Characters / Halo (2022)

This page covers the various characters appearing in the Halo franchise's "Silver Timeline" established by the 2022 TV series. For the characters as they appear in the mainline continuity of the franchise, see the main Halo character index.

Beware of spoilers on all of these pages.

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SPARTAN Program

SPARTAN-IIs

In General

The SPARTAN-IIs are the pinnacle of humanity — Super Soldiers who were recruited as children with key physical and psychological markers, then placed through intense training, surgical augmentation, and given Powered Armor to make them nigh unstoppable in combat.

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• Composite Character: In the games, the different Spartan programs are largely All There in the Manual. There are obvious generational differences, but the specifics are not explained and they are all just referred to as Spartans. The show largely follows the same idea. In the main canon, the SPARTAN-II candidates knew they were taken from their homes to be trained, but a combination of Halsey having very precise psychological markers for every individual, having their advanced training let them excel in ways few people can comprehend, and a comprehensive education to make them Genius Bruisers had them grow up to be unusually affable despite their size and power. The IIs were also Consummate Professionals who had no sense of ego (though sometimes enjoyed their status as awesome Super Soldiers). The SPARTAN-IIIs were made without Halsey's involvement and most candidates were angry orphans given truncated training and augmentation, which made them more stern and antisocial. The Spartans in the show have the origin, training and education of the SPARTAN-IIs, but they were deceived into thinking they were orphans, their augmentation included some memory wipes and Emotion Suppression, while also demonstrating some Interservice Rivalry between teams and Jerk Jock-esque banter that gave them some off-putting behaviors more like the SPARTAN-IIIs.
• Covered in Scars: Spartans are shown to be covered by two kinds of scars, surgical ones leftover from the augmentation process and healed-over wounds from years of violent combat.
• Gentle Giant: A combination of good genetics and augmentation at a young age make most Spartans exceptionally tall and muscular. But outside of combat and the bubble they maintain at home, Spartans are very quiet and keep to themselves, bordering on being shy and withdrawn. Ackerson even notes that their deadly reputations belie how fragile they really are.
• Harmful to Minors: They were all taken from their homes under the age of ten, surgically altered and trained to be super soldiers from the get