‘Fallout’ season 2 turns abandoned LA mall into New Vegas

The sweeping desert landscape of Las Vegas that Lucy (Ella Purnell) and The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) explore in Season 2 of “Fallout” was not filmed in Sin City, but an abandoned LA mall.

While the first season showed viewers the post-apocalyptic landscape of Los Angeles, following Lucy as she tries to track down her kidnapped father, Season 2 shifts the story to New Vegas.

Production designer Howard Cummings told The Hollywood Reporter that the focal point of the season was to capture Las Vegas before the nuclear bombing of 2077, calling it a “retro-futuristic Vegas.”

Instead of filming in the real Las Vegas, Cummings used the long-abandoned Valley Plaza Mall, which opened in 1951 and has been dormant for over a decade, and turned it into the small screen New Vegas.

The mall’s old Regal Theater building was rebranded as the Gomorrah Hotel and Casino, with the 27-foot Lucky 38 sign standing next to it, which was built by his team on set.

“Most people think this is all CG and they just did a greenscreen,” Cummings said, insisting that these were all real practical sets, aside from digital Vegas backdrops.

The prewar flashback scenes were filmed first, before the nuclear blast that turned Goggins’ Howard into The Ghoul, before Cummings and his team went back and “trashed” that set.

“All the palm trees look good at the beginning, and then they’re all dead. The brand-new cars [were] rusted and destroyed,”

Cummings also shot the Freeside district of New Vegas in an Old West town in Santa Clarita, California, the same location where another show he worked on was shot, HBO’s “Westworld.”

The production designer and his team had to re-face the buildings to match them to the buildings from the game, though there was some digital work as well.

“I added the Wrangler Casino and Silver Rush signs, but the overpass was added in post,” Cummings admitted.

If the show does head back to New Vegas for Season 3, they will have to find a new place to shoot, since a panel of LA city commissioners approved a plan to demolish the abandoned mall, with the demolition process starting in October 2025.

Fallout will seemingly be the last film or TV show to shoot there, with other major productions such as “Magnolia,” “Pineapple Express,” “Straight Outta Compton,” “Captain Marvel,” “Sneaky Pete” and “The Middle” filming there throughout the years, while Randy Newman also filmed the video for his iconic 1983 song “I Love L.A.” there as well.

Amazon did renew Fallout for a third season back in May 2025, though it’s unclear when production will begin quite yet.

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