Halo the series is owned by Paramount Plus

Directed by Craig Zisk

The season premiere left me underwhelmed, to say the least. For someone who genuinely enjoyed the first season and all its interesting creative choices, it was jarring to see so much of it thrown away in the pursuit of poe-faced solemnity. In any case, I said my piece last week and got it all out of my system so I’m ready to approach this episode much more on its own terms instead of comparing it to what came before. Well, okay. Maybe a little bit more griping, but hopefully it will be productive rather than simply nagging. Will this be the episode that turns me around on the season, or will my disappointment grow with each passing week? Let’s find out!!

With the Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber) certain that something is going on that Ackerson (Joseph Morgan) and the UNSC aren’t telling him, he takes his crew on an unauthorized mission to search for the missing Cobalt Team and find evidence of whatever it is that The Covenant are up to. Of course, you can’t rock the boat without getting wet, and this little excursion puts a significant wedge between him and the rest of Silver Team (Kate Kennedy, Bentley Kalu, and Natasha Culzac) who are increasingly concerned about Chief’s erratic behavior; a feeling that Ackerson is happy to exploit as he continues to move all these pieces around in whatever game it is he’s playing. Reach isn’t the only place that’s having problems, however, as Laera, her son, and Kwan Ha (Fiona O’Shaughnessy, Tylan Bailey, and Yerin Ha) are now targets after Soren (Bokeem Woodbine) was taken prisoner by the UNSC. Without him around to play Pirate King, there are a lot of people looking to not just take the throne but whatever buried treasure Laera might know about. Can these three escape The Rubble without Soren’s past catching up to them? What can Chief do to stop The Covenant and save Cobalt Team now that the UNSC consider him unreliable and a threat to their secrets? I’m not convinced that the Master Chief is built for this kind of subterfuge. Did they even cover spy craft during his Spartan training, or did they look at this four hundred pound slab of meat and decide it was a lost cause?

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?