Fallout Season 2 Episode 4 Might Have Solved One Mystery From The Games

This article contains spoilers for Fallout" season 2, episode 4, "The Demon in the Snow."

"Fallout" is a stellar video game adaptation in large part because the show understands that trying to translate a story gamers have already experienced is a fool's errand. Instead, the Prime Video series recognizes that the real star of the "Fallout" franchise is its setting. It isn't the storylines or even the characters, but rather the world-building and unique tone of the games that make them so beloved. The TV show has exquisite production design that brings the games' retrofuturistic nuclear wasteland to life, recreating places, creatures, and other iconography from the games.

That's not to say that Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet's adaptation, produced by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, doesn't care about story. Quite the opposite, in fact. Throughout the first season and a half of the show, we've seen compelling character stories that take us to different corners of the "Fallout" universe. The series also does a lot to deepen the lore of the games by exploring the world before the bombs dropped, like explaining how the franchise's mascot came to be or revealing who decided to end the world.

Granted, there's been some controversy with how the games' timeline is portrayed in the show. Because the TV adaptation is canon, it has answered questions that were left unanswered in the video games, like what happens to Shady Sands or to Caesar's Legion. In the latest episode of the show, "Fallout" clears up one pre-war mystery from the games and confirms that the terrifying Deathclaw was used in the Sino-American war that preceded the nuclear armageddon.

Episode 4 opens with a flashback to a pivotal moment in the history of the "Fallout" world: The Alaskan Front. This is the frontline of the Sino-American War, a devastating conflict that lasted 11 years and ended with nuclear winter. In the show, we focus on Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins), here just a soldier in Power Armor. His armor malfunctions, his ride is destroyed, and he's surrounded by the enemy. Things get even worse when Howard starts to hear a growl.

We don't get a good look at it, but we do see its terrifying, devil-like horns. We also see how it annihilates the Chinese soldiers without breaking a sweat. It's big, it's freakishly strong, it has huge teeth, and looks like it clawed its way out of hell. This, of course, is a Deathclaw, the most dangerous creature in the "Fallout" universe.

The flashback ends with Howard hearing a message to the troops saying that the Red Army is retreating and congratulating them on their work. But Howard knows it wasn't the Power Armor or the American weaponry that scared away the other side, it was a monster.

Well, it technically was American weaponry anyway. As the "Fallout" season 2 trailer finally revealed, Deathclaws, the mutant monstrosities that are incredibly hard to kill, were initially genetically engineered by the U.S. government as super soldiers. We know from the games that the Deathclaws escaped from their labs during the nuclear apocalypse and reproduced into becoming the apex predator of the wasteland. What we didn't know until now was whether the Deathclaw had actually seen combat.

"Fallout" continues to explore corners of the games' lore that haven't been explained before, and we can't wait to see where Cooper Howard's story leads.