Fallout Showrunners Reveal Why Deathclaws Didn't Appear in Season 1
Fallout's most iconic monsters were intentionally held for future seasons.
The first season of Prime Video's highly anticipated Fallout TV series debuted in its entirety last week, taking fans of the popular video game franchise to the post-apocalyptic wasteland we've spent years exploring. The show featured all kinds of Easter eggs and nods to the games, including a few popular creatures from the wasteland. We saw Yaogui and Gulpers, but the likes of Super Mutants and Deathclaws — arguably the most iconic creatures from the games — were missing from the show.
Without giving any specifics away about the ending of Fallout Season 1, one of the very last shots of the finale features the skull of a Deathclaw in the desert, teasing their existence and setting them up for a debut in Season 2. But why hold them for the sophomore season?
According to the Fallout showrunners, it was all about saving some big elements from the games for the future. During a recent interview with TheWrap, showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneve Robertson-Dworet talked about that Deathclaw tease.
"We wanted to get Deathclaws, but we didn't want to just throw it away," Wagner explained. "It's such a monumental piece. We want to save something for Season 2 to be able to do it properly, not just added on to 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."
Robertson-Dworet went on to say that it was a challenge to decide exactly what from the Fallout games needed to be in Season 1 and what needed to be saved for later.
"There's all the greatest hit things, like the most obvious things that people who aren't even gamers know about Fallout, like Nuka-Cola, Deathclaws, whatever. There are these things that are just so prevalent and we were tempted to do all of them in Season 1," she said. "But on the other hand, we didn't want to see the show seem like it was written by people who just like spent 10 seconds reading the Wikipedia page for Fallout and didn't bother to bring in some deeper cuts. 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 screen."
Fallout hasn't been officially renewed for Season 2, but the stars seem to be aligning for a series return.