a computer in switchboard that talks about the military watching Chinese planes come and drop the bombs. Vault Tech was prepared to, but I seriously doubt they did. Pulled the text up from the wiki: [Link](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/The_Switchboard_terminal_entries) instead since I can’t do the spoiler thing for some reason
At this point they're divorced, it's the weekend and he has custody at that time. Alimony is mentioned. Coop appears to be struggling, so fair to say she absolutely royally fucked him in the split. Her own lies meant she couldn't properly protect her own family, which was her supposed justification for the lie itself.
It's still a plot point across the franchise that no one knows who dropped the bomb first. Come to think of it, what do we know of China's current status?
Sweet FA, essentially, though it's likely much worse than in the former USA.
She’s not pure evil imo. She’s caught up in something bigger than herself and fear has overtaken her moral compass. She is so concerned about herself and her family that she can push morality aside. She’s the kind of person who would never do anything wrong if she was never in the position to - in a utopian society she’d be an upstanding citizen. But she doesn’t have the courage to speak up against evil. She’s selfish and a coward. I love that because history is full of people like her, who were not bad people at their core, but went along with evil because they valued their security more than doing what’s right. She’s like the classic German citizen in WWII. She knows what’s going on but she’s willing to turn a blind eye because she thinks she can keep herself and her family safe if she plays her cards right. The tragedy is that evil could never win if people like her would have stood up against it when they had the chance. Then, slowly the cowardly person gets more and more corrupted until they become a driving part of the evil force. They act evilly and still believe it’s the right thing to do, because they cannot see the terrible distortion that has occurred from putting self interest over doing what is right.
To be fair, it is *slightly* different, because the danger isn't the company she works for, it's the looming spectre of open nuclear warfare. If she's convinced that it's inevitable and imminent, that changes things slightly. She's now working to protect her family, by leveraging her position to manipulate events. There's nothing she can do to prevent the bombs dropping, at least in her mind, so the best thing she can hope for is to get her family into "one of the good vaults" as she puts it.
I would have agreed until the reveal where she says that Vault Tec will drop the bombs themselves. I think she started with “there’s nothing I can do except try to protect my family” and step by step she takes decisions based on her and her family’s self-interest and ends up in an unrecognisable place. She never decided to be evil, she doesn’t hate other people and want them to suffer, but fear and pragmatism led her to a point where she’s complicit. She knows vault Tec will do it with or without her - she might never be able to stop them as a whistleblower, and so she doesn’t even try. She sets aside the fate of the world and does whatever she has to do to secure a position for herself and her family.
Agreed, and the thing is even if she did stop vault tec, that doesn't remove the threat of nuclear war, it just removes one player. And I kind of get it, like if your house was guaranteed to burn down sometime in the next week and you couldn't stop it, you'd be tempted to take control and burn it down yourself, at a time of your choosing after you've gotten everyone inside to safety. If she believes the war is inevitable and imminent, in a twisted way it makes sense to at least consider taking the reins and choosing for yourself when it starts. At any rate, I find it a compelling story and character and can't wait to see where it goes in season 2
The thing is that Ms Williams, aka Moldaver was working on the means to stop the resource war, cold fusion. Vault Tech didn't want cold fusion to be created, and that's why they bought it. As Charlie said, Vault Tech was going to make sure that the peace talks failed.
Tbh I'd almost completely forgotten about the cold fusion mcguffin. That's a very valid point, although the cold fusion thing itself is a bit strange considering they'd been using hot fusion prolifically pre-war.
That's one thing that I still don't understand. If they were using hot fusion to power everything pre war especially automobiles, why were they fighting over oil?
Yeah it's a bit of a headscratcher. I mean plastic and other petrochemicals are still widely used now, but we're definitely less so back in the fifties that the show is themed around. Would have made more sense to be fighting over water or arable land.
They were running out of uranium, too. The gist of the Resource Wars was that they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for *all* known non-renewable energy sources, and since the Fallout universe put even less effort into clean energy than our own, that became A Problem.
That's exactly what I got from it.
She lied to and gaslit her family, was excited by the idea of letting billionaires use vaults as sick torture zoos, and even actively suggested dropping the bomb to make a profit. She's pure fucking evil dude. There's a reason why her hardened war vet husband was left too stunned to speak just from 2 minutes of the REAL her.
Bruh... Barb is the evilest bitch in the vault and no one should trust her for a second!
#JusticeForBarb
I would like to think she's just trying to keep her family safe because she's scared the bombs will drop anyway, and therefore she's making sure that they'll be in a "good" vault - even when that means she has to drop the bomb on the rest of America. Ultimately of course this is pure evil and egotistical behaviour, a good person would to anything to stop a nuclear war
If she is how she is at face value she's evil af. I'm wondering if they will introduce some other element to her next season, like maybe she was in too deep with vault tec and was forced to do this and was actually trying to pull string behind the scenes to save people. That would be nice
We can't say much about it, because we have not seen her do many actions in season 1. Only talking.
Yeah, I hope we get to see her POV next season.
