The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) and Lucy (Ella Purnell) have finally arrived in New Vegas in episode 4, only to be greeted by the worst possible thing they could encounter in the entire wasteland. The show never names the horned menace the duo finds by name, but fans of the post-apocalyptic RPGs will recognize the threat instantly. Lucy and The Ghoul are up against a Deathclaw, the most fearsome enemy in the franchise.

We first glimpse a Deathclaw near the start of the episode, when pre-bomb Cooper Howard is shown during his military service days. He's fighting on the frontlines of the Battle of Anchorage, and things aren't going well. Cooper instructs a fellow jarhead to evacuate the area, seemingly intent on becoming a martyr to the cause. Worse, Cooper's Power Armor starts malfunctioning. The Hollywood star soon finds himself fallen over, unable to do anything as a group of Chinese soldiers approaches him. The squad is amazed; they've never seen Power Armor before. They reckon it's just a matter of time before the Chinese army plops them into the metal suits as well.

As all this happens, Cooper is preoccupied with whatever is growling in the shadows. He tries alerting the Chinese about the impending threat, but by the time they turn around, it's too late. The diabolical reptilian kills them all in mere seconds. For a moment, as the creature approaches Cooper, it seems like he's doomed too. But he is narrowly saved by an explosion that steals the abomination's attention.

Near the end of the episode, The Ghoul and Lucy dispose of a group of the remnants of the Elvis-worshipping Kings faction, now reduced to ghouls, with such ease, they assume there's no danger in entering the New Vegas strip through the front gate. But as they make their way through the wreckage of Sin City, they realize things are too calm. Where is everyone? Lucy, high and careless thanks to a supply of Buffout chems, picks up a nearby eggshell with glee. That's when Cooper realizes what's going on. They're smack-dab in the middle of a nest, and the dunces have made the mistake of touching the remnants of a Deathclaw's progeny.

The episode ends before we can see what happens next, but based on what we know from the games, it's nothing good. Deathclaws have been a part of the Fallout franchise since its inception, where they've continually been poised as the most terrifying product of the post-apocalypse. If you found one in the original Fallout, you were as good as dead. In later Bethesda games, Deathclaws were a common enough sight that the Fallout 4's tutorial tasks players with killing one near the start of the game. In Fallout 76, fans can even turn Deathclaws into pets. Even so, Deathclaws aren't something players want to toy around with for the most part.

To understand where Deathclaws come from, we must dive into some nerdy Fallout lore. Through a combination of terminals, dialogue, and voice notes, players steadily learn of the American military's experiments with creating super soldiers. One method the Enclave explored was a bioweapon known as the Forced Evolutionary Virus, which could potentially beef up a subject's muscle mass and intelligence. FEV was later commandeered by other entities to create Super Mutants, among other atrocities.

The implications of this research would end up forming the basis of the Brotherhood of Steel, whose founder was so horrified by the Enclave's experiments that he vowed to stop humanity from ever doing something like that again. This is why season two of Fallout has spent so much time with the Brotherhood of Steel's attitude toward ghouls, which the organization views as abominations that must be exterminated.

Deathclaws stem from the same source. The apex predator is another attempt by the military to create a super soldier meant to take on missions that might be too risky for normal humans. After the bombs fell, Deathclaws steadily escaped their enclosures and started populating the wasteland. Though we know they are the result of genetic engineering, it's unclear if the Enclave concocted them with FEV specifically. We do know, however, that the military performed experiments with FEV and Deathclaws only to accidentally produce a flock of hyper-intelligent monsters capable of communication. We also know there are multiple variants of the horrible foe.

Though the egg would imply Lucy and The Ghoul have encountered a Mother Deathclaw, those genotypes are typically shaded blue. The enemy's ochre tint makes it seem like the two are dealing with a run-of-the-mill Deathclaw. But given everything we know about the monsters, that's still a worst-case scenario for Lucy and The Ghoul. Both the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave have a hard time dealing with Deathclaws, and they've got state-of-the-art weaponry. Lucy and The Ghoul are hardy, and they've stocked up on supplies and weapons after helping the NCR at this point. But they also barely survived a measly Radscorpion attack earlier in the season. How in the world are they going to deal with a Deathclaw?

My guess: they won't. Perhaps they'll narrowly escape. Maybe the digitized version of Mr. House will finally reveal himself at this point and save the day. We won't know until January 14, when season 2, episode 5, "The Wrangler," arrived to give us some answers.