The Halo TV series unceremoniously killed off one of the game’s best characters

The Halo The TV show has always kept the lore of the video game series at bay. From the early announcement of the ‘Silver Timeline’ (an entirely separate but loosely similar canon that the TV show would adhere to) to the first season, which gives Master Chief a slightly different origin story, the Paramount Plus series has never worried. featuring the things that long-time Halo fans hold near and dear. But as the show’s second season moves into more recognizable territory like Fall of Reach, it’s still surprising to see how wildly it diverged from the game’s fourth episode.

(Ed. remark: This story contains spoilers for the first four episodes of Halo season 2, as well as the entire Halo video game series.)

The Fall of Reach is one of the most important events in Halo’s video game canon. The destruction of Reach is a war-defining victory for the Covenant and is also the catalyst for sending Master Chief to the Pillar of Autumn, the UNSC ship that would eventually crash-land on humanity’s very first Halo ring would discover. It is also the basis of the game Halo: rangea particular fan favorite.

The Halo The TV version of the Covenant’s attack on Reach takes place – almost entirely out of nowhere – in the fourth episode of the second season. The UN Security Council (who seem to be more of the villains of the show than the actual Covenant) seemingly knew for weeks that an attack was possible, but did nothing about it. This leaves Master Chief and his fellow Marines and Spartans completely blinded and fighting through the streets without their armor. All in all, it’s a very silly setup for a better than average episode of Halo – perhaps the most fun episode the series has had yet.

But after all the dust has settled and the battle for Reach is clearly doomed, the strangest part of the episode remains how it handles Captain Jacob Keyes: by killing him in a rather silly “forgot to undock the ship” incident.

If you’ve been a fan of the Halo games for years, chances are you remember Captain Keyes as one of the series’ first interesting characters. His only major role is in the first game, and he clearly wasn’t built for the complicated lore and mythology the series would eventually use. But for the story the original Halo In 2001, Captain Keyes related it quite nicely: Keyes is a grizzled leader in a doomed army, holding the crew of the Pillar of Autumn together when they crash-land on the Halo ring. But more importantly, when the Flood reveals itself, he sacrifices himself in the hopes of saving humanity from the horrors of this parasitic, universe-killing race. It’s a classic archetype of ’80s and ’90s action movies, but because of the frothy sci-fi alien shooting story that Halo said, it felt perfect.

The TV show version is a lot more complicated and a lot less interesting. In an attempt to focus on Master Chief’s backstory, the show’s first season flattens Keyes into a mostly utilitarian antagonist, another cog in the bureaucratic machine that kidnapped children to become soldiers for reasons the show never fully understands. treats. By the time all these storylines in video game history take place, Keyes regrets his actions but is too deep into the Covenant war to do anything but persevere. In the show, he doesn’t seem exceptionally remorseful and the Covenant, as always, feels more like an afterthought than a real threat.

None of this is technically a huge problem, especially considering it’s far below the show’s laundry list of problems, but it’s yet another way in which Paramount Plus’ show is disappointing fans of the games. Captain Keyes is a complicated figure in Halo lore, especially when the books give him a backstory, but in the context of the first Halo game, it’s still a much better story than the show has managed to tell in its twelve hours thus far. He was a neat side character and a beacon of humanity’s selflessness in the face of the overwhelming terror of the Flood.

In the show, all of that disappears so he can die disconnecting the fuel line to a spaceship he could have prepared weeks ago, all to save a random Marine that Master Chief may or may not be fond of. Man, this show is still such a disaster.