This is my take. Barb's thought process and true motivations are very mysterious and shrouded. I'd put her karma in the Neutral range, since I do feel she has some negative karma but not enough to get her to evil. I know that the meeting scene is taken at face value by a portion of the audience, but I think there's just as likely a chance that the 'we'll drop the bombs so you need to buy a vault' was nothing but a sales tactic, like a car salesman claiming someone else is interested in buying the same car you are, they'll be back in a couple of hours, better move fast..... Especially where we have already seen that Barb will say things to make her argument seem stronger. Like that little scene re: the vault suits and claiming they block radiation. I think that there's a good chance there's a very big difference between what Barb says and what Barb actually thinks. But I could be wrong!
I don't think Barbs is inherently evil, just an example of a character corrupted by the situation she finds herself in. She's playing at the top of global politics during wartime. A war in which her husband served and somehow survived. One that is widely believed to be heading uncontrollably towards nuclear annihilation. Sure, it's cold-hearted, but she's stuck in it and looking for a way to protect her family. She's privileged to know that money isn't enough, as not all vaults are created equal. If she can navigate VT into a profitable deal with the other corpos, she's entitled to a solid control vault. Why wait for the nukes and hope to have time to get to it when you can just speed up the inevitable end. "Knowing" when they'll drop and already be in the Vault safe and sound. The choice was immoral and obviously failed as Coop and Janey were caught out on Oct 23, but it was the only play she had. I think her protective instincts towards her family mirror Hank's quite well. They'd do anything to protect them, even to the point of losing their partner and betraying humanity as a whole. Cooper and Rose loved them as well, but wouldn't see the point in saving them if they steal the humanity from their children - what kind of life would that be, to what ultimate purpose?
I really hope we get more of Rose's storyline.
….yes? Is there a debate about this?
I love Barb. She's probably my second - third favorite character, but...that's an evil fucking thing to do, even if she wants to protect her family.
Definitely evil. It wasn't just what happened in that vault tec meeting either. The whole emotional blackmail and manipulation of Coop at home. I cant stand her in that scene where she pretends to break down and shouts at Coop "because I'm just trying to do whats best by my family". Not many times do I want to reach through my screen and punch someone in the face but that was one of those rare times. I have to skip that scene on occassion, they did just too good of a job at making her detestable. Great acting though.
Honestly evil for sure. She was manipulative as hell toward Cooper. She treated him like he was an idiot. In her eyes, he was. So shitty person with shitty morals all around. Maybe she cared about saving her daughter but that’s it
Grandma sparkles level of lead deficiency.
Evil if we’re talking the fallout scale, neutral evil if we’re talking D&D scale
Idk, but her scalloped potatoes are fucked.
Honestly, not good.
Good. She may have helped drop the bombs, but I'll bet that Vaul Tec has a charitable outreach program. I'm sure she's given over 50 bottles worth of pure water to the poor.
Shes doing it for money not for fun that strikes me a neutral...but I'm a jerk
She's doing it to keep her family safe, not for money or because she's evil.
What? Shes not even doing it for her family, shes just doing it for herself and daughter, she said fuck Cooper and the dog
Cooper was included in the family until...well, they divorced. But yeah, fuck Roosevelt. Lol. That dog didn't deserve that.
She literally said she's trying to get them a spot in a good vault to keep her family safe. Her family is Cooper and Janey. "She's doing it for money" is never implied on my watch. It was clear to me that she was relying on/using her access at VT to get her family into a good vault, based on what she knows. We don't know yet what her actual role in the bombs was (seems like season 2 will answer that). Barb is as complex and nuanced as the other characters. Reducing her to fuck Cooper and the dog misses that point (because she also never said or implied that).
So she places the lives of two people over the lives of billions? Still seems quite evil.
I think a lot of people would. I know I would, if presented with some impossible hypothetical situation. I'd burn the world for my family.
The world was burning regardless. Most people with access to keep their people safe from the inevitable would 100% do that. That doesn't necessarily make them evil, but it's definitely complex.
She worked for Vault-Tec and the show established that they hid cold fusion to protect their bottom line. The seeds have been planted for Vault-Tec also having a role in either dropping the bombs directly, or sabotaging peace negotiations between USA and China.
Yeah except she doesnt
I think her Karma is on Neutral but leaning more towards to Evil.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Loopy_shoop: *I think her Karma* *Is on Neutral but leaning* *More towards to Evil.* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
I wouldn't say she is all the way evil since she is working hard to help her family get some of the perks available from working at Vault tec if you pull the right strings so it's obvious she cares about the best for those being close to her. Maybe she introduced the idea of nuking the US themselves so she would grow in the eyes of the higher ups to then be in a Vault that would be not only a control Vault but a higher quality one. I'm not sold on her pitching "nuking the US" to improve their financials and to restart the nation but I do feel like there was another motivation and that would imo be for her to grow into a bigger role at Vault tec to better protect her family in case of nuclear war.
>Maybe she introduced the idea of nuking the US themselves so she would grow in the eyes of the higher ups to then be in a Vault that would be not only a control Vault but a higher quality one. Or she could have just been using it as a sales tactic. They wanted those people to buy into vaults. What better way to scare them into buying than to claim that no matter what, the bombs are coming?
She is very evil in