Here Is The Entire First Episode Of ‘Halo,’ Free On YouTube

Paramount Plus is really going hard to try to get Halo to rope in potential subscribers, so much so they’ve taken the unusual step of uploading the entire pilot episode of the series to YouTube for free.

I’m not entirely sure how long it’s going to stay that way, but if you have a spare 58 minutes, you can watch the episode below to see what you make of it for yourself:

So, is it worth a Paramount Plus subscription? On its own, maybe not, but I will say I highly recommend Mayor of Kingston, the Jeremy Renner show, if you do subscribe. Some people like all the Star Trek stuff there too.

But back to Halo. I think they actually did quite a good job with the pilot, so much so I admitted I was wrong about many of my preconceived notions of the show, and they did a lot of interesting things in the pilot.

I will say, however, I did not like episode 2 nearly as much, which is not online for free, and not just because it lacked the battles of the first game. The script here is just…weird, as is the characterization of Chief, I feel, and not just because he feels like an entirely different character with his helmet constantly off. We’ll see where things go from here, but I will warn you that I do not think episode 2 is as good as the free episode 1 you see here. But obviously the entire season probably is best judged as a whole before we start making final declarations.

Regardless of these kinds of debates, Halo already seems to be paying off for Paramount Plus. It’s the best debut for a show in the short lifespan of the streaming service, which may not be saying much, but it’s something. And even before season 1 aired, season 2 was already greenlit, presumably because they were already committed to how much they’d spent on production already, and assumed a level of viewership that would justify it. They guessed correctly, it seems.

As for this free episode, it is proving to be…somewhat controversial on the YouTube page there. It had 6.1K likes to 1.4K dislikes. A positive ratio, but not the best one I’ve seen. 145,000 views total right now, meaning a good chunk of people have checked it out. I would love to know the conversion rates from this video to Paramount Plus itself, but I doubt we’ll ever know that.

Regardless, I think releasing the episode on YouTube is a good call, and we should see more shows do this, if you ask me, as right now it only happens rarely. We’ll see what the future holds for Halo outside of a guaranteed second season, and whether more critics and fans come around the more episodes air.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.