After a ride that’s been far bumper than anyone expected, Paramount+’s lavish Halo adaptation has finally achieved what the game only took a single level to reach.
We’ve finally landed on the Halo.
It’s been seventeen episodes of ups and downs, sluggish subplots, anti-establishment themes and some legitimately rocking action sequences; but has the mixed bag of a series all finally been worth it?
I truly believe that I would have embraced Halo: The Series with much more enthusiasm if I hadn’t clung to tenaciously to what I knew about the plot of the games and the numerous times when the show contradicted stuff that could potentially be coming down the pipe would prove to be immensely distracting, but if this season finale achieves anything, its finally gotten me to start accepting the differences. However, in true Halo style, we’ve got a lot of other stuff to get through in order to get to our destination – in fact, you could call it a flood….
After everything that has transpired the mysterious, ringed, space faring installation known as the Halo is in sight and while a space battle rages between the Covenant and the UNSC, an empowered Master Chief glares out the window of his craft, caught in two minds as what to do next. His horribly corrupt and ruthless superior, Parangosky demands that he heads towards the Halo in order to reach it before Makee and the Arbiter do, but if he does so, countless troops, including fellow Spartan Kai and Perez, will be obliterated by the superior Covenant forces.
Meanwhile, in the nearby UNSC base, Miranda Keyes discovers what was in the small container found clutched in the hand of the mummified alien Forerunner and take it from me, it’s nothing good. Released from it container, a virulent alien virus is released that starts infecting people left and right that first zombifies its victims and them turns them into malformed, tentacle sprouting monsters who attack anything that moves. Desperately trying to escape, Soren, Kwan, Laera, Kessler and a reformed Ackerson try to flee the infestation but suffer tragic casualties; however, after having one of her handy visions, Kwan discovers that this virus has a name – the Flood – and they’re all tied in with the mysterious creature she’s been warned about.
Meanwhile, Master Chief, fully in his rebellious mode, defies Parangosky to aid his comrades, but after Kai declines to use the Spike to cause a detonation that will possibly take out both fleets and the Halo, she instead takes a course of action that will end the battle at the possible expense of her own life.
Reunited with captured A.I. Cortana, and finally free to act against Makee, Master Chief streaks toward a showdown with the Arbiter on the surface on the Halo which could prove to be disastrous for both species.
Simply put, Halo’s second season finale has done itself no favours whatsoever with the sheer amount of plot threads it has to resolve in a single episode in order to get the show where it needs to be. I’m not going to lie, it’s a bit of a jumbled, messy journey to get there, but get there it does with a couple of neat surprises along the way and the main headline is that the show has finally introduced the Flood, a parasitic virus that transforms all life into malformed, Lovecrafian beasts like Night Of The Living Dead has a gooey baby with Slither. Fans will no doubt “Um, Actually…” about the fact that the show has technically pulled the trigger on the uber-villains of the franchise a little early, but if we’re being honest, it’s the boot up the armour the show probably need to draw focus away from it’s rather dull politics. As if on cue, the Flood rolls over almost ever plot thread that’s been slowing the show down since it began, politely taking out Parangosky and Laera with a minimum of fuss, removing Halsey off the board as she is frozen after getting infected and even giving Kwan’s storyline a boost by having her ancestors be directly linked to the swarming force. Best of all, Halo manages to pull off that squirming, freakish, body-horror, Resident Evil shit far better than any live-action adaptation of Resident Evil has managed to pull off so far, which is incredibly ironic when you think about it.
But while the Flood tidily takes care of the lion’s share of the plot lines and Kai bows out with a heroic sacrifice that may or may not take, there’s still the sizable matter of the Master Chief/Cortana/Makee/Arbiter circle to resolve and while the reunion between the Spartan and this trusty A.I. is disappointingly downplayed, we get a crunching, painful showdown between the show’s two heavies as Master Chief and the Arbiter finally get their mitts on one another.
While the fight leans unsurprisingly hard on CGI, it’s somewhat of a cathartic affair where all of the show’s missteps and pacing issues are forgotten while we watch two hulking champions pound the shit out of each other. Halo has always been at it’s best when it zeroes in on action sequences that doubles down on the game’s iconography and while long-time enthusiasts will be peeved at the brutal outcome, there’s no reason that another Arbiter can’t be later chosen to fulfill his sizable destiny from the games.
Once the smoke clears, the prospect of a third season of Halo finally seems like quite an intriguing notion. After all, a lot of the board has been cleared of aspects that got in the way of the main story with the corrupt leaders of the UNSC and a clutch of peripheral characters either biting the big one or simply being put on pause. If the show wants to bring back Halsey, Kai, Riz, or second Arbiter, it can with ease, but it’s also got its lead on the Halo where he belongs, he’s currently reunited with Cortana again and the Flood is in play – if the show could focus a little more on the Covenant and its various species (have we even seen a Grunt this season?) we’d ultimately have the show I’d always hoped for.
The episode isn’t flawless – at times it feels like the Flood is only there to quickly simplify all those jumbled plot lines – but the scale is huge, the fights are bruising and as the season comes to a close, we’re introduced to 343 Guilty Spark, a floating droid that acts as the Halo’s keeper who warns Master Chief about the dangers that lurk within the Halo itself. But from the ashes of a very busy finale comes the hope that a third season of Halo could finally get to the point in a way that the previous seventeen episodes have struggled to do.
Halo, is it me you’re looking for?
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