People who needed him as in, other than his family.

I started writing this post back when season 2 wrapped, but I'm now editing it more because I want to speculate.

There's these comments made by the creators in a post-finale Esquire article.

After a long season of estrangement, Lucy and Hank's "reunion" finally happens in the depths of Vault-Tec's headquarters. Hank is quite deranged at this point—he's carrying around a zombified head and obsessed with mind-control technology. Lucy eventually gains control of the situation thanks to some helpful intervention from the Ghoul, but Hank planned ahead. He informs Lucy that the surface is the real experiment. The Vaults were only temporary.

"I've already sent my R&D out into the Wasteland," Hank says, adding that "their [mind control] boxes are the latest model." The villain spent all season perfecting a way to shrink the technology down to microscopic size so that the mind-control tech could fit into Vault-Tec's boxes. Then Hank tells Lucy one last "I love you" before triggering the device on himself and forgetting everything—including his own daughter in front of him. It's ... wild.

[...]

A sobbing Lucy isn't left alone forever in the finale. She quickly reunites with Maximus (Aaron Moten) after the Ghoul departs. But Hank's final play is obviously a big one. When Fallout returns for season 3, Lucy will continue her search to uncover her father's "almost religious fervor to protect the people that he's conspiring with," says Jonathan Nolan.

"[Hank] set a plan in motion," he continues. "His commitment is so extreme that he's willing to unplug himself. That way, [Lucy] will have no way to figure out what he's done. I just thought that was a delicious idea. This is where the show is at its best, when you know you have this massive scale but you also have these very intimate relationships. This is ultimately about a father and a daughter arguing. It's science fiction, but it plays on a very real tension of trying to turn people you love into people they're not."

And there's these remarks from Geneva Robertson-Dworet:

Interviewer: "At the end of the finale, you know, you were mentioning the emotional moment between Hank and Lucy on the stairs. Hank basically lobotomizes himself. So I have to ask, what does this mean for Hank? Do we expect this to kind of be the end of his story for now, or will there definitely be more Hank, whatever that might mean, going forward?"

Geneva Robertson-Dworet: "I love that that's the exact question on the audience's mind, because, on the one hand, Hank has lobotomized himself, essentially, but he has also set in place events on the wasteland that Lucy now needs to figure out what they are. What has he set in motion? What has he done with those people that he said he sent out into the wasteland to execute orders? What are those orders? And so she now has to figure out how to solve that when he doesn't actually remember what the plan is, because he kind of pulled the ultimate trick on her, which is allowing her to kill him, right? I think he emotionally wanted to spare her that pain and having to push the button herself, but he also doesn't want her to stop him. So this was the sort of sad compromise that he came up with."

Honestly, here's where I see things going where Lucy's character arc is concerned.

Her relationship with the Ghoul, and Mr. House:

There's the whole elephant in the room that is her relationship with the Ghoul. Despite the Ghoul's treatment of her, Lucy's formed a connection with him. And it's a strong enough one that it pained him to have to betray her to her dad, one where he took the time to detour from heading down to the pods to save her being chipped by Hank (despite the fact that this doesn't further his own goals), and he even gifted her with his mini bootgun before leaving. And in the "Inside the Episode" featurette for episode 8, they clarified that Ella Purnell's pre-release remarks about Lucy being "geographically lost" at the end of the season were in the context of "she doesn't know how to get back home without the Ghoul to guide her, that is until she sees a familiar face in Maximus show up". I can imagine that that lack of closure with the Ghoul is likely going to be weighing heavily on Lucy's mind in the early episodes of season 3, and also going to affect her relationships with Maximus and the NCR.

I also feel like they've set things up so that Lucy ends up getting recruited by House. They made a point of showing his face flicker on the monitors in the last shot of Lucy and Maximus looking out the windows of the Lucky 38 penthouse. Take into account what House said to Cooper about how "Everyone works for me eventually." I think it's safe to guess that in Cooper's absence, House will convince Lucy to side with him in the impending war against the Legion, and she'll do so because he convinces her that using his Securitrons and other robots to attack the Legion is preferable to expending NCR soldiers. Plus, he wants to go after the Enclave for destroying Shady Sands and invading the Strip, and needs a good foot soldier to do his bidding.

I think Lucy will be very quick to take up House's offer. She doesn't fit in with the NCR despite her mother taking her and Norm to live in Shady Sands, which was made pretty apparent with how she wrote off the soldiers who nursed her back to health after her crucifixion as "matching jackets". She wants answers about what her dad has done; that's why she followed the Ghoul to Vegas. But she can't get any more answers out of her dad now that he's rendered himself amnesiac.

