Whatever you think about Fallout Season 2 on Prime Video, the monsters are pretty cool. We’ve already gotten to see the awesomely named radscorpion, but that pales in comparison to the massive monster introduced on this week’s episode. Spoilers for Fallout Season 2, Episode 4 “The Demon In The Snow” past this point, but this week we meet Deathclaws, and they’re a nightmare right out of a Ray Harryhausen movie.
There’s a reason for that, and why these baddies look so good that we’ll get to in a second. But to lay it all out as it happens in the episode first… We actually start with a flashback to “The Alaskan Front.” The short version of this is that there was a Sino-American War, aka between the US and China, from 2066 through 2077. That was caused by China’s invasion of Alaska, and in 2067, Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins), aka the man who would eventually become The Ghoul, was part of the American forces fighting back against the People’s Republic of China.
As we’ve been told before but finally get to see here, Cooper was wearing faulty West-tek armor that had a tendency to completely shut down if shot in the chest-plate. Even beyond that, the face-plates having trouble raising, and Cooper’s partner Chuck can’t use coms, and his armor is sparking.
It’s all a bad situation, and it only gets worse once Cooper sends Chuck back to base, defying orders, and then hears a strange roaring sound past a downed vehicle. Cooper gets shot in the chest-plate, his knee locks up, and he’s down on the ground, frozen, surrounded by Chinese soldiers… When behind them, in the fire he sees a gigantic, horned monster.
It’s a Deathclaw, of course, and the production deploys it expertly as it tears apart the Chinese soldiers. Filmed mostly in close-up, the monster looks like something right out of Clash of the Titans as it roars and slashes and gets its dripping snout right up in Cooper’s terrified face. This, I would argue, is so much better than any CGI slop they could have used, and all credit to the production team for filming the beastie in such a way that it doesn’t look like a puppet… Though it is.
“Thankfully, I didn’t have to look up into the rafters of a stage and imagine this, because we have puppeteers,” Walton Goggins told SFX Magazine via GamesRadar+. “It’s not a green screen; there are puppeteers manning this thing. It’s cumbersome and it’s weird, but they’re doing the work to intimidate us. It’s incredible.”
Added co-showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet via Empire Magazine via Reddit, “We do things practically whenever possible. We want things to be tactile and tangible. It was only by using puppets, that are quite scary when you see them in person, that things feel deeply real.”
Is it a full on man-in-suit for the final shot of the Deathclaw stalking away towards the burning wreckage after leaving Cooper to die in the snow? Well… Probably not. That likely is CGI, but its deployed effectively as well. And of note, without spoiling anything, this brief glimpse isn’t the last you’ve seen of the Deathclaws (yes, multiple), so stay tuned for more horror — and awesome puppetry — as the season continues.
Fallout Season 2 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of Fallout Season 2 premiere Wednesdays on Prime Video at 3am ET / 12am PT, with the exception of the season premiere, which debuts early on Tuesday, December 16 at 9pm ET / 6pm PT.
Here’s the full list of episodes in Fallout Season 2 with premiere dates:
- Tuesday, December 16, 2025: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 1
- Wednesday, December 24, 2025: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 2
- Wednesday, December 31, 2025: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 3
- Wednesday, January 7, 2026: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 4
- Wednesday, January 14, 2026: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 5
- Wednesday, January 21, 2026: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 6
- Wednesday, January 28, 2026: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 7
- Wednesday, February 4, 2026: Fallout, Season 2, Episode 8 *Season Finale*
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