The Halo Show’s Best, Weird Thing Is Stripping Master Chief Down

We’ve recognized from the get-go that Halo The Series would cut up other than the established lore of the beloved Microsoft gaming franchise to supply its personal spin on acquainted beats and concepts which were touched upon in over 20 years of video games, tie-in books and comics, and extra. But considered one of its most fascinating variations up to now is the way it offers us a quite literal take a look at the humanity of its lead hero.

Much of the runtime of “Contact,” the primary episode of the Halo TV collection, is about how the Master Chief, performed by Pablo Schreiber, is coming to phrases with the concept that not solely is the UNSC—the group he was cast to battle for, irrespective of the fee—morally suspect, however that he’s certainly able to rebelling in opposition to the years of coaching, motivation, and a non-insignificant quantity of psychological programming to defy his relationship with it. The climax of episode noticed two unprecedented issues occur: the primary was that Master Chief selected to defy a direct order of the UNSC, after ONI head Admiral Parangosky (Shabana Azmi) ordered him to execute the younger Kwan Ha (Yerin Ha), the only real survivor of an Insurrectionist colony outpost slaughtered by the alien Covenant. That’s not something notably new to followers of the video games or Halo’s bigger tie-in fiction; later entries within the collection like Halo 5: Guardians have explored the concept of Chief briefly “going rogue,” and the murky moral standpoint of the UNSC because the de facto perspective for Halo’s worldbuilding past the video games has been questioned virtually for the reason that very first transmedia Halo fiction.

The second factor was maybe probably the most stunning, and undoubtedly controversial to Halo followers: Master Chief proved his willingness to guard Kwan and switch in opposition to the UNSC by eradicating his helmet. Although by way of necessity within the wider Halo lore there have been moments the place Chief—aka John-117—has been unarmored or unmasked, the video games specifically have all the time feverishly averted displaying his face. Seeing the close-cropped, scarred, rugged-but-earnest visage of Pablo Schreiber staring again on the digicam—after which persevering with to depart his helmet off—is a surprisingly main second for the franchise. But it additionally speaks to an try and do one thing with Master Chief that the Halo video games have lengthy struggled to do: make him really feel extra human than his larger-than-life standing as this musclebound, armor-clad single-handed savior of humanity ever has.

There have been moments within the video games to discover this in fact, particularly in Chief’s relationship together with his AI companion Cortana—however from its first-person perspective to its ceaseless need to all the time hold the human face behind Master Chief’s green-and-orange-tinted helmeted visage hidden, the Halo video games have lengthy successfully made John a shell for gamers to inhabit, moreso than a deeply-investigated particular person character of his personal. That’s the purpose of the video games’ energy fantasy: you might be entering into Master Chief’s armor, being the hero, quite than essentially exploring John’s journey. Halo The Series’ quick determination to strip that layer of armor away from Master Chief and present him in a second of profound vulnerability by going in opposition to that “unspoken rule” of the video games is a right away and efficient approach to present followers the completely different, however acquainted path the present desires to go down in its exploration of the franchise’s wider story.

It’s fascinatingly dealt with past simply the shock of Schreiber’s face being plain for all to see. The few most “gamified” moments of the primary episode are available in its motion sequences within the opening Covenant assault, the place Chief and his staff of fellow Spartan warriors repel the alien invaders, by briefly throwing us into Master Chief’s perspective. We get to see the HUD inside his helmet, hear the glints of shields recharging and him maintain his assault rifle as much as blast an Elite—imagery instantly, recognizably, Halo, as a result of it’s what we see within the video games. When John unmasks himself to Kwan within the episode’s climax, the response of the UNSC officers monitoring him from their base is shock—as a result of they’ll now not see by way of his visor themselves, now not immediately observe what John is doing and what he says and sees. The management of his armor, a instrument of the UNSC’s technological and propagandist would possibly, is severed within the singular act of permitting us to see Master Chief as a human being, actually and metaphorically.

The second episode of Halo, “Unbound,” by which John and Kwan meet up with a former Spartan and now fellow rogue, Bokeem Woodbine’s Soren, to debate why they felt the necessity to run from the UNSC, explores this newfound curiosity within the connection between Master Chief’s armor and his vulnerability as an individual. It’s now framed, in distinction to Soren’s confidently hardened place in opposition to the UNSC, with John’s sheltered naivety having been pressured to develop up figuring out little however his new life as a weapon of what’s now Soren’s enemy. Once once more Chief’s helmet turns into an vital masks for him, one he lowers when in Kwan’s and Soren’s presence, however one he places again up when he first enters the latter’s asteroid hideaway, a safety to maintain eyes away from Kwan and firmly on him.

As the episode continues and Chief talks to Soren extra concerning the life he’s led after escaping the Spartan program, Chief begins to strip increasingly of his armor away past simply the helmet, as much as the purpose that he’s actually wandering round in simply the undersuit, virtually bare with out the layers of cumbersome inexperienced plating that had turned him right into a strolling tank. It’s meant to be an unnerving sight to Halo followers to see John on this second of non-public disaster, uncertain of the place his path lies, and what he believes in. And it matches with the just about alien concept of being requested to look at his physique in such a manner—broad, cumbersome, and muscular, however the form of a particular person, and never a Spartan. The iconic imagery of the Halo franchise is pulled away from him, piece by piece, till John is left at his most spiritually and actually uncovered.

Alas, it’s probably not to final—“Unbound” seems like a little bit of a regression on the promise of the primary episode, in a lot that with little rhyme or purpose Master Chief decides to depart Kwan in Soren’s care and return to the fold of the UNSC, his former defiance and disbelief at its ethical integrity left untouched by its finish. But even then, we nonetheless get to glimpse right here and there these moments of Master Chief’s humanity—the unfamiliar sight of his face, his physique, his literal presence as an individual. Wherever Halo goes from right here in its exploration and alternate spin on the story of the franchise is arguably going to stay considered one of its most boldly controversial, and fascinating, steps away from what followers anticipated from the present.

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