Fallout Season 2 Ending Explained: Does The Ghoul Find His Family?

War may be coming to New Vegas, but The Ghoul is headed to Colorado.

Fallout‘s season 2 finale premiered on Feb. 3 and left more questions than answers about his family, his past and what exactly Vault-Tec planned for the Wasteland some 200 years ago. Though fans witnessed the tense confrontation between Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) and her father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), the fate of The Ghoul’s (Walton Goggins) family remains a question mark.

“Lucy and The Ghoul have these very intense emotional moments on the theme of family,” executive producer and showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet tells PEOPLE.

For Lucy, that meant realizing that her dad had lied about his true intentions and his role in bombing Shady Sands. For The Ghoul — whose real name is Cooper Howard — that meant finding out if his wife, Barb (Frances Turner), and daughter, Janey (Teagan Meredith), made it to the secret vault for management in New Vegas before the nuclear war.

“The Ghoul has been waste-landing longer than anyone, and has crossed pretty much every moral boundary that a person can cross in order to survive [to] pursue his goal of finding his family,” Robertson-Dworet continues. “It’s all for the sake, in his mind, of a noble goal that he does all these awful things.”

So, is The Ghoul’s family alive? Here’s everything to know about the season 2 ending of Fallout and what it means for season 3.

Warning: Fallout season 2 spoilers ahead!

How does Fallout season 2 end?

The second season of Fallout ends with The Ghoul and Maximus (Aaron Moten) working together to save Lucy from her father, who has taken her prisoner in New Vegas. While Maximus, or Max, fights off a group of terrifying Deathclaws, The Ghoul finds Lucy inside Robert House’s (Justin Theroux) Lucky 38 casino — just before her father can implant her with a mind-control device.

The Ghoul shoots Hank in the butt and then tosses a gun to Lucy, allowing her to decide her father’s fate. He then takes off in the direction of House, who has promised to show him where Barb and Janey have supposedly been kept in cryo-stasis for the past two centuries.

What happens to Norm?

Like his sister, Norm MacLean (Moises Arias) has also broken out of the vaults and come face to face with the Wasteland. Only he did so in the company of the cryonically frozen, pre-War Vault-Tec employees in Vault 31.

After realizing he is not one of them, some members of the group attempt to kill him. But before they can bring him to “justice,” they’re attacked by one of the Wasteland’s most deadly predators: mutated cockroaches.

Norm survives the attack and goes back to retrieve Claudia (Rachel Marsh), the only Vault-Tec employee who didn’t want him dead.

What was Hank’s experiment? 

Slowly but surely, the real intention behind Hank’s experiment to perfect Vault-Tec’s mind-control devices is revealed. In the final episode, he tells Lucy that he kept Congresswoman Diane Welch (Martha Kelly) alive for 200 years because she had the perfect personality to implant into Wastelanders, making them compliant and obedient workers.

Hank attempts to implant his daughter with one of the devices, but The Ghoul shoots him in the butt before he can. Now armed, Lucy decides to use his own technology against him. After implanting him with the device, a now docile Hank reveals that he’s already released implanted people into the Wasteland — and that they’ve been given instructions.

But before Lucy can get him to tell her what those instructions are, Hank uses the remote he’s been secretly keeping in his pocket to erase his own memory.

Robertson-Dworet tells PEOPLE that the confrontation between Lucy and Hank sets the stage for season 3.

“Lucy said, said in the first episode of this season that she was looking for her father to bring him to justice,” the showrunner says. “And The Ghoul laughs at her … So Lucy, the whole season is basically trying to struggle to figure out ‘How am I gonna bring justice to someone like my father? Am I gonna have to resort to violence?’ ”

Robertson-Dworet says that though Hank’s decision to erase his memory before Lucy could find out about the “larger plan” that has already started to unfold could be seen as selfish, she says it also could be interpreted as a “gesture of love.”

“He wants to spare her [from] having to bring him to justice herself, given that it’s going to take an act of violence to do so,” she explains. “And that leaves Lucy wondering, what is it that he sent those people out to do?”

Is The Ghoul’s family alive?

The season 2 finale ends with The Ghoul finding the chambers where his wife and daughter have been cryonically frozen for the past 200 years. But, when he opens them up, he finds that they’re empty — except for one clue that leads him to believe they’re still alive.

On the floor of Barb’s chamber, The Ghoul finds a postcard to Colorado. On the back, she’s written “Colorado was a good idea.” Though House offers his condolences, The Ghoul says that for the first time in “200, long ass years” he knows his family is alive.

Did Lucy and Max find each other?

Yes, against all odds, Lucy and Max find each other in New Vegas. After he successfully destroys the Deathclaws — aided unexpectedly by the New California Republic — and she learns of Hank’s plan, the two reunite outside of the Lucky 38 casino.

The final scenes of Fallout season 2 show Max and Lucy exploring House’s penthouse and looking out to the surrounding Mojave Wasteland. She tells him there’s a war coming and that it’s all her fault. He replies, “Yeah, well, welcome to the Wasteland,” and grabs her hand.