News Fallout Fallout Season 2 Reveals a Missing Detail in the Deathclaw Origin Story While Fallout season 2 confirms much of what we knew about Deathclaws, it does fill in a fascinating missing piece of their origin story By Matthew Byrd | Published on January 7, 2026 Photo: Amazon Prime Video Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Amazon Prime Video This article contains spoilers for Fallout Season 2, Episode 4. Fallout season 2’s fourth episode finally introduced viewers to the Deathclaw: the towering reptilian monstrosities that have long been featured players in Fallout fans’ nightmares. And while the show’s version of a Deathclaw is (thankfully) largely true to the show’s source material, the most notable thing about the Deathclaws’ series debut is something about the creature’s origin story we didn’t learn in the games. Fallout‘s most recent episode (titled “The Demon in the Snow”) begins with a flashback of Cooper Howard fighting the war against the People’s Liberation Army of China somewhere in Alaska. During a heated arctic battle, Howard encounters a Deathclaw that is seemingly also battling the People’s Liberation soldiers. We don’t see the creature at that time (that comes much later in the episode during the “current” timeline), but anyone who has ever been unlucky enough to run into one of these creatures in the Fallout game knows exactly what he’s looking at and why he’s practically frozen in fear. Despite some claims to the contrary that are currently making the rounds online, this scene confirms much of what we already knew about Deathclaws. The Fallout games and their associated supplementary material confirmed that Deathclaws were not mere post-apocalyptic mutations but were instead creatures manufactured by the U.S. government sometime during the Great War. We even know that their genetic structure is largely based on the DNA of a Jackson’s chameleon and that they were intended to function as super soldiers that could thrive (so to speak) in any environment. While Deathclaws evolved over the years (and were later modified by various nefarious forces), those aspects of their origin have long been part of the Fallout canon. What’s new is the seemingly simple idea that Deathclaws were ever deployed into combat zones. Until now, there’s never been any reference to the Deathclaws actually being used during the Great War. Actually, a previously popular theory suggests they were one of the many catastrophic (and sometimes hypothetical) weapons developed during that time that weren’t actually utilized. Instead, some believed they simply escaped from their labs sometime after the bombs dropped. Now, though, the Fallout series (which we’ve previously established is part of the greater Fallout canon) confirms that the United States did actually deploy Deathclaws in at least one battle. Granted, it’s not the kind of game-changing (quite literally) lore revelation that the Fallout series has previously introduced, but it does fill in a fun missing piece of the Deathclaw puzzle. At the same time, it raises some new questions about Deathclaws and greater Fallout lore that may never be answered. Most notably, the nature of Deathclaws’ behavior in the games strongly suggested that they are largely territorial creatures who will viciously defend an area but are not necessarily trying to aggressively conquer new territories. That they were seemingly successfully used as relatively tactical instruments of war suggests that their more independent traits may be part of their later development. But that’s just the kind of hyper-nerdy overthinking you (hopefully) love us for. Truth be told, Amazon’s Fallout series remains both a faithful adaptation of the games and a wonderful addition to their wild worlds. [end-mark] The post <i>Fallout</i> Season 2 Reveals a Missing Detail in the Deathclaw Origin Story appeared first on Reactor.