Halo brings the horror and ends with a bang in season 2 finale, "Halo"

The season 2 finale of Halo is out now on Paramount+, and it is a fiery, action-packed affair. Simply titled "Halo," the episode delivers on some long-standing promises while introducing a terrifying new villain. Halo still has its rough spots, crossing firmly over into camp territory in its finale in ways that sometimes detract from the otherwise intense story. But all told, it was a solid ending to a much improved second season for the series.

Read on for our full review. Beware SPOILERS ahead as always.

Halo Episode 208 review: "Halo"

It's been an interesting season for Halo, the Paramount+ series based on the long-running video game franchise. I'll come out and say this right at the top: I'm familiar enough with the Halo games to catch plenty of nods to them in the show, but not so familiar that I'm upset about how the show has changed things. This is one instance where having that sort of lens is a privilege, because despite sharing a few similarities with its game counterpart, the TV show is telling a rather different story.

Yet the bones of the tale remain. The Master Chief (Pablo Schrieber) has arrived at the hidden ring world called the Halo, just as a human and Covenant fleet clash in orbit a short distance away. He is united with Cortana, his AI companion, just in time to crash land on the Halo and begin fighting for the next chapter of human survival. And the enigmatic contagion known as the Flood makes an appearance at last.

The original Halo video game begins with some of these same story beats, but the road to get to them in the television show is very different. From where I'm sitting, these changes work pretty well; they add much more depth to characters like John-117 while making the landing on the Halo an tragic affair which is only possible because of the sacrifices of many people in the Chief's orbit.

And when I say sacrifices, I mean it. "Halo" may have even more main character deaths than the Fall of Reach, the mid-season showstopper that saw an entire planet fall victim to the Covenant. The sheer amount of casualties make this episode hit hard; though I will say that in at least one case, I found that the death itself felt a little underserved because of how much else was going on around it.

I'm talking about Kai (Kate Kennedy), who makes her last stand on a Covenant ship in order to blow up an even bigger ship which is melting the human fleet to slag. She's had one of the most fascinating arcs on Halo; let's not forget, she was the first Spartan to remove her emotion inhibitor chip. So it was a shame to see her unceremoniously go out in a way that felt like it held much less gravity than she deserved. Then again, we did see her armored body floating in space at the end. I'm not quite ready to say for certain we won't see Kai again in season 3.

Whether Kai returns or not, there are plenty of others characters, such as Laera (Fiona O'Shaughnessy) and Parangosky (Shabana Azmi), that I doubt we'll see again, barring a zombie cameo. The penultimate episode of Halo season 2 saw Kwan Ha (Yerin Ha), Dr. Halsey (Natasha McElhone) and Miranda (Olive Gray) discover an artifact left behind in a science lab belonging to the precursor race which built the Halo. In the finale, we discover that that artifact was actually a sample container which held a horrific contagion known as the Flood, which turns living creaturs into part of a monstrous hivemind.

There were plenty of exciting parts of "Halo," but the appearance of the Flood tops the list for me. Halo has never been a particularly scary show, but it dialed the horror way up in this episode, with shocking moment after shocking moment as it becomes clear that the Flood had already taken over the Onyx base before anyone even became aware of it. By the time people start transforming into monsters and attacking each other, it's far too late to stop it.

This adds a much needed third dimension to Halo that I think will benefit the show a lot moving forward. So far it's spent much of its time on the human-Covenant war and the race to find the Halo and use it to wipe the other species out. But with the Flood on the loose, these teams may need to set some differences aside. The Halo games take a similar route at times, particularly with the inclusion of the Arbiter, a playable Covenant character who was introduced in the second game.

The Arbiter is another of the Halo finale's headscratcher moments. The season spent a lot of time building up this rival to the Master Chief, I assumed because he was going to play a similar role as he does in the games. But instead, the Master Chief kills off the Arbiter. It's a great scene, to be sure, but I do wonder what the thought process was in including this beloved character only to cut his storyline short.

That said, the Arbiter and Master Chief's duel near the end of the episode is exciting to watch; it's a testament to both Halo's visual effects department and its stunt coordination that battles between the Master Chief and a fully CGI alien hit as hard as they do, rather than feel like the sort of generic CGI combat slop that has become so prevalent in, say, Marvel movies of the past few years. Instead, I was on the edge of my seat as they two duked it out. Halo has improved in a lot of ways in season 2, and its combat scenes are definitely one of them.

Another way which Halo season 2 stepped things up is with the attention paid to its character arcs, the Master Chief's in particular. Halo is a military sci-fi story, and a lot of time is spent getting into the head of the Chief and characters like Corporal Perez (Cristina Rodlo). That plays a big part here at the finish, where the Chief is heading toward his objective but instead decides to go back and save his comrades against orders. His days of following blindly are long over, and that makes him a much more interesting character.

It does give us a few weird moments; the finale a lot more slow motion, dramatic scenes of the Master Chief putting on his helmet, or walking slowly, than did previous episodes. I found these a little jarring, but thankfully they were the exception rather than the rule. For every slightly campy scene, there were 10 much more intense scenes involving the Covenant or the Flood.

At the end of the day, Halo has finished its second season strong. Season 1 got off to a rocky start that managed to stabalize somewhat by its ending, but with season 2, the show has established a much more stable baseline of quality for itself. Yes, it still has moments where it feels like it's struggling to figure out what to do with every member of its large ensemble cast, but given that so many characters bit the dust this season, I'm hopeful that season 3 will be even more focused and impactful.

Which is good, because it'll need to be. Season 2 ends with the Covenant and human fleets reeling while the Chief and Cortana pursue Makee (Charlie Murphy) into the depths of the Halo. It's there that Chief meets another iconic Halo character: the robot Guilty Spark, who has a crucial role to play in whether the Halo ultimately serves as a force for good or mass genocide. The stakes have just been raised. Here's hoping Halo gets a third season to show what happens next.

Halo Bullet Points

• Another huge loss this episode was Dr. Halsey, who was infected by the Flood. The scene where she just suddenly stops responding to her daughter Miranda was excellent; my jaw dropped with the suddenness of it. We last see Halsey being put in cryo storage, so of course she'll come back at some point. But will she be the same?
• I'm glad that Cortana and the Chief are finally united again. The interplay between those two is both crucial to the story and pretty entertaining. Hopefully it's for good this time.
• I was glad to see Parangosky get what was coming to her. After all the manipulating she did this season, I doubt I'm the only one who fist pumped when she got taken by Flood zombies. That said, I will miss Shabana Azmi in the role; she was always very engaging to watch.
• Ackerson (Joseph Morgan) also had a great episode. While he began Halo season 2 as one of the show's most frustrating characters thanks to his scheming, he ended with a great redemption that made him one of the season's more interesting figures. I'm curious to see where he goes from here.
• While the battle scenes in general looked good and balanced CGI and practical performances well, I do hope that Halo improves its explosions just a little bit. They're currently the weak link in the battle scenes; many of them look like someone set off a little firework, rather than blaster fire exploding off of machinery.
• Now that the Master Chief is at the Halo, we've officially reached the point where the first video game begins. The Halo show has taken an alternate timeline approach thus far, but it'll be interesting to see what it does now that it's in more familiar territory.

Verdict

With its second season finale, Halo has firmly established itself as a solid, dependable sci-fi action romp. It still has rough spots, but the writing, set design, costuming, acting, staging and pretty much every other aspect of its production is vastly improved over its first season. The finale stuck the landing, delivering thrills and exciting action set pieces as well as more than a few shocking character deaths. Bring on season 3!

Episode Grade: B+

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