The Halo TV series missed its best chance yet to send us to a Halo ring

Reach has fallen within the Halo TV universe. If you realize something in regards to the lore of the Halo video games, you realize that the subsequent factor that’s supposed to occur is Master Chief escaping from Covenant forces above Reach, his ship getting attacked, after which promptly crashing onto the series’ first Halo ring. In different phrases, that is principally the second the place the motion begins. That isn’t what occurred within the Halo TV series. Instead, Chief (Pablo Schreiber) and his pals took a reflective tour to a backwater planet that felt a lot extra like a detour than character improvement.

After escaping Reach, Chief and everybody else on the escape ship with him (which is principally the entire still-living series regulars apart from Kate Kennedy’s Kai), go to Aleria, a small dust farming planet with loads of land to spare and practically poisonous soil. After an episode as massive and thrilling because the Fall of Reach, this looks like a very HBO-style respite: the type of episode devoted to taking inventory of the characters we misplaced and analyzing the brand new form of the world after a massive shake-up. But these exhibits earn these reflective episodes with constant high quality earlier than them, and so they have a tendency to make these quiet episodes really feel ever greater and extra necessary than the loud ones. That was actually not the case in Halo season 2’s fifth episode.

Photo: Adrienn Szabo/Paramount Plus

In protection of the Halo series’ complete premise, it has no obligation to comply with the occasions of the video games straight. Since the present’s announcement, the inventive group behind it has been cautious to specify that this series takes place within the “Silver Timeline,” which is totally separate from the canon of the video games. So going someplace apart from Halo after the Fall of Reach isn’t actually a downside. The downside is that the present as soon as once more fails essentially the most fundamental and necessary check of doing fascinating issues with these adjustments.

The series appears satisfied that the viewers loves and cares about its facet characters. But they’re simply not fascinating. During this episode essentially the most coherent plotline we spend time with entails Soren (the fantastic Bokeem Woodbine, attempting his best as at all times) and his spouse looking for their youngster. We see them query numerous folks across the village, and even discover somebody they assume is maintaining their child from them. But by the top of the episode, they uncover that he was truly kidnapped by the UNSC — a company we virtually completely know at this level because the army that loves kidnapping youngsters. It’s a bland, “no shit” reveal that feels each too apparent and completely meaningless on the similar time. Another of the episode’s plotlines entails Riz, a Spartan who was launched simply a few episodes in the past, deciding that she needs to be a farmer now that she is just too injured to be a Spartan.

With plotlines this boring, about characters that the present by no means actually does a good job of convincing us to care about, it’s getting awfully arduous not to lengthy for the round perfection and alien weirdness of the Halo rings that give this franchise its title. So why aren’t we there yet?

The reply appears to lie within the Halo present’s strategy to the rings basically. The series clearly acknowledges one of many nice strengths of the primary recreation was that Halo was profoundly mysterious. But the present is approaching that thriller in a very completely different approach than the unique recreation did.

Photo: Adrienn Szabo/Paramount Plus

For the sport, the thriller of Halo was in how little info you had about each the alien ring and the online game’s world. Aside from the fundamental premise of humanity being on the again foot in a struggle in opposition to aliens, virtually every thing else was a black field. So while you crash-land on Halo within the recreation’s second degree (a degree additionally known as “Halo”), the trail is obvious for the sport to slowly reveal its secrets and techniques about Forerunners, the Covenant faith, the Flood, 343 Guilty Spark, and every thing else that feels commonplace within the series at the moment. The TV series, then again, determined to make Halo a vacation spot. Instead of giving us no lore, it’s been stacking up piles and piles of lore by its first two seasons and dangling the Halo ring in entrance of his by way of characters’ prophetic visions. This path to Halo isn’t inherently dangerous; a well-done buildup and reveal could make for a incredible second in a TV present. But just like the Hatch in Lost, the hot button is that you’ve to present the viewers why the factor is mysterious and necessary — you may have to actually show it to us, not simply have characters bombard us with insistent dialogue that it issues. And extra importantly, the characters even have to get into it will definitely.

None of that is to say that the present has run out of time to make it to Halo, and even that it might’t be good as soon as it will get there. But it’s to say that the journey there up to now has felt profoundly misjudged and approach too sluggish, and it’s beginning to really feel prefer it may not occur in any respect. In this episode, Makee (Charlie Murphy) tries to persuade the Arbiter to go to the Halo rings as a result of she insists that the Prophets are mendacity in regards to the Great Journey, telling the remainder of the Covenant fanciful tales about its significance and transcending the bodily realm, however by no means truly planning to take them alongside on their journey to divinity. Now, I’m not saying that the Halo series is the Prophets and we’re the remainder of the Covenant, however I’m saying that our lack of a journey to a Halo ring is beginning to really feel a little suspicious, and so they’re working out of time to persuade me we’re actually going.