5 things Showtime’s Halo TV series needs to get right

Show humanity’s painful struggles against the Covenant

Showing us how merciless the Covenant can be is only be one side of the equation. We also need to see how hopelessly outclassed humanity is at the beginning of the conflict, and how desperate they become. After all, they’re up against a group armed with advanced alien weapons and an armada of warships equipped with high-powered plasma beams that can burn the surface of planets and colonies; it’s an uphill battle from the start.

The series could could parts of Eric Nylund’s novel Halo: The Fall of Reach and show us the Covenant making first contact with humanity, which involved them destroying the human colony Harvest. The following episode (or episodes) could show the battle to retake Harvest, which resulted in a victory for humanity, but at the cost of two-thirds of the human fleet. And this battle was fought against a single Covenant ship, which should tell you the odds we’re up against.

While humans struggle against the Covenant at the beginning of the war, they gain an edge with the creation of Spartan super soldiers, the most famous of which is Master Chief himself. Originally, Spartans were created to quell human insurrections, but they would eventually turn the fight against the alien threat. These super soldiers are trained from the age of 7 and are augmented in ways that give them super strength and speed.

Extended Halo lore goes into detail about the children who had to go through Spartan training, and it would be fascinating to see some of that fleshed out on the show.