With all the video game shows and films we are expected to get in the near future, not many have the strange baggage that the TV adaptation of Halo does. Microsoft's flagship shooter was first announced to be getting the TV treatment back in 2013; which is to say nothing of the movie that Microsoft tried to make for the series that ultimately went missing in action. In the time it took for the show to be shot and released, the franchise has gone through some noticeable shakeups, with last year's Halo Infinite having successfully gotten waning fans back on board with the games, at least. The idea of a simple story of one space marine and some friends fighting for humanity against a succession of alien threats is what the franchise is about.
It would be easy for the series to just coast on the goodwill of the franchise, but the show is not interested in just doing a simple retread of Master Chief's story. On the planet Madrigal, there is a small colony of human Insurrectionists. The Insurrectionists left the United Nations Space Command, the government of the galaxy that spent years using their Spartan supersoldiers to fight the pockets of Insurrectionists. In the games, the Spartans are considered to be mythical figures who save the day and inspire hope in humanity. There is no reverent tone in this opening, as an Insurrectionist professor describes the armored soldiers in chilling detail as something to be afraid of, the kind of spooky story you tell to get a child to go to bed or avoid a place they shouldn't.
When our POV character, the teenager Kwan Ha, and her friends are out exploring past the borders of their colony, they are attacked by a squad of Covenant Elites. From there, the episode goes into full horror as the Covenant is covered in the blood of her dead friends and she can't tell anyone that it's real. The violence in the games has always been cartoony, but director Otto Bathurst gives this sequence a genuine sense of terror and desperation as Kwan gets her people to safety and looks for her father Jin while avoiding getting shot at. The way they move around the battlefield is a real weight on the way they can face them in the games.
The UNSC's Spartans touch down to save the day feels more in line with how Infinite and Halo 5 want, if the early parts of the Madrigal invasion are trying to pull from the sheer hopelessness found in the original Halo and spinoffs like Reach and ODST. There is a real weight to how the Spartans move on and off the battlefield that gives them presence. When Chief picks up a turret to mow down enemies or when another Spartan dual wields a Plasma Pistol to take down an Elite's shields, it's hard not to be excited.
343's past efforts to humanize the Spartan have been mixed, and exactly what kind of character Master Chief is has been a point of contention for some time. The series doesn't attempt to reset the Chief back to being the mostly silent murder machine he was in the original trilogy, but it doesn't just hit the same notes as more recent games, either. There are some similarities between Chief and a bounty hunter, but there is a more deliberate, almost robotic cadence to how Spartan interacts in the world. He isn't trying to imitate Steve Downes' performance from the games, and the show's smartest move is to let him exist as an exceptional soldier who's only begun to reckon with his upbringing. It feels like the show has a firm enough handle on its central character that it feels earned when he takes his helmet off in the pilot.
The Spartans are an important part of the game, though the franchise has kept them away from Chief so as to sell his importance as a symbol for humanity. The same holds true for the show when he has interacted with other Spartans. The Silver Team Spartans don't have much to do in the first couple of episodes, but there are some signs of potential. There is a real unease that eventually surrounds all four of the main Spartans in this show, even from the masters who deploy them. The most important person in Chief's life is the defector Spartan Soren. When he shows up in the second episode, his laid back vibe gives Soren real chemistry with Chief, which makes you believe their characters were good friends before their lives went different paths.
The show offers a bigger focus on parts of the Halo universe that the games have relied on expanded media to dig into. The UNSC kidnapped young children and, thanks to the efforts of scientist Catherine Halsey, they became supersoldiers. The pursuit of knowledge has always driven her, and it has created a wedge between her and other UNSC members, including Jacob Keyes and her scientist daughter Miranda.
One of the show's bigger tensions is the twisted family that was made in the UNSC from Miranda, the Spartans, and Chief. The series highlights how much Halsey plays favorites with her supersoldier children and also manipulates them for her own ends. In the first two episodes, the family is missing an artificial intelligence named Cortana. There is a tease at a take on Chief's future partner that could make or break the series, but nothing quite so solid yet on how the show will handle one of the franchise.
The first two episodes of the show show that Steven Kane and Kyle Killen are interested in exploring the universe through a different lens than the games have provided. There is enough faithfulness in the game to show that this is a show for the fans. There is enough willingness here to shake things up, get a little looser and weirder so it can take the Chief on a great journey of its own that could offer up some fun surprises.
On Paramount+, there is a new movie, "Halo", today, March 24.
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