Who are the Enclave and what do they have planned in Fallout season 3? The show’s big villain, explained

The season 2 finale of Prime Video’s Fallout sets up a host of new conflicts in the Wasteland, ramping up the threats posed by Caesar’s Legion and the Brotherhood of Steel. But the series is also bringing the focus back to The Enclave, a faction introduced in the very first episode that is poised to play a much bigger role in season 3.

While the show hasn’t explained much about The Enclave so far, there are plenty of clues that can be pieced together. So let’s dig into what we already know about the secretive group and their schemes.

[Ed. note: Spoilers below for the Fallout season 2 finale.]

The Enclave is quietly responsible for many of the events in Fallout, exerting powerful influence over Vault-Tec and the U.S. government to ensure nuclear war and their place of power in the aftermath. When Vault-Tec executive Barb Howard (Frances Turner) warns her more idealistic actor husband Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) that there are worse people than her, The Enclave is who she’s talking about.

Cooper sought to save the world by stealing a diode used for cold fusion from Vault-Tec courier Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan). But as RobCo CEO Robert House (Justin Theroux) explains to The Ghoul (Goggins) in the season 2 finale, Cooper accidentally played right into The Enclave’s schemes by turning the technology over to the U.S. president (Clancy Brown). “I told you, there are far worse people than I, Mr. Howard,” House tells Cooper in a phone call right before the actor is arrested by the House of Un-American Activities Committee.

House is obsessed with using data to predict the future, but during the finale, he admits that The Enclave outplayed him. The Enclave ensured that the bombs would drop, and two hundred years later, they continue to use their technology and connections to Vault-Tec to manipulate the Wasteland. “The Enclave’s eyes are everywhere,” House warns The Ghoul. A sequence at the end of the episode confirms that by showing how the faction is eavesdropping on transmissions sent from the Vaults and New Vegas.

The Enclave has intimate knowledge of everything going on in the Vaults, which are being used to run a wide variety of sociological and biological experiments. When Vault 32 rises up against overseer Stephanie Harper (Annabel O’Hagan) after discovering that she’s actually a Canadian, she uses Hank’s secret Pip-Boy to send a message to The Enclave and encourage them to initiate “Phase 2.” It’s not clear what that is, but given the information that Norm (Moisés Arias) found on his excursion with the Vault 31 management team, it seems likely it involves the Forced Evolutionary Virus.

The FEV is a bioweapon that is capable of mutating lifeforms. It’s what created super mutants like the one played by Ron Perlman, who warned The Ghoul about a coming war. The FEV interacts poorly with radiation exposure, which damages the subject’s DNA. The residents of Vaults 32 and 33 would be perfect subjects because they haven’t had any such exposure and are very used to obeying authority due to their coddled lives. Phase 2 could be exposing everyone living there to FEV to build an army that The Enclave can use to exert even more control over The Wasteland.

Photo: Prime Video

That’s the exact sort of scheme House was afraid of. He said his plans for the future were shaken by “the demon in the snow” that Cooper Howard encountered as a marine fighting on the Alaskan Front during the Sino-American War in 2067. The Enclave worked with the U.S. government to create these monsters, known as deathclaws, which were designed to replace human troops. Their presence in New Vegas demonstrates how much these beasts can shift the balance of power.

War is coming to the Wasteland, and while The Enclave is used to coming out on top, they’re not a monolith. Enclave scientist Siggi Wilzig (Michael Emerson) demonstrated that in season 1 when he secretly saved a puppy that would have been euthanized for being too runty, escaping with the dog and the cold fusion diode that The Ghoul gave to House.

“Is The Enclave going to be purely villainous or are there noble people in there too? Are they ever in the right? These are the questions that make Fallout so rich as you get deeper into the lore,” Fallout showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet told Polygon. “There’s always more twists and turns and complexity to be uncovered.”