Fallout Season 3 Is Happening, Headed Toward Colorado, With Ella Purnell Expected Back as Fans Hunt for a Release Date

Yes, there will be a season 3 of Fallout. The next chapter has already been approved, and the end of season 2 was designed to point viewers straight at what comes next: a new stretch of the wasteland, with Colorado emerging as the clearest destination on the map and Ella Purnell’s Lucy positioned to remain the emotional center of the story.

What fans still do not have is the one thing driving most searches right now: an official Fallout season 3 release date. Instead, the timeline is being pieced together from production planning chatter, typical postproduction realities, and the scale of the show’s effects-heavy worldbuilding.

Will there be a season 3 of Fallout

Season 3 is greenlit, and the creative team has been operating as if the renewal was secured well before the season 2 finale aired. That matters because early renewals usually translate into shorter gaps between seasons, at least in theory: scripts can move sooner, sets can be reused, and cast scheduling can be locked in earlier than it would be in a true “wait and see” renewal.

The catch is that Fallout is not a lightweight show. Its build includes huge practical sets, creature work, stunt-heavy action, and extensive visual effects. Even with an early renewal, the calendar still has hard limits.

Fallout season 3 release date: the most realistic window right now

An official date has not been announced. Based on the most consistent reporting around expected filming timing and the show’s usual turnaround, the earliest plausible window is early to mid 2027, with late 2027 to 2028 also very much in play depending on how complicated the season becomes.

Why the spread is so wide:

• Filming is expected to begin in 2026, not immediately

• Postproduction for Fallout is substantial, especially for creature sequences and large wasteland environments

• If season 3 expands the world significantly, the effects workload tends to balloon, not shrink

If you want the practical takeaway: treat 2027 as the optimistic target, and late 2027 or 2028 as the “nobody would be shocked” outcome.

Fallout Colorado: why season 3 appears to be heading into the mountains

Colorado has moved from fan theory to strong on-screen implication. The season 2 ending points toward the Rocky Mountain region as the next major waypoint, which would be a franchise first for the show’s main storyline. It also opens a rich slice of Fallout lore that the series can remix without being locked to a single classic game setting.

Colorado is narratively useful for three big reasons:

1. It’s a believable bridge between major wasteland hubs
   If the story is transitioning out of the Mojave and toward a new power structure, the route itself becomes a story engine: raider corridors, militarized checkpoints, and isolated settlements clinging to mountain passes.

2. It gives the show fresh factions and fresh rules
   New territory lets writers introduce a local “order” that doesn’t feel like a copy of what viewers already saw in California or Nevada. Colorado can support anything from bunker-born technocrats to fractured militias to survivalist city-states.

3. It plugs directly into high-value Fallout mythology
   Colorado is strongly associated in franchise lore with hardened installations and a certain kind of pre-war continuity fantasy: the idea that somewhere, deep underground, the old world’s command structure might still be trying to run the future.

Ella Purnell and the returning cast: what to expect in season 3

Ella Purnell is expected to return as Lucy, and it would be structurally strange if she didn’t. The show’s core appeal is the collision of her moral clarity with a world that punishes it. That tension is the heart of the series.

Other key returns viewers should expect include:

• The Ghoul, whose personal quest has become the story’s emotional accelerant

• Maximus, whose arc sits at the intersection of belief, power, and institutional violence

• Lucy’s family thread, which continues to connect personal betrayal to the larger systems that shaped the wasteland

Season 3’s cast question is less “who disappears” and more “who gets expanded.” A Colorado pivot is the kind of move that usually brings in a new regional power center, meaning a wave of fresh antagonists and allies.

Behind the headline: why Colorado is a strategic choice, not just a new backdrop

There’s a business logic and a story logic working together.

The story logic is variety: a new region refreshes the show’s visual language and lets it surprise viewers again. The business logic is longevity: a series built for multiple seasons can’t stay in one corridor forever without feeling like it’s looping.

Stakeholders and incentives are lining up like this:

• The studio wants a repeatable hit with steady season cadence

• The creative team wants room to expand the map without being trapped by exact game plots

• Fans want recognizable Fallout DNA without a rigid scene-by-scene reenactment

• The broader franchise benefits when the show introduces new viewers to deeper lore threads

Colorado offers familiar Fallout themes—vault secrets, militarized legacy, corporate ruins—without forcing the show to recreate a single beloved game location beat-for-beat.

What we still don’t know

A few missing pieces will determine whether season 3 lands sooner or later:

• The confirmed start of principal photography and how long the shoot runs

• Whether the season uses more location work or leans harder on controlled sets

• How many creature-heavy set pieces the season builds around

• Whether the story splits into multiple parallel journeys, which typically increases complexity

What happens next: the most likely scenarios

• A formal announcement of production timing in the coming months, once schedules lock

• Casting additions tied to a Colorado power structure and new regional factions

• A release window update later in 2026 once filming is underway

• A longer wait if the season’s scope expands dramatically beyond prior seasons

For now, the clean answer is: season 3 is happening, Colorado is the direction the story is pointing, and a 2027 release is the best expectation—unless production or postproduction scale pushes it into 2028.