Why The Halo TV Show Isn’t Working

While I haven’t been able to keep up with the confident viewing pace that some of my colleagues have, my longtime enthusiasm for the franchise couldn’t keep me away from viewing the new HaloTelevision series. Each episode leaves me increasingly perplexed as I’ve watched from week to week. I’m a longtime Halo player, a fervent sci-fi fan, and a dedicated gamer; I should be the target audience for this long-awaited adaptation. All the pieces seem to be in place for an enjoyable time. The meticulously reproduced versions of Covenant and UNSC weapons and ships, the overwhelming power of a Spartan on the battlefield, and the semi-mystical nature of ancient artifacts related to the Halo – these are all the sorts of things fans should want, right? And yet, as each episode comes to a close, I’m left feeling cold about the entire experience. Even with all its trappings this is somehow amazing Halo series just doesn’t feel like Halo.

Warning: Below is an opinion piece that contains spoilers for Halo TV’s Season One Episode Eight.

I often get frustrated when the rolling tide of internet hate threatens to overwhelm a film or TV adaptation simply because the involved showrunners, writers, directors, and actors make choices that don’t slavishly conform to established (and often nebulously defined) parameters that fans have set from the source game, book, comic, or other media. An adaptation is just that – a thing adapted into a new form. This should be modified to suit the space.

That sort of vitriol has taken an especially nasty turn in recent years when casting directors have made choices that defy fan expectations along racial lines, selecting actors to fill roles based on talent and personality rather than a visual parity with those characters’ previous appearances. I think that’s an especially limiting lens through which to evaluate an adaptation’s quality, and those concerns don’t factor into my difficulties with the new Halo series.

Yet, adaptations must respect the themes, core ideas and character arcs of an existing novel. It’s here that the HaloThe TV series feels as if it is missing the last boat on the exploding Ringworld. The show is too focused on creating new characters and establishing the UNSC bureaucracy, adding more pathos to John, and rooting everything in layers deception interpersonally, leaving the heart of what makes Halo unique.

As the Halo Infinite development team was about to launch, last year I had the opportunity to meet with 343 Industries. I was able to enjoy a campaign that worked on many levels in Halo Infinite. It was because the studio managed to lock into something that felt right for the series and its characters, even after releasing a couple of numbered entries in the series that didn’t always gel. “I think 343 made some mistakes in chasing dragons; they forgot that they owned their own dragon,” head of design Jerry Hook told me in the months before that game launched. “Creating or designing for an established franchise versus a brand-new IP is very different.” In crafting Halo Infinite’s campaign, 343 returned to some core principles and themes that helped make the original Halo: Combat Evolved so rewarding. They focused on the core elements that made Halo unique. BeThey are Halo, and they put all their attention on these elements.

You can think of both Halo: Combat Evolved or Halo Infinite. The focal point in both of these cases is the lone hero fighting to overcome overwhelming odds. He’s in an unfamiliar and frequently alien setting that inspires awe and wonder. A.I. works with him alongside his friend. His strength isn’t in her body but her intelligence and strong relationship she has with the warden. Perhaps most importantly, the story is about hope and resilience for mankind in the face seemingly unstoppable destruction.

The Watch the HaloIt feels as if someone received a report about some core principles and may even have registered their primacy. But then they said something along the lines of: “Okay, sure. But what if is also…,” and then launched in a new direction. The journey becomes difficult. Master Chief stops being the hero whose superpower is that he always finds the path forward, and he becomes instead a self-doubting and troubled soldier who can’t figure out where his loyalties lie. The UNSC stops being the distant and battered remnant of humanity’s military might and instead emerges as a tangled mess of broken power structures and administrations. Add in a troubled youth grieving her father. Add a Spartan, a long-lost Spartan, to spice it up. The Covenant is allied to a kidnapped human. The government is in power. An maniacal governor planetary. Is that a Master Chief love scene?! This is a great idea! This list could go on.

The first season of “The Walking Dead” is not a story about survival or conflict on an alien Halo. Halo TV series feels compelled to fill in the gaps before the “real” story begins. In doing so, they seem to forget that sometimes there is less than what you might think.

None of this is to say that I haven’t felt glimmers of enthusiasm. McElhone’s Catherine Halsey is compelling as the anything-it-takes scientist. We are treated to a spectacle of the Spartans in action during Eridanus’ II battle. And after decades of inhabiting the role, Jen Taylor’s voicing of Cortana nails the character’s cleverness and compassion for John, which have always been guideposts for the character.

As the series teeters toward its season one finale (which I haven’t yet seen as of this writing), I’m left hoping that this grand live-action HaloThe show is able to correct the ship with the second season already confirmed. In order to do this, the second season will need to shed some unnecessary weight and reveal why so many fans are passionate about these characters. I’m not asking for a shot-for-shot remake of a game I’ve already played; in fact, that would be deeply disappointing. The first season of Halo has been dangerously close to misrepresenting and misunderstanding the characters and themes that made Halo so popular.

I found the episode 8 of this series to be the worst in terms of storytelling. But one redeeming scene caught my attention, as Master Chief speaks to Makee about his recent experiences, saying: “I saw a capacity for hope. Love. It is within each of us. Humans have something unique. Something sacred. Something worth protecting.” Behind the Mjolnir helmet mask of the original game character, this feels like a sentiment that lines up with Master Chief’s core principles. The TV show would do well to take that quote and run with it into season two, and there find a story direction far more compelling than what we’ve seen so far.