The first episode of Halo is officially live on Paramount+, and the reviews are in. Fans of the video game franchise have been waiting a long time for this series, which has been in various stages of development hell since it was first announced all the way back in 2013. But it’s here, finally! Was it good? Was it awful?
You can read our full review here, but suffice it to say that there were some good things about the Halo premiere as well as some rough spots. It’s still got eight more episodes ahead, so here’s hoping that the show finds its footing as it goes on.
Halo tells the story of an intergalactic war between humanity and an alien collective known as the Covenant. At the center of it is the Master Chief, a genetically engineered super-soldier known as a Spartan who is “humanity’s best weapon.” Basically, the Master Chief is the main character you play in the video games, and he excels at kicking space alien butt.
One of the ways that the Halo show is differentiating itself from the games is that it’s putting a much bigger focus on exploring the Master Chief’s humanity. Played by Pablo Schreiber (Orange is the New Black, American Gods), the chief begins as an almost robotic figure with practically no autonomy. That breaks down within the first few minutes of the opening episode, however, as he starts remembering flashes of his past after coming into contact with an alien artifact. Unlike in the games, we actually see the Master Chief without the helmet in the show, and despite my initial misgivings about that, Halo is doing some interesting things with it.
Nonetheless, it’s a tall order to portray such an iconic character, especially if he’s going to deviate in some major ways from his depiction in the beloved game series.
Pablo Schreiber discusses becoming the Master Chief
Though Schreiber is an established actor who’s been in the industry for quite a while, Halo is his first lead role. What was it like for him to get the call telling him he would be portraying the iconic Master Chief?
“It’s surreal,” Schreiber told Collider. “It’s an opportunity, my first opportunity, to play the lead of a show. And that comes with a lot of responsibilities, first of all, and just how you interact on set and the tone that you set with crew and with the rest of the cast. Then you just want it to be as good as it can be. That’s really where I make my bread and butter is just working as hard as I can every day to elevate the experience to the thing… bring it to the place that I want it to be at. We’re working harder and harder every single day that I’m involved with this show to make it the show that I think we all want to make.”
Speaking of working hard, it turns out that the filming schedule for Halo got pretty crazy. One advantage of having a main character whose face is hidden behind an armored mask a lot of the time is that you can have multiple stunt people filming scenes. According Schreiber, that meant that at one point there were as many as three Master Chiefs running around on set.
“The only time it’s not is when there’s massive stunt sequences and obviously, when they hook somebody up to wires and they don’t want me to get hurt, they throw somebody else in,” Schreiber said. “Because of the demands of the role and I’m in almost every scene, there was times where we would have three chiefs on different sets around the lot. I would be somewhere doing a dramatic scene with the helmet off and then Justin Howell, my incredibly capable stunt guy, would be hooked up to ropes somewhere doing flips and aerials. Then we’d have a second stunt guy doing some running shot or something like that. That was really when we were block shooting all the action stuff and things were getting very busy and very hectic.”
Tapping into the Master Chief’s humanity
As we mentioned above, one of the biggest ways that the Halo show is standing apart from the games is that we get to see the Master Chief without his helmet. The show is making a point to explore the character’s humanity, and a large part of the plot is about this genetically engineered super soldier remembering his past.
“ was played and established by an incredibly capable and talented voice actor named Steve Downes, who’s been the voice of the chief for the past 20 years and he’s amazing. Everything he’s done, I’m a huge fan of,” Schreiber said. “This obviously is my interpretation of the character and my chief and the only reason to make a show about the Master Chief and about Halo is to get underneath the suit, break down the character and investigate aspects of his humanity and what makes him tick.”
"The effects of war on the soldier in our society is one of the major themes that were we’re looking at and him discovering… We meet a character who’s cut off from his humanity, who doesn’t have access to his emotions, who doesn’t even have memories of his childhood. It starts there and he has an interaction with an artifact that brings back some memories from his childhood. He begins the process of uncovering his own personal history.How he interacts with people when he’s in his suit is obviously one thing because he’s a super soldier. He’s humanity’s last hope. He has a history of carrying the world on his shoulders, but there’s also a human being inside there who is beginning to realize what that means as the course of the season goes on. So how he relates to that daunting, his own daunting humanity, will be distinct from how he relates to the world inside that massive hunk of metal/plastic."
The different faces of the Master Chief were one of the most compelling elements of Halo’s premiere, so it’s encouraging to hear Schreiber talk about it in such detail. Hopefully it’s something Halo really digs into as the season goes on.
Halo will begin filming season 2 in the summer
Halo’s first season premiered on March 24, but Paramount+ renewed the show for a second season early on. The studio made a hefty investment in the series and they want to get their money’s worth.
Schreiber did give us our first hints about when production would start for the second season. “We’ll be filming again this summer,” he revealed. “We’re still figuring out exactly what the start date is, but we will be in production by summertime because we have a hard date that we need to be up and running in order to get some location that is weather affected.”
For now, Halo’s first episode is available to stream on Paramount+, with new episodes dropping on Thursdays.
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h/t Collider