Halo the series is owned by Paramount Plus
Directed by Debs Paterson
I reviewed the first season of this show and thought it was pretty great, but I also know that my opinion was in the minority, and was unsure if we would even get a second season after the lukewarm reaction from everyone other than me. Thankfully, Paramount is willing to give this show another chance to find its audience and the last season gave us a great starting point to finally move us to the Halo ring and everything else that fans wanted to see in the series. Will season two finally get the ball rolling and bring the fans on board with what I thought made the first season so special? Let’s find out!
Our story ended with the Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber) and his fellow Spartans Kai, Vannak, and Riz (Kate Kennedy, Bentley Kalu, and Natasha Culzac) managing to escape from the Covenant with the artifact, but not without incurring losses. Makee (Charlie Murphy), the human adopted by the Covenant to activate the artifact, was shot down in the firefight and Chief was forced to let his AI partner Cortana (Jen Taylor) take full control of his mind and fry his personality to manage the escape. It’s some time later and while Chief is verbal again, he’s not the warm cuddly bear he was by the end of the last season. He’s taciturn and stiff with his fellow Spartans and his questions about his past and the ethics of the Spartan program no longer seem to be an issue. The Covenant have escalated their war efforts and are now destroying whole planets, including Madrigal which Kwan Ha and Soren (Yerin Ha and Bokeem Woodbine) fought for half of last season to liberate, and the entire planet of Reach has come down with a bad case of Blade Runner depression, though whether these changes are part of the story itself as humanity is starting to lose hope or are just a creative change is still unclear. To make matters worse, the UNSC seems to have turned whole hog into the Office of Naval Intelligence (the Section 31 of this franchise for those Star Trek fans out there), and not only did they take Cortana out of Chief without a proper explanation, they are going all in on the propaganda with the Spartans being treated more like props than warriors. All of this chicanery from the ONI has left Chief and his crew feeling useless while the Covenant are seemingly making moves that will undercut all of humanity’s defenses and turn the tide of the war in their favor. Can Chief and Silver Team figure out the Covenant’s secret plans despite ONI’s insistence on remaining in the dark? What does this escalation of violence from the Covenant mean for those either liberating themselves from the UNSC or choosing to live on the margins and stay out of the war entirely? Why is everything lit so poorly!? Did the UNSC lose all its funding?
There’s no beating around the bush on this one. I am incredibly disappointed by what I saw in these two episodes. Sure, there are some decent action scenes and the actors for the four Spartans on Silver Team are doing what they can with the material, but the show is deliberately turning away from everything that I loved about the first season and the end result is something woefully generic and obnoxiously brooding. Now some of this is understandable if you know the Halo lore and have already picked up on the destination for this season. We’re clearly moving towards the Fall of Reach which is the lowest point for humanity in the war, so a bit of melancholy is not unwarranted in the lead-up to it. The first major problem with that, however, is that we are jumping right into it with a lot of the story and the escalation of stakes happening off-screen so there’s no gradual change in tone from the last season to this one. It’s obvious that someone was taking the complaints of the obnoxious fans to heart and starting this season off with a clear message; everything they didn’t like about the show is gone and we’re taking everything as seriously as possible. The end result is a show with a lot of Don’ts on its list but very few Dos. The first season spent a lot of time justifying a lot of its changes to the lore, such as Cortana’s redesign, but now everything feels a little more in line with the game design so that fans don’t complain. Cortana is blue now for no adequately explained reason and that’s about all I’m confident to say about her because she has no personality in the single scene she gets in these episodes. John could be a little bit goofy and awkward when outside the suit, but fans didn’t like that so now he’s stoic and boring. The fact that the show didn’t kill Kwan Ha was a genuine surprise, but they did go ahead and nuke the planet that she fought for because fans didn’t like that subplot so out the window it goes. Heck, we can’t even keep Miranda Keyes around despite being a major character in the games and we only get her father for one scene before he just disappears.
So what do we gain from making all of these cuts? What is the benefit from taking all the life and personality from the series? Well ONI is in the picture now, but all that amounts to is a one-dimensional villain with none of the complicated nuances that we got from Hasley and the UNSC last season. We get to see more Spartans than just the members of Silver Team, but unlike the first season where they were creepy weirdos that still managed to be endearing, they come off as dude-bro jerks who couldn’t leave the screen fast enough for me with the sole exception of Louis (Marvin Jones III) as an ex-Spartan who has the only genuinely interesting character moments through his interactions with Riz. At best, the new tone does give us one of the better action scenes of the series as episode one starts with Chief fending off a group of Elites on a misty mountain. It’s well executed and finally gives us the element of horror that has so far been missing from the series, so perhaps if the show escalates the action then I can see myself having a bit more fun with this. Unfortunately, the action is just as sparse as it was in the first season and because of how many things they’ve cut it’s having a hard time establishing a narrative between the action scenes with only its superficial stabs at gritty seriousness filling the void. Say what you will about the first season, whether you liked the tone or its changes to the lore, it came in with a firmly established theme that informed the actions of the character and the direction of the story. Characters felt purposeful and were driven in ways that clashed with each other, and there was momentum driving the early episodes while it established its own status quo. I watch these two episodes and I know that we’re heading towards a big battle with the Fall of Reach, but beyond that, I don’t get a sense of what anyone wants or what anyone is trying to accomplish. John is at least somewhat continuing his quest for humanity, but it feels aimless; especially since we seem to have dropped the whole Spartan II child kidnapping plotline that had a lot of potential for interesting character beats. One of my favorite moments in the last season was when Kai begged Halsey to tell her what her name was, but I don’t see any evidence in her character in these two episodes that it matters anymore to her or to the other Spartans.
The season is off to a bad start and until they can convince me that all these changes are not just there to cynically pander, it’s going to be an uphill battle to get me back on board. I haven’t even mentioned what they did to The Rubble this time around, but this review is getting long so I’ll end it with this. I truly loved the first season despite its flaws, and while a new direction isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s not looking like a wise move so far. We’ll see how fans react to this, but I see nothing but disappointment ahead of me as the season trundles along.
The Reviewers Unite 