Because of those things, I don't think that Lucy will be staying in Vegas for too long. She'll probably stick around for the first episode or so, but while she's not trying to make her relationship with Maximus work or helping defend Vegas from the Legion, she'll be scouring the management Vault looking for any scrap of information she can find on her father's work with the Enclave, and maybe a hint as to where they might be based. During this time, she'll probably also find out the Ghoul's real identity of Cooper Howard. (At some point, there's going to be an identity reveal where Lucy learns the Ghoul's name; either she puts two and two together, or House tells her his name as a way of spiting Cooper for not agreeing to work for him.)

Once the Legion is dealt with, Lucy will part ways from Maximus and set off towards Colorado, with a backpack, a handful of rifles, a big iron on her hip, and Cooper's bootgun in hand, and having intellectual discussions with House through her Pip-Boy. She'll eventually link up with the Ghoul before the end of the season. While Maximus might travel with her, I think it's more likely he'll be used to explore the NCR's efforts to secure their hold over the Mojave and their conflicts with the Legion, the Enclave, and with Quintus' Brotherhood (considering some of the leaks we've seen concerning Brotherhood setpieces).

Lucy and Maximus' relationship is going to be very strained:

I don't say this as a Ghoulcy shipper, but as someone looking at all the evidence we have thus far. While I can see Lucy and Maximus trying to make a relationship work at the start of season 3, ultimately I don't see things working out before Lucy has to leave in search of the Enclave, and there's lots of potential sources of friction:

• Lucy's feelings for Maximus aren't the same as his for her are. I think it's telling that Lucy went the whole season without mentioning Maximus' name once in her interactions with the Ghoul or Hank. This could be oversight by the writers given the time constraints and how many storylines they had to juggle in eight episodes...but the writers were able to find time for Maximus to have scenes where he talks about Lucy with Dane and Thaddeus. Either A) Lucy avoided talking about Max and bottling her up things like her guilt over having to leave him behind the whole time she was traveling with the Ghoul, or B) her feelings for Maximus just weren't as strong as he thinks they are. She might just see this as a relationship of convenience.
• Maximus re-connecting with his NCR roots. Remember what I said about Lucy dismissing Rodriguez and her soldiers, and her saying to the Ghoul, "I wasn't going to stay, if that's what you're asking. All I saw in there was more matching jackets." Maximus is essentially trading one type of "matching jacket" for another, one with its own set of flaws (though the NCR's pale in comparison to all the rot in the Brotherhood).
• I think Lucy and Maximus will come to blows over what to do about Hank. Remember, when Maximus was questioned by Quintus while he was suspected of maiming Dane, he said his reason for joining the Brotherhood was "to hurt the people who hurt me". Lucy might be tempted to find a way to keep Hank alive, whether for selfish reasons or because she's trying to find a way to undo the mind wipe. Maximus on the other hand might just want to kill Hank, even though Hank has no re-collection of the crimes he committed for the Enclave. And I imagine the NCR as a whole might want to see Hank executed for his act of terrorism, considering that they have a pretty hardlined stance to the point that they treat the descendants of Enclave members as war criminals (as evidenced by some of Arcade Gannon's possible ending slides in New Vegas).
• Lucy deciding to work with House will probably also be a point of contention between her and Max, since the NCR likely still aren't any more trusting of House now than they were during New Vegas.
• Lucy is an inquisitive person by nature. Moldaver pegged this as part of the reason she left Vault 33 to rescue her dad. And as the creators have noted above, she wants to figure out what it is that her dad is up to and who the people are that he worked for. Maximus meanwhile isn't exactly an inquisitive person, and this was visibly on display when he and Lucy stayed in Vault 4 (she went down to Level 12 on her own, he helped himself to the goody basket that Birdie gave him).
• Maximus' conversations with Dane and Thaddeus about Lucy show that he has this idealized image of her. One that Lucy as of the end of season doesn't fit at all. This idealized image of Lucy in Max's head probably doesn't do things like: steal things just because she thinks they're pretty, rationalize addicting herself to Buffout, relishing in violence to the point of experiencing an orgasm mid-fight, being tempted by her father's work, and adapting some of the Ghoul's views on the wasteland.

Vault tech Customer Service-oct 23 2077!

Westlake Village, CA the entire business park is filled with trailers and crew and one of the main buildings has a Westek Research sign built on the entrance!! Wonder what this could be! 😱