The TV show Halo that makes the humans the villains completely misses the point

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Halo The TV show has a villain problem. This may seem impossible for a series that’s supposed to be about a hostile race of aliens led by liars exploiting religious fanaticism, but instead the show can’t stop focusing on human bickering, with galaxy-conquering aliens are bizarrely relegated to an afterthought for both. the characters in the show and the audience.

I could talk about how HaloCentering humans as the villains behind every plot cheapens one of the few fascinating moral complexities of the Halo games and books: that the Spartans were built for fundamentally inhumane treatment of rebel fighters and then accidentally found justification in a surprise alien invasion. But it’s more honest and even more damning to talk about this on the internet Halo The TV show’s own terms and conditions. And under those conditions, I simply have no idea why there are aliens in this show at all.

In an attempt to highlight the wickedness of humanity, Halo has completely sidelined the Covenant, throwing the entire show off course and spinning wildly into space. Even the show’s grand invasion of Reach by the Covenant is just another human plot, one of a thousand ways the TV show sets out to prove that the human bureaucrats are evil, something we’ve known since the opening moments of the first season of the show.

But all this emphasis on humanity’s sins raises a critical question: almost two full seasons later HaloWhat point exactly is it trying to make? Season 2’s seventh episode, “Thermopylae,” seems to attempt to answer that question, as Makee (Charlie Murphy) begs Chief to stop helping humanity so that together they can establish Halo on their own and can make it a paradise. instead of letting both sides use it as a weapon that destroys civilization. Apart from the silliness that this version is Halo for being so constantly tempted to recast Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber) as the lead in a domestic drama, Makee’s statement still leaves a gap in our understanding of what this show does. If the point is “war makes monsters of us all,” shouldn’t we see that equally in both the human and Covenant factions? And even more urgently, why won’t anyone acknowledge that the Covenant are the ones who first faced extinction and based their entire galactic conquest on the Prophets’ lie about a Great Voyage that would take them out of the Galaxy?

Each episode exposes us to a half-dozen scenes in which humanity’s reckless and evil leaders make choices that shape civilization – most notably the ongoing machinations of Admiral Margaret Parangosky (Shabana Azmi), one of the worst and least convincing characters in recent history. TV memory, thanks to her constantly baffling decisions and apparent lack of strategy and communication. (Simply put, she’s here to antagonize every other character, with no real character of her own.) Meanwhile, we only get to see the Covenant’s side from the point of view of Makee and the criminally underdeveloped Arbiter. Sure, we hear them say that the Prophets may be full of shit and that the Great Journey may be a lie, but it remains a complete mystery why the alien’s truly compelling similarity to Earth’s corrupt and lying authorities is so vaguely drawn . . Perhaps making those connections clearer could help us understand why Master Chief fought more people Halo season 2 then he has Covenant.

Despite the fact that the moment-to-moment conflict rarely makes sense or seems to lead anywhere, it hasn’t stopped the show from introducing more plot threads or providing fans of old series with new bits of relatable lore. For example, this latest episode gave us our most meaningful look at the Forerunners yet, though they haven’t quite been named yet. It also hinted at yet another alien faction that could arrive soon, but we’ll have to wait and see if that thread goes anywhere.

All these new introductions do little to diminish the sense of narrative cheapness that surrounds it Halo, However. As more ideas and plots are introduced, it only underlines how little point this all actually makes. Sure, we know the Covenant is knocking on humanity’s front door, but the sudden distraction of every character in the show now coming together with the need to capture “the Halo,” as they keep calling it, feels like it’s gone out of the nothing comes. That’s a pretty amazing feat of messy storytelling, considering this is the object the entire franchise is named after.

Halo season 2 is now streaming on Paramount Plus. The season finale will be released on Thursday, March 21.