Author: Elizabethpagano

Last week’s episode of Halo finally gave us that long-awaited battle scene that we had been in such desperate need of, but if you were hoping for a similar situation this time around, you’re—of course—out of luck, because that’s what this series does to us. Just when things are starting to hit a decent stride, they rip it out from under us and give us something inferior. In this case, that inferior thing is Makee.

I don’t know what it is about this girl, but she really just gives me the creeps. Maybe it’s her overall sketchy-ghost-like demeanor or perhaps it’s just that she reminds me of Siobhan from Mare of Easttown, but basically, I’ve had enough.

Aside from her, this episode focuses on the fallout out from the battle on Eridanus II, which includes exposing Dr. Halsey and her lies, figuring out the connection between Master Chief and Makee, and pushing past the prior restraints of the keystone.

Master Chief vs. Dr. Halsey

Adrienn Szabo / Paramount+

Chief is fairly out of it following the events of the last episode, with Cortana notifying him to seek medical attention as his system is completely overloaded due to this contact with the keystone.

As he’s both physically and mentally out of sorts, he casually locks Dr. Halsey in her lab, turning on a system modification that will emit a fatal level of radiation into the room. He seems unfazed by this whole situation as Cortana instructs him to stop what he’s doing and let her out, with rage building in his body as he remembers bits of his childhood and her involvement in it.

Just as the gaseous radiation is being let into the lab, Chief finally acts and lets Dr. Halsey out with practically zero time to spare. Basically, it was a test to see if Cortana had the capability of saving her, but as she’s only able to shut off Chief and not operate him, she wouldn’t have been able to step in for the save.

Later on, Chief demands a meeting with Dr. Halsey and they finally get to hash things out, as she had been putting off the meeting for quite some time. She ends up revealing that she did indeed kidnap Chief as a child, along with other children who were trained to become Spartans. Instead of telling the families that she was taking their children away, she came up with the idea to flash-clone the children beforehand, pulling a bit of a switcheroo on them.

As the clones would naturally die off as time passed, the families were left mourning as their real children were actually alive, being trained into Spartans by Dr. Halsey and the UNSC.

With this revelation, Admiral Parangosky (who had been listening in to this conversation) decides to remove Dr. Halsey from the premises, firing her effective immediately and putting her daughter, Miranda Keyes, in her place. However, this exile doesn’t stop her and her assistant, Adun, from hacking into the Cortana system and spying in on Chief and the UNSC from afar.

The Keystone’s Alignment

Adrienn Szabo / Paramount+

In the last episode, our sketchy Covenant-ish friend, Makee, was left on the battlefield, with the UNSC deciding to take her in for evaluation, eventually figuring out that her and Chief have very similar genetic makeups. Because of this, they’re both able to experience the keystone at about the same levels, though it seems like Chief is even more sensitive to it than Makee.

Given this, the two have a heart-to-heart conversation about their shared experiences, with Makee revealing that the keystone used to hurt her, as well, both physically and mentally. However, when she stopped fighting it, it became one with her and everything became more clear. While Chief also seems to be skeptical of her, he decides to test something new out in his approach to the keystone.

He finds Dr. Keyes and has her agree to run a test with him and the keystone, though it’s more so a test for himself rather than of anything diagnostic-wise. Even though he hasn’t healed from the prior keystone, he goes ahead and firmly grasps it, immediately sending him into another world and his heart through the roof beat-wise.

At the same time, Makee is chilling in another room when this happens without warning, causing her to fall to the ground as her heart races uncontrollably. Their heart rates end up hitting the exact same BPM, and just when it seems like both of them are going to die, their heart rates fall and we’re brought out of the exam room and into their heads.

Chief is standing in a lovely, open meadow on Reach with Makee next to him, with both of them taking in the views and the calm. It’s clear that Chief now has control of his reaction to the keystone after following Makee’s advice. With this, there’s no telling just how far he’ll be able to go the next time he touches the larger keystone, as well as where his relationship with Makee will head.

