‘Halo’ Takes Us Under The Helmet, Revealing Mysteries In The Context Of Intergalactic Conflict

Adapting a video game (let alone a video game series) is never easy, but when it’s done right it can really land. The forthcoming Halo series, based on the highly popular sci-fi action video game franchise, is clearly aiming to join the family of adaptations that get it right. It’s an interesting, well-produced series that rounds out the universe gamers know and love, and one certainly worth exploring when it comes to Paramount+ this Thursday, March 24th.

The game franchise follows a 26th Century war between humans and an alien species known as the Covenant, and the player pushes forward as enhanced super-soldier Master Chief / Spartan John-117, whose face you never see. The series, by contrast, takes us under the helmet, smartly giving us intriguing mystery and identity issues to walk the tightrope between honoring the games and giving us the actual, fleshed-out characters that make for good cinematic drama.

The series itself opens to a Covenant assault in the Outer Colonies that gets interrupted by the arrival of the USNC Spartans, bioengineered super-soldiers with cutting-edge armor that are humanity’s top-level defense against the alien onslaught. Leading this squadron is John-117, aka Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber of American Gods fame), a Spartan who gets a little more than he bargained for when he interacts with a mysterious technological artifact that oddly interacts with him while being inert to everyone else. It glows brightly, and gives him displays of alien glyphs and visions of happy memories he can’t explain. He opts to save the sole survivor of the Covenant attack, and the unusual experiences disrupt Master Chief’s certainty and send him into unexpected terrain.

Pablo Schreiber gives a great performance to a character who is, in the series, struggling with experiences and mysteries he can’t explain. He’s stern and stiff, a rigid keeper of the USNC directives until he’s thrown headfirst into a situation with little precedent. We quickly discover that it has major implications for humanity and the galaxy (little surprise there), and we’ll get to explore these intergalactic conflicts with a Master Chief questioning his identity and role in the larger scheme of things while regional politics, internal directives, and Covenant maneuverings all grow in their danger.

The first couple episodes also introduce Natasha McElhone as Spartan creator Dr. Halsey, a character that exhibits complex compassion but who has major untrustworthy energy. She adds considerable charisma to every scene she’s in, and it’s intriguing to consider what role she’ll play going forward. The sci-fi action (obviously an anticipated core element of any Halo adaptation) lands thus far, sporting the designs fans know and love for the various Covenant soldiers but with some realistic-looking upgrades. The combat was enjoyable to watch, and the SFX were sufficiently impressive in that and the space battles that the series will be one to enjoy beyond game aficionados.

It was a smart move to highlight the complexity of these competing issues, and Schreiber’s Master Chief seems quite capable of walking that rhetorical tightrope. Building up the character of John-117 and the complexity of the worldbuilding on-screen (which we get a version of in the Extended Universe materials and novels, though this series is its own independent timeline) was the smartest way for the series to go and build its fanbase beyond existing Halo diehards, and so far they’ve built an intriguing space-sandbox for the series to play in.

Perhaps the series’ biggest limitation thus far (and this review was written with the first two episodes available) is that the elements of the series that have the most promise are only thus far in the most nascent of stages. There are teases of Master Chief questioning the USNC and its Spartan program, the Outer Colonies pulling out and against the USNC’s will, and the Covenant’s surprising tactics against our human heroes, but in the first two episodes we’ve only seen the opening moments of all these elements. One can’t say yet what’s to come with any degree of certainty, but so far there’s a lot of promising material for future episodes.

Altogether it’s a series with considerable promise, and one that so far delivers on the sci-fi action that one would hope from the series. The more John-117 grows and questions, the deeper the rabbit hole goes and the more intriguing the world is, and we’re also hopefully going to get growing political unrest and high-octane space battles as the series progresses. Challenging as it is to adapt a beloved game series, Halo so far has something for franchise fans and broader audiences alike.

Halo premieres Thursday, March 24th on Paramount+.