The following article contains major spoilers for the Fallout season two finale.

The second season of Fallout concludes with a killer, genuinely ten-out-of-ten finale, packed with deathclaw-scrapping action on the Vegas strip, a major villain reveal, and healthy doses of emotional catharsis. Much of the latter comes via the resolutions and twists experienced by The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), who, across the season, marched onwards in his search for his wife Barb (Frances Turner) and daughter Janey (Teagan Meredith). All the while, he continued his inner journey towards rediscovering his humanity, though he still remains a far cry from the moral righteousness of his past life as Cooper Howard. But hey, baby steps.

In the final episode, upon reaching the executive vault—Vault-Tec’s subterranean inner sanctum, where Hank (Kyle MacLachlan) has spent the season converting wastelanders into his own docile horde of brainwashed workers—with House’s (Justin Theroux) help, The Ghoul saves Lucy (Ella Purnell) from her father. He then descends to the cryo chambers, expecting to be reunited with the deep-frozen duo of Barb and Janey. But then comes the big twist: they’ve already left, and seemingly some time ago. Left at the bottom of Barb’s chamber? A Colorado postcard. Looks like the next season is headed for the irradiated Rockies.

“Look, you could have opened those cryo chambers, and Barb and my daughter could’ve been there,” Goggins tells GQ over Zoom. “Ultimately, it wasn’t [the case]. I watched it last night… And for me, it was the most organic way forward.” Not that it blunts The Ghoul’s persistence, especially now that he knows they’re alive—well, more than likely alive. “It ultimately comes down to something we all have in common, because it’s baked into our DNA as human beings, and that’s hope.”

Like everyone else, after a finale steeped in twists, turns, and huge reveals, we had a million questions to ask, not least about The Ghoul. Thankfully, Goggins was on hand to answer them.

GQ: I think the events of the season, and the finale, are pretty informative of how the Ghoul became so monstrous over those 219 post-war years. It’s left a little ambiguous, but it’s implied that he had an unwitting hand in the end of the world. That’s a lot of guilt for a guy to live with for two centuries.

Walton Goggins: If he ultimately finds out how that plays out. God, any decisions that we make in our own life… Are we contributing to our own personal downfall? Are we contributing to the downfall of our community? Are we aware of the decisions that we’re making, and how that reverberates, or ripples out, from the pebble being dropped in a pond? I don’t know the answer to that question. And I still don’t know the answer to that question. I don’t know if that’s true, or if that’s not true.

What I do know is there’s a person who thought he understood what his life was, thought he was the master of his fate, and what he quickly found out is that other people have been pulling the levers for a very long time. If he is responsible on any level for bringing about the end of the world as we know it, it is unwittingly. And so we’ll see how that plays out.

Again, you alluded to the finale’s big twist for The Ghoul, when he opens the cryo chambers and Barb and Janey aren’t there. House has this quote where he tells The Ghoul that he “bet on hope and lost,” but actually, it seems to have had the opposite effect. I don’t think The Ghoul has lost any hope. If anything, it has been reinvigorated.

He found out that his family was alive. I mean, God, can you imagine —in a tragedy, in a mine somewhere; this happens to be 200 years, but let’s call it 48 hours of not knowing whether or not they’re alive—and once you find out they’re alive, there is no better news. And then it’s a matter of extracting them from underneath the earth, and that’s it’s own journey. So it’s not so dissimilar from him. He’s gonna fuckin’ find them, man. [Laughs.]

Earlier in the episode, in the executive vault, The Ghoul saves Lucy from her father. How would your characterize their relationship by the end of the season?

We talked ad nauseam about me interfering in that moment with Lucy, and not saving her life, you know. Ultimately, I think it comes down to how far The Ghoul has come, incrementally speaking. He’s got a long way to go, for Cooper Howard and The Ghoul to become one.

But we’ve increasingly seen that convergence.

Exactly. That’s the goal. Like, that’s the inevitability. But what he does do, by emasculating Hank in shooting him in the ass… That’s just funny, but the moral to that story is this is her decision. It’s your life, and how do you want to live it, based on the information you have now: what is your morality, and has it shifted, and how has it shifted? You have to make that decision for yourself. It’s baked into the DNA of the game, but it’s also baked into the DNA of the story.

I love that little hat-tip that he gives her just as he departs. Was that scripted?

That’s just giving myself over to an imaginary set of circumstances, really. That’s the magic that happens whenever you play pretend for a living.

When The Ghoul and [Justin Theroux’s character] House reunite years later in the post-war present, House now essentially takes the form of this giant computer. How did you shoot that scene physically? Were you literally talking to this huge screen?

Because of the analogue nature in which we like to approach this experience… They set [Justin] up on his own screen. He was being filmed at the same time that I was being filmed. We were doing it in real-time with each other.

So, kind of like a Zoom call?

Yes, absolutely, except I had a 35-millimeter camera on me with film in it, and so did he. But they projected him, and that image, on that screen, through a patch on the camera, and [applied] that effect in real-time. He was there, he was dressed, he was doing it. Those were the takes that we used. It wasn’t an effect afterwards, and we weren’t working on different days. We were there together.

How helpful is that for you as an actor?

Oh, God. As long as you’re working with someone who is coming at it from their heart, and that cares about it as much as you do, and is giving as Justin is as a person, the rest is just… You can’t dictate where that river flows. You just turn yourself over to it. And whatever comes out, is exactly how it was supposed to come out. And that’s what it’s like working with Justin. Just like working with Sam [Rockwell] on The White Lotus. It’s a beautiful thing to know that you’re being vulnerable with someone who has your back, and they know that they are being vulnerable with someone that has their back. That’s what fuckin’ art is, man.

Forgive the obligatory question: Do you know anything about season three?

That we’re filming it. That we’re picked up, and we’re going. Look, we’ve talked about some things. Like I said, there’s a lot in this post-apocalyptic world that I’m very excited to explore, but there are themes in the past that I’m equally as excited to explore. Both of these worlds are so rich for me, and these opportunities are so rich for me, that wherever and whatever comes my way, I’m all in.

This article originally appeared in British GQ.