Pablo Schreiber assures fans that Halo season 2 is "far stronger"

It's possible this is news to you, but next week, Paramount+ will premiere a new season of Halo, its TV show based on the first-person shooter video game series of the same name. The first season, which starred Pablo Schreiber as the futuristic super-soldier Master Chief, went over...okay. The sci-fi battles looked great, but fans of the games thought the show strayed too far afield from the games, and it didn't have the punch to draw in many newbies.

But the cast and crew are back and recharged for season 2, which Schreiber assures us will be a step up. "There's no question the second season is far stronger than the first. I will stake my reputation on that. It's absolutely improved," he told SFX Magazine. "It's so beautiful, incredibly cinematic. And the dialogue is better. It's just a better season, period."

Schreiber even made things a little personal by indirectly shading former showrunners Kyle Killen and Steven Kane, who left after season 1. David Wiener came on as showrunner for season 2. "I think [David Wiener, Halo's new showrunner] is just a more gifted writer, to be quite frank. I think his dialogue is better. He puts words in the mouth that feel more appropriate for the character."

It sounds like Schreiber had more than one disagreement with the direction of the show under the old showrunners. For example, he wasn't a fan of the sex scene between Master Chief and Makee (Charlie Murphy). “I felt it was a huge mistake at the time and I argued against it and fought against it. But I am who I am. I don’t write the scripts. I only give my opinion. It wasn’t listened to."

If you don't like that Master Chief takes off his helmet, tough. "There’s no point discussing it."

One of the big complaints from fans — and this may seem odd to you if you aren't familiar with the games — is that in the show, Master Chief takes his helmet off. In the games, that pretty much never happens. He's under that thing the whole time, fighting aliens and defending humanity.

Listening to the cast and crew talk in interviews, you get the idea that they've been asked 'the helmet question' a lot. "People who don’t feel the helmet was necessary to come off, they’re at such an early conception of what the show could be," Schreiber told GamesRadar. "In order to examine the discrepancy between these two versions of the character [Chief and John-117], you can’t tell that story without taking the helmet off. If you don’t agree with the helmet coming off in the show, you don’t like our show. So, there’s no point discussing it."

Even Joseph Morgan, who plays a new characer James Ackerson, weighed in on helmet-gate. "[I]f you want to see a Halo where Master Chief doesn’t take off his helmet, you’re not gonna like this, because he does take off his helmet—spoiler alert, his helmet does come off," he told Kotaku. "But if you can get past that, it’s cool."

I'm not personally invested in whether or not Master Chief wears his helmet all the time, but I do think the cast and crew have an uphill battle arguing that they couldn't have written a show where the star never shows his face, since Halo is coming out after people have already seen The Mandalorian, a Star Wars TV show where exactly that happens, more or less. And I have sympathy for them always having to field questions about this. The helmet is coming off, people. We're clear through the looking glass.

Halo season 2 is coming next week

In fact, the cast and crew seem to be taking a defensive posture in a lot of these interviews, especially those who have been around since the first season. Is Halo season 2 a reset? Does it do right by the games? Just watch it, okay.

David Wiener, who only came on as showrunner this season, sounds a bit more gung-ho. “It’s exciting, just because it’s Halo, it’s an opportunity to tell a story on a massive scale…and we do, it’s a really epic story,” he said. “We tried really hard to tell it from a very intimate point of view, so that our Spartans are a subjective perspective that provides a lens into the emotionality of the show. There are very few properties that provide that kind of opportunity.”

We'll see how this all comes together when Halo season 2 premieres next Thursday, February 8 on Paramount+.

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h/t IGN