Alright, so there was no action in this episode of Halo. That’s a definite negative, but on the flip side, we didn’t have to suffer through any more Kwan scenes, which completely makes up for that fact. I’m not hating on Kwan here—I want her story to be good, but it’s just not trending that way as of right now. The most important plot right now is Chief and the hunt for the larger keystone; it just seems like the whole fighting-for-Madrigal-rebel-thing just doesn’t have enough oomph to keep going.

As for what to expect from next week’s episode, I’m sure we’ll be diving into Dr. Halsey’s involvement from a distance as she now has access to Cortana. It’ll be interesting to see just how much Cortana’s relationship with Chief changes as a result of this staff switch-up; whether that ends up being a negative or a positive is basically up for grabs at this point.

With episode four being a bit on the slower side, this week’s installation of Halo brought in some much-needed action on the battlefield while still working on the plot with Chief and the keystone.

On Eridanus II, we’re visiting the Reach for Life Installation, which is basically a nature-based school for children. With all of the kids in uniforms, it basically looks like a weird child cult. However, it turns out this is a bit of earlier Eridanus II, as we’re following a much younger Dr. Halsey, who seems to be touring the school (slyly scouting for kids).

They’re basically in a large, fenced-in area where they can explore gardening, climbing, and other outdoor activities. A young Master Chief is up above on some precariously raised platforms and is being teased by another boy. However, when the boy almost falls off, Chief is able to save him from a deathly fall by lifting him up, which is seen by Dr. Halsey. She’s impressed by the school and asks her husband what he thinks; though he outwardly seems interested, it’s clear that he’s not so sure about Chief. At that moment, we cut to the present, showing this man as one of the captains of the UNSC.

Dr. Miranda Keyes arrives on Eridanus, as well as Kai and the other Spartans, who are setting off to join Chief. It turns out that the man from before is her father, Captain Keyes, and they head off to a temporary UNSC camp to find Halsey and her new discovery: the second keystone. Cortana informs Chief that this keystone has an energy power much greater than the original one found on Madrigal. Upon hearing that, Halsey directs him and the others to stay away from it, as its power could be potentially dangerous.

Adrienn Szabo / Paramount+

At this point, we check back in with Kwan and Soren, who have made it to the Okjungdong Basin on Madrigal after having fled the situation with Vinsher’s troops. The motorcycle that they stole broke down, so Soren decides to walk around and find another vehicle, chaining Kwan to the dead motorcycle with one handcuff to keep her from leaving.

Back on Eridanus, Chief spots Kai’s new hair color and thinks something might be up with her, so he goes over and asks her to take a walk with him. He immediately asks her when she removed her emotional-suppressing pellet, to which she admits, “After I saw you remove yours.” She gets extremely honest with him, admitting to loving the new perspective she has on life, yet all Chief offers up in return is informing her that he’ll be unable to clear her for combat as she’s distracted. It’s a bit of a double standard, though, as Chief has removed his pellet, as well, and is not barring himself from combat.

We focus on Kwan, who’s now picking up the motorcycle and walking around (very slowly), though it eventually falls to the ground with her. On the ground, she attempts numerous times to remove herself from the handcuffs, and after tons of tries, she is able to free herself.

After Chief approaches Captain Keyes about the issues he’s been having with Dr. Halsey, Keyes and Halsey have a meeting with Admiral Parangosky, who’s very concerned about the emotional situation with Chief. Halsey informs her that the situation is under control, though Captain Keyes denies this, telling Parangosky that Chief remembers Halsey being in his house as a child.

“You’re willing to tell the committee anything they need to hear as long as you get what you want, and now you’ve put all of us at risk,” Parangosky tells her. “I’m cutting you off.”

After that statement, Halsey brings up a mysterious Admiral Hood, to who she basically threatens to tell all of this as a form of blackmail, which Parangosky isn’t too pleased about. Ultimately, Parangosky gets Halsey to agree to handle the situation with Chief in the way that she wants. As a result of all this conflict, Captain Keyes wants their daughter taken off the project, which they both agree on.

