If the Fallout TV series gets a second season it'll have deathclaws, more than justifying its existence

A deathclaw from Fallout 4 clings to the edges of its cage, ready to do battle.

(Image credit: Bethesda)

It's surprising that season 1 of the Fallout TV series doesn't have a deathclaw. They're the most terrifying foe in the Fallout bestiary; when I think of Fallout I think of Vault Boy and I think of deathclaws. But television producers must practise restraint. They can't just toss all the series iconography into eight episodes to please nerds, much to the chagrin of Redditors and me.

But season two of the Fallout TV series—if it happens, which it likely will—will almost certainly feature a deathclaw. In an interview with The Wrap, co-showrunner Graham Wagner explains that deathclaws aren't in the first season due to a fairly fundamental tenet of storytelling: you can't just front load all the good stuff.

“We wanted to get deathclaws, but we didn’t want to just throw it away. It’s such a monumental piece,” Wagner said, “we want to save something for season 2 to be able to do it properly, not just added onto the massive world building we had to do already in season 1. So season 2, we’re very excited to finally tackle one of the most iconic elements of the games.”

This is related to the team's resistance to the "kitchen sink approach", which would have seen the first season riddled with an abundance of references at the expense of being actually interesting to people who have not played Fallout 3 with a terabyte of mods installed. "[W]e didn’t want to see the show to seem like it was written by people who just like spent ten seconds reading the Wikipedia page for ‘Fallout’ and didn’t bother to bring in some deeper cuts,” another co-showrunner, Geneve Roberson-Dworet, said in the same interview. “So it was important to us to also bring deeper cuts into season 1. Hopefully that won’t piss off fans because we didn’t get to every last thing, but hopefully they will bear with us and pray with us that we get a second season to bring these things to the screen.”

As for that season 2, it's not yet officially happening—Prime Video hasn't purchased a follow-up yet—but in the event that it does, the finale of the first season gives some pretty big hints regarding where it will be set.

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Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.