Trying to follow up the Battle of Reach was always going to be a tall order, but in an almost admirable act of defiance, Halo’s fifth episode barely even tries. Those who were hoping that the remainder of of season two was going to stay on Reach and feature the leads scrambling to survive the Covenant’s devastating assault of the colony are going to be sorely disappointed that the show chooses to go right back to its overly talky approach to the legendary video game.
However, there’s a bright side to the show once again stepping on the brakes immediately after feeding us some epic action, and that’s that everyone is finally talking about the things they should be talking about, which hints that the epic space opera could finally be moving in the right direction. All roads, it seems, lead to the Halo after all, its just we’ve been taking the scenic route.
Starting the exact moment the previous episode finished – with the planet Reach all but fallen and our main characters either wounded or dead – things look extra grim for the survivors when a hulking Brute Chieftan shows up wielding a gigantic battle hammer. However, the timely arrival of Soren’s wife, Laera and Kwan Ha means that the wounded Master Chief, Soren, Halsey and Riz are saved, but when Riz tries to go back and retrieve the body of her fellow Spartan Vannak, she is also grievously wounded.
Awaking a while later, Master Chief (aka John-117) finds that the patterned group has left the smoldering remnants of Reach behind in favour of the chilly farming colony, Aleria in order for Soren and Laera to track down their son, Kessler, everyone takes the time to try and heal in various ways.
While John is incensed that the UNSC and ONI would deliberately allow such a thing to transpire and cheapen the lives of all involved, fellow Spartan Riz has taken account of the damage that her body and soul has endured and elects to opt out of her live of unending war.
Elsewhere, Halsey is dealing with the loss of her ex-husband by being characteristically shady about everything and everyone, but there’s a sense that her icy facade may be thawing ever so slightly, while Kwan Ha uses the tragedy to help her move on from her own grief of her family lost from a Covenant attack on a previous planet.
However, while Soren and Laera make a shocking discovery that their son has been taken by the UNSC, presumably to sign him up for a brand new Spartan program that the duplicitous Ackerson is reopening with Kai in tow; Makee and a hostage Cortana convinces the Arbiter to betray the Covenant and make a personal play for the mysterious Halo.
Yes, after a solid episode of nail biting warfare and shocking sacrifices, everything that Halo has been trying to work toward finally seems to be coming together. While the thrilling, pre-credits scuffle with a Brute gives us one, last parting reminder of the fall of Reach, the show gets right back to having everyone mope around – but the main difference now is that all the moping now has some meat to back it up. Thanks to Reach, all the navel gazing and uncertainty finally has something to frame it and you can feel that every plot thread now seems far more energised and meaningful that they did before the colony spectacularly went bye bye.
Take Master Chief, for example. His distrust of his superiors has now galvanised him into bitter rage, which sets him to becoming the driven, selfless hero we know from the games and the loss of Vannak and the leaving of Riz drives it home even harder. Similarly, the sequence where Cortana and Makee convince an Arbiter, who has resigned himself to failure, to hunt for the Halo himself sets both the proud Elite, the charismatic A.I. and the wildcard Makee all on far more interesting paths than they were before.
However – and I can’t believe I’m saying this – but even the side stories for Soren and Kwan Ha finally have a sense of purpose in the bigger picture. Kwan has been the most annoyingly superfluous character in the entire series since the second episode of season one; but now her vision has tied her directly to the first mention of the Gravemind (a huge worm/plant thing that’s a mouthpiece for Halo superbaddie, the Flood), she suddenly has become incredibly valid. Soren, on the other hand, has been sort of fun side character that also leads directly back to the Master Chief’s past, but with his son now being part of the new Spartan programme, his tales of his lonely, brutal childhood now seem worryingly like Kessler is destined to relive them. It’s here that Bokeem Woodbine really gets to shine, his friendly and genial demeanor finally giving way to the type of fear that only a parent can feel and it goes a long, long way toward making these disparate threads finally feel vital instead of just diversions.
Even the fact that Halsey is acting like a broken recond and still maintaining that they all need to go find the Halo isn’t enough to have you yelling at the screen in agreement, as, for once, the pause in the action actually enriches the show instead of hamstringing it.
However, the rather regrettable elephant in the room is that it’s taken a staggering fourteen episodes of Halo for the show to finally get me on board with the direction that the drama is headed in, and even then, there’s no real guarantee that it’ll manage to hold. But if the show manages yo keep all of its threads heading in the same direction and- most importantly – keep its characters together instead of having them spiral out once again and have them do their own thing, Halo just might bring its second season home in style if it has no more expensive battle scenes left to deploy. Would I rather have Master Chief fighting the Covenant rather than the UNSC? Of course – but at least he’ll be fighting someone, rather than sitting around feeling crippling doubt and a showdown with Kai feels weirdly like something I’d wanna see.
Still, there will be those of you who will find another eposode of thoughtful emoting just too much to bare after the explosive awesomeness of Reach, and to you I merely say: I totally get it. But things ain’t over until they’re over, and Halo hopefully still have a couple of narrative plasma grenades left hidden in its inventory.
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