Adrienn Szabo / Paramount+

Back on Eridanus with the keystone, they’re just cutting into it when a high-pitched, sonic boom bursts out of the stone, sending a massive blast through the area and basically destroying everyone’s eardrums in the process. The sound is so loud that it messes with the electrical services and computers, and just as that continues, the Covenant is able to pick up a signal, which makes Makee fall to the floor as she’s extremely sensitive to the keystone.

Chief runs to the cave just in time to see the crystal around it break, revealing just the keystone. Dr. Keyes is able to pick up some data on it once the computers start working, confirming that the sound was putting out a signal to something else. After revealing that the keystones could be part of something entirely different than just two halves, her father takes her off the project for safety reasons.

Chief asks Cortana to fetch the files about his adoption, though there are none in the database as the plague wiped them all out. In addition, there are no archives about the Spartan program, which Chief also finds odd. Out of anger, he touches the keystone even though it could potentially kill him. He immediately has new memories, including that of him being brought to the Spartan program as a child. He sees Halsey, who injects him with something, but at that moment, his hands leave the keystone and he falls to the ground.

Halsey walks in and he immediately tells her that she kidnapped him as a child, though she wants to table this discussion for the time being, as the main objective is to bring the keystone back to Reach. Extremely angered by having to put off this conversation, Chief jumps up to attack Halsey, though Cortana shuts off his neural bridge just in time to stop him.

On Madrigal, Soren rides back to the spot where Kwan is supposed to be, though he finds nothing but the broken-down motorcycle. As he gets closer to the motorcycle, Kwan comes up behind him and shocks him with some sort of taser device, causing him to fall on top of the motorcycle. She steals his pistol to shoot him, but we cut over to Chief waking up before seeing what happens.

Cortana lets him know what happened, and while they’re arguing, she notifies him that a Slipspace rupture was detected, meaning that the Covenant is near. Ah, finally, some much-needed action.

Adrienn Szabo / Paramount+

The Covenant launches an all-out attack on the UNSC as they’re looking to retrieve the keystone. They immediately destroy the Pioneer ship that was meant to bring the keystone back—whoops. The new order at hand is to transport the keystone to the smaller ship that Dr. Keyes is on, which is a bit of a lengthy transport to reach via Warthog.

While it was initially just an aerial attack via Banshees and other ships, the aliens of the Covenant are now dropping down, making it much harder to transport the keystone. Also, unfortunately, it looks like there was a major explosion on Dr. Reyes’ ship, leaving her injured along with a new change of direction for the keystone, which is now headed to Halsey’s ship.

On the battlefield, it turns out that Chief was right about Kai’s state of mind, as her heart rate drastically increases, causing her to freeze in the middle of combat while being hit by gunfire. Seeing this unfolding from afar, Chief’s emotions get the better of him, which leads him to jump onto a Banshee to bring him to Kai. He’s able to crash the banshee into one of the main Covenant ships, sending a shockwave through the area and clearing it of aliens—temporarily.

Many of them stand up and start attacking Chief, who works his way through the crowd to get to Kai. Though he saves her from the Covenant, the keystone has somehow ended upright in the middle of the battlefield (?) and he has to sprint to save it from being taken by them. However, they drop down an absolutely enormous alien who takes it back up to the ship with ease. Before completely leaving, they drop down a pod with Makee, who falls to the floor pretty randomly; I honestly don’t know what they’re going to do with her.

As a whole, this probably dethrones episode three from being the best of the series, as this one had just the right balance of, well, everything. Now, I’m not saying that the Kwan story is boring, but we were focusing a little too much on it in the previous episodes for how little was actually happening with its plot. What was sprinkled in of her story in this episode was the exact, perfect amount, as Chief’s story is what we need to be focusing on at the moment.

It was definitely refreshing to see a bit more of Cortana, as her relationship with Chief is gaining more structure with each episode. On top of that, the backstory with Dr. Halsey and Chief is proving to be one of the most interesting, as the series is giving us just enough information to hold us over until the next episode. While I would’ve preferred even more action, the last 15 minutes were the most exhilarating so far, providing an even more dynamic battle scene than the one we saw in the first episode.