TL;DR – The Halo series has done something I never thought it would or even could do. It made me care.

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

Warning – This episode contains scenes that may cause distress.

Halo Review –

When I think back to the first season, sure, there were the significant changes everyone talked about, Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber) taking off his mask and all that. But that never bothered me because adaptation to a new medium necessitates making changes. After all, it is a new context. My biggest problem was that the story, while satisfactory, did not make me care all that much about the characters in the show. Well, if nothing else, Season Two has fixed that problem.  

So to set the scene, in last week’s Visegrad, we discovered that not only does The Covenant know where Reach is, and that the authorities know that The Covenant knows where Reach is, but they are already on the planet and their main invasion is imminent. Queue the explosions. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

We start this week’s episode at probably the lowest point that the series can get (well, the lowest point so far to cite the ancient Simpsons texts). Much of the first half of the episode is just John, sans his armour, trying to get back to Fleetcom as buildings are demolished around him and Talia Perez (Cristina Rodlo). Just about everyone they meet during this escape ends up dead a few moments later, even people we have grown to care about. It is a hard watch because you know that all of this is just a prelude to the planet getting glassed, and you are watching millions of people die. This is encapsulated in the character of Jade (Olwen May), who knows she will die in her store and has accepted that. Also, shout out the Xbox cameo.    

However, this escalates when they get back to Fleetcom and discover that the best that they can do is hold the line because the longer they hold the line, the more civilians they can get off the planet before it all comes to an end. There is this moment when Admiral Jacob Keyes (Danny Sapani) gives this speech that is equal parts uplifting and bullshit. He is lying to get them to fight to the last person, but the motivation is true: the longer they fight, the more people they can save. There is this odd feeling as you watch him manipulate the people in front of him, understand the manipulation, yet be ignorant of how it is also working on yourself.

This shift to a holding pattern means that The Covenant are coming to them, and come they do. I did like that they have improved on the design of the different Covenant races from the first season. Now, they felt like they had weight and presence, which you needed for those action scenes to work. All the guns felt right, all the scenarios felt right, and I liked that we constantly shifted things up so that each fight had a different tempo to it, so you didn’t become numb to the proceedings. There were some awkward moments as they focused on Soren (Bokeem Woodbine) and Halsey (Natascha McElhone) a bit too much, and I am sorry, but nothing the show has done has ever made me care about Makee (Charlie Murphy) in the slightest. However, several prominent cast members did not survive this episode, and I felt those impacts.

In the end, do we recommend Halo: Reach? Absolutely. This season keeps moving from strength to strength. It has made me care about these characters in a way I was not expecting, and it made me desperately want to see the next episode.    

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 – Tom Hemmings
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 and Olwen May, Lotti Kővári & Elijah Cook