'Halo' Season Two Episode 1 Review
Image Source: IGN
Criticism is necessary in the entertainment industry. Comedians wouldn’t know which jokes work and which don’t without a silent audience or the laughter they base a career on. The same idea goes for writers and television shows, and season two of Halo seems to have taken the misses of season one and decided to approach this season from a new direction and, so far, it mostly works.
Season two has a new showrunner: David Wiener. The new season shows off this change in leadership with a hell of a start and new executive decision-making on where to take the series. We start with the Silver Team watching over a village on a planet that the UNSC is trying to evacuate as the Covenant closes in. Right off the bat that tension about the Covenant that was missing from season one is present, and it continues through the episode. Chief slips off into the mist to find a lost squad of UNSC marines, and comes into a fight with a pair of Elites with energy swords. Not a bad way to kick off a season of renewed hope for the show.
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Image Source: IMDb
There are clues about the new direction in this first scene, as well. There’s a short conversation between Vannak and Kai as they watch over Chief and Riz in the village. Vannak’s speech is notably more animated, so Kai asks if he’s removed the pellet that suppresses their emotions. Vannak denies it at first, but then reveals he did, and it leads to some funny, organic dialog between the two. Apparently, Vannak likes to watch nature documentaries. What this tells us is that there is a time jump between the end of season one and the start of season two and with that, there’s an indication that some of the plot points from season one have been abandoned, or at least they’ve moved on. For instance, we don’t really get an explanation of how we get to this point after Chief seemingly died to let Cortana take over at the end of the season. We also don’t know how or why Vannak was convinced to take out his pellet.
With these changes, there was hope that perhaps they would have moved on from the whole Kwan Ha arc of the first season which, I think, was one of the more detrimental aspects of season one. There was a clue halfway through this episode when Admiral Keyes revealed that Madrigal, Kwan Ha’s planet, was glassed by the Covenant. Sadly, they let me down when they revealed at the end of the episode that she is indeed still around, hiding out in a cave on The Rubble. Who knows, perhaps they take her involvement in a new direction since her monologue at the end has her talking about things older than God. This could be a reference to the Forerunners, the makers of the Halo ring worlds. She comes off almost like a mystic, possessing some hidden, ancient knowledge, and there’s potential there. But her arc in season one came off so unimportant that I found myself waiting all season for a reason for her story to be in there. We’ll have to wait and see.
Image Source: Fandom
New characters are introduced in this episode. We have James Ackerson, played by Joseph Morgan, who is claimed to be Halsey’s replacement at the UNSC now that she’s a fugitive. Chief senses something is going on with the Covenant, as they aren’t following their typical behavior of glassing a planet outright. He points out that they’re invading first, having been confronted by something like 30 cloaked elites with energy swords in the mist, and they let him go. That’s not normal, and he wants people to know. Ackerson is clearly established to be the bureaucratic and political antagonist of the season. He ignores Chief’s warning and sets to playing the public relations game, trying to convince people that the Covenant isn’t winning. This sets up a confrontation between him and Chief about the reality of the situation.
Episode one establishes a vastly different vibe from what was done in season one. It’s not perfect, to be sure. The episode starts with excitement and then reverts back to a sort of standby status, with the bureaucratic and narrative structuring for the season taking precedence. Tension is still high, as Chief’s concern about the actions of the Covenant remains his drive, but the pace feels jolted after the way it starts. There are hints of the direction for the season, but it comes off disjointed with the continuation of the Soren and Kwan Ha storyline that doesn’t seem to indicate where it wants to go.
Rating: 7/10
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Source(s): Paramount+
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