TL;DR – In what might be the best episode of the series so far, we ratchet up the tension, and give some real danger.

Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ service that viewed this episode.

Warning – This episode contains scenes that may cause distress.

Halo Review –

When you have a whole galaxy to play in, it can be hard to find your focus. You have so many competing demands on your story where you want to give it depth, but then all you do is bring complexity. Science Fiction shows can very much fall into this trap, but when it all fits together, well, you get today’s episode.

So to set the scene, in last week’s episode, Sword, we discovered a genuinely horrific fact: not only do The Covenant know where Reach is, but they are already on the planet. Given that The Covenant has been glassing every planet they find with humans on it, this is a bad, bad, bad thing. Thus, we find John-117 (Pablo Schreiber), Riz-028 (Natasha Culzac), Vannak-134 (Bentley Kalu) & Kai-125 (Kate Kennedy) making their way through the Visegrád Sector to a comms relay that has gone dark, hoping to find the Cobalt team alive. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

One thing I think the episode does very well is building on the suspense. The opening of the Spartan team walking through the comms relay as the crashing door is mirrored by the tapping of the figure. It is a simple editing technique, but it works. We also see it as Laera (Fiona O’Shaughnessy), who has been tipped off by Kwan Ha (Yerin Ha) that her husband’s crew has been bought, arrives home and finds that same crew playing with her son Kessler (Tylan Bailey). You can feel the tension as the conversation happens on several levels, as people hint about the violence coming. That tapping then becomes a growing motif throughout the episode, to full effect.   

To counterbalance the tension, we get these humanising moments designed to give context to this world. Bringing in Bill Paterson to guest star for a single episode is a great move when you want him to embody an entire planet. The worker who built Reach would now be left behind because he is not a strategic asset. Having members of my family who had a memory impairment, some of those scenes were hard to watch. I am not sure quite where I land with James Ackerson (Joseph Morgan) because I can’t tell if his character is messy or complicated, but it is compelling to see where he will fling next. I am also interested in seeing where they will take the character of Dr Catherine Elizabeth Halsey (Natascha McElhone) because it is hard to redeem the irredeemable. Still, they are constantly hinting that the show will go in that direction before hard turning away.       

This was the first week where I think that they got a firm handle on all the different subplots that were going on. What was happening at The Rubble had meaning, and it felt like they really propelled that story on. Also, props to Yerin Ha for playing a character being able to take down an entire ship full of henchmen convincingly. All of this builds up to the ending moment where we get all the characters in their moment of calm as Talia Perez (Cristina Rodlo) reads out to John what she heard in the static: The Arbiter (Viktor Åkerblom) proclaiming a holy proclamation about the coming death of Reach. They didn’t have to do this in a church, but it helped. Also, who said The Covenant are not punctual?      

In the end, do we recommend Halo: Visegrad? Yes, we do. This is not only the best episode of the season so far; I think it was the best episode of the series so far. It moved all its stories forward. It had some real emotional impact while also finishing on a bang that requires me to come back next week. Well, if called, who am I to say no?

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen Halo yet ?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Halo
Directed by – Craig Zisk
Written by – Marisha Mukerjee
Created by – Kyle Killen and Steven Kane
Based on – Halo by Bungie & 343 Industries
Production/Distribution Companies – Showtime, 343 Industries, Amblin Television & Paramount+
Starring – Pablo Schreiber, Natascha McElhone, Joseph Morgan, Shabana Azmi, Christina Bennington, Natasha Culzac, Olive Gray, Yerin Ha, Bentley Kalu, Kate Kennedy, Charlie Murphy, Fiona O’Shaughnessy, Cristina Rodlo, Danny Sapani, Jen Taylor, Viktor Åkerblom, Tylan Bailey & Bokeem Woodbine with Marvin Jones III, Christian Ochoa Lavernia, & Bill Paterson and Anna Koval, Ivanno Jeremiah, Juliette Motamed, David Crowley, Iliasz Shweirif, Thomas Dominique, Karen Connell, Maria Luisa Costa & Bronte Carmichael