6 Halo stories better than what the Paramount show gave us
It’s been over a year since the Halo TV show premiered on Paramount+, but its foul taste is still in the back of my throat. I like to give things a chance before I come down on them, and I did watch the show, but it is truly a mockery of the incredible storytelling in the Halo video games and novels. There was so much source material to work with, but the showrunners opted to take the shell of the story and fill it with garbage characters, story and dialogue.
It pains me that people are being exposed to this incredible franchise through this slapdash series. How might things have gone better? Here are six Halo stories that blow that waste of time Paramount+ show out of the water. Maybe we’ll even see some turn up in future seasons.
1. The origins of the Flood
Millennia before the events of the Halo games, a highly advanced race called the Precursors were the most dominant beings in the galaxy. They used their unfathomably advanced technology to watch over the universe. The Precursors curated all life in the galaxy and chose humanity as their successors. Out of rage for not being named the heirs, a group called the Forerunners wiped out the Precursors in a genocidal war. However, not all of the Precursors were killed. A few of them used their shapeshifting abilities to transform themselves into a dust and placed themselves in ships at the far edges of known space.
This dust became “defective” over time, causing those who came in contact with it to come down with an infection that mutated the host into an aggressive husk. This is what eventually became known as the Flood, which was much more than just a mindless zombie virus. a host mind affected by the Flood is absorbed into a hive brain. The genetic structure of the host can be altered in seconds, with organic material like bones and organs morphing into whatever the Flood sees fit.
Hosts were not only used for their intelligence, but also for their body mass. When enough hosts were brought to one location, the Flood could use the biomass to create a Gravemind, a massive conglomeration of hosts that can grow to a gargantuan size.
A Gravemind is is where all the information from infected hosts is stored. Previous memories from past Graveminds are a part of this neural network, giving the Flood a kind of ancient super-intelligence. When the Flood first rose, the infection became so large that entire portions of the galaxy were absorbed, leading to multiple Graveminds the size of planets. The intelligence of the Flood was so vast that it could even outsmart AI by utilizing a strategy called the logic plague to make the AI work for the Flood’s ultimate goal of galactic domination. Once the galaxy is transformed into one giant Flood hive, it then works to incorporate other galaxies.
Ancient space-faring humans around the year 100,000 BCE were the first to discover the Precursor dust in abandoned ships in space. Centuries later, hosts became aggressive cannibals. Eventually, the Flood began to infect dozens of human worlds, forcing the ancient humans to flee into Forerunner space. Taking this as an act of aggression, the Forerunners started a war with the humans, who now found themselves in a conflict on two fronts. When the Forerunners began to realize how dangerous the Flood were, the parasite suddenly fled the galaxy. Thinking it strange that the human worlds were no longer infected, the Forerunners incorrectly surmised that Humanity had found a cure and that they were hiding it.
The Forerunners demanded the cure the Humans did not have, reducing the human empire to nothing for crimes it didn’t commit. The humans were banished to their homeworld, Earth, and became hunter-gatherers. Without the humans as a buffer, the Forerunners were overwhelmed when the Flood returned in full force. Given the timing of their return, it would seem that the Flood made it look like the humans had a cure to pit its two enemies against each other. The Forerunners were also still treating the Flood as a disease instead of an intelligent enemy, realizing too late that destroying infected planets was the only way to stop the spread.
Before the humans were wiped out, they found an ancient being held inside of a Precursor stasis chamber on an abandoned planet. The creature, dubbed the Primordial, was brought to Earth where human scientists figured out how to communicate with it. The humans attempted to ask the being about the mysteries of the universe, but at first the Primordial’s answers were jumbled and unintelligible. However, when asked about the nature of the Flood, the answers it gave were clear and so horrific that many of those who heard took their own lives. After the Forerunners took over the planet, their leader The Didact spoke with the creature and deduced that it was both the last Precursor and the first Gravemind.
The Primordial was then brought to Zeta Halo where it was imprisoned, the same Halo ring we see in Halo: Infinite. An advanced Forerunner AI called Mendicant Bias was tasked with interrogating the Primordial, but the pair disappeared along with Zeta Halo for 43 years. During their time together, the Primordial explained to the AI the true nature of the Flood and how the infection and the Precursors are one and the same. Mendicant Bias was eventually infected by the logic plague and defected to the Flood. As the most powerful AI ever built, Mendicant Bias was in charge of leading the war effort against the Flood, but now it had effectively switched sides and given the Flood a massive advantage.
In an act of desperation, the Forerunners created another AI called Offensive Bias, which was just as powerful as Mendicant but lacked the creative thinking of its counterpart, which made it resistant to the logic plague. The Halo array was also created to combat the parasite. The Halo rings are enormous weapons of mass destruction designed to wipe out all organic beings in the galaxy to deprive the Flood of its food. Without any organic life to feed on, the Flood would starve to death. With no options left to defeat the Flood, the Forerunners fired the Halo array and eradicated the galaxy of all life and the Flood. Prior to the firing, the Forerunners had collected countless DNA and embryonic samples from many species throughout the galaxy. Automated systems sent ships with each species back to their respective homeworlds, effectively resetting life in the galaxy.