Halo had to reach his fifth full video game before toying with the idea that Master Chief would be a villain.
The Halo The TV show, which debuts exclusively on Paramount+ on March 24, arrives within the first 55 minutes. And this moment is representative of the dark, series-turning stakes the new “silver timeline” is looking for — eager to pry back the video games’ shiny, military-good-guy veneers and explore the darkest corners within. to be hidden Halo games all this time.
That alone might be reason enough for series fans and newcomers alike to tune in, but oh well! HaloTV shows need all the help they can get. I’ve seen the first two episodes so far, and the casting, acting, script, and often stagnant pace struggle to keep this Warthog on the road between some memorable highlights.
“Spartans are not people”
Paramount / Amblin
As I wrote earlier at Ars, Halo‘s TV version exists in an alternate “silver” timeline. The basics remain the same as the primary games-and-book canon (Master Chief in iconic green armor, Cortana as ubiquitous AI, The Covenant are aliens, etc.), but other key events and characters can arise or change. And the first TV episode is a great example of this creative decision that, for the most part, works out well.
The Surface Level Toy Pilot Episode Halo expectations by landing in an unexpected scene: a rebel outpost. Everyone here hates the series’ iconic human military might, known as the UNSC, and they… Real hate those armored soldiers. “Spartans are not people,” says a rebel during a rowdy scene in a bar. “They keep on killing.”
Paramount / Amblin
This opening sequence is a solid but thorough world build that is not confusing or overwrought. Most sci-fi TV shows would kill to start. And that’s before all hell and lasers break loose. This Rebel compound on the planet Madrigal is soon engulfed in a conflict that demands intervention from the Spartans – and while the resulting battle confirms that Master Chief is a Covenant-killing badass, it also shows that he falls short of the archetype that fans alike if beginners could assume he is.
At one point in the middle of a battle, Chief nods silently to a rebel leader who hates the UN Security Council, in a way that feels perfect:we may disagree, but now is not the time, the nod seems to say. Still, the battle ends, with the surviving rebels not necessarily a priority. A dramatic camera zoom on a survivor highlights this point, as if to shout to viewers: don’t trust the UNSC† And that’s not the last time Halo suggests this to viewers, even if we enter the series under the assumption that Master Chief would be the Good Guy.
Over-the-top violence – but not much of it
By the way, Parents: If you have enjoyed Halo games with kids aged 10-17 and excused the colorful violence as a milder alternative to the military combat like Dutyreconsider your assumptions. Halo‘s TV series started as a Showtime project and its violence is in “premium cable” territory. Covenant monsters sometimes die with visceral blood and unshakable images of direct gunshot wounds, and a second episode features a military execution in which a despot wraps up prisoners’ heads before blasting each with a pistol.
Despite this warning, the first two episodes of Halo don’t have many fights. They add up to 110 minutes, but they contain only one game-caliber confrontation, along with a fine-or-toothless spaceflight interlude (in which Chief masterfully flies through an “impossible” asteroid field, because, duhhe won’t crash and die that early in the show of course).
Paramount / Amblin
HaloThe facilitators clearly want viewers to invest in the politics and infighting of the UN Security Council’s inner circle, a circle in which military leaders clash with the researchers leading the Spartan project. That shouldn’t surprise fans of the series’ many books, who have delved into the machinations of the UNSC, and there’s meat on the bone of the premise like, “with great Spartan armor comes great responsibility.”
With the right casting and the right script, the show might have been close to a Halo keep going The West Wing† But these overlong UNSC sequences drag on with an overstated plot and dead faces, and their apparent heart, Dr. Catherine Halsey (Natascha McElhone, California), never manages to connect with her SyFy-grade castmates in a way that flexes her acting muscles. Halsey’s character has always juggled responsibilities and ambition due to her intense connection to the Spartan super soldier project, and when we finally see her sitting down with Master Chief (pictured here by Pablo Schreiber, Orange is the new black), her eyes light up.
But that’s more the exception than the rule HaloThe UNSC-focused moments and the soap opera-like results can be better described as: Dawson’s Range†
Schreiber largely makes up for the blatant Dune rip off
Paramount / Amblin
Fortunately, Schreiber accomplishes the seemingly impossible task of taking the Master Chief character—defined by the plot as a necessarily dispassionate shell of a human being—and instilling him in life and empathy without betraying his parentage. I would go so far as to say that Chief the… dark souls of real acting challenges. While Schreiber’s voice and cadence diverge from the stoicism of the games’ old voice actor, HaloThe TV version of the TV version rarely scares or annoys viewers by the fact that this timeline’s Chief has more to say.
The best part about Halo so far is how eager it leans on real military parallels. Most military game stories tend to cover up things like this. How many people are being dragged along as collateral damage in the military-industrial complex’s march toward its targets? What happens when a force stops calling certain populations “survivors” and starts calling them “insurgents”? For soldiers caught up in a conflict, at what point does “duty” deteriorate into “control”? These questions all cause trouble for Master Chief in a way his Mjolnir super armor can’t avert. That conflict, along with how Schreiber is visibly struggling with it, makes me optimistic about what’s to come in future episodes.
That being said, however Halo repeats what Frank Herbert did in Dune decades ago. When Halo does not follow the rhetoric of the “the spice must flow” series, but shows that Master Chief is plagued by more and more dreams revealing or by following rebellious teenagers into a secret cave, where they discover that their planet’s native plants are also act as an LSD-like drug. At this point, Paramount+ might as well hire Zendaya for a short walk-on role and close the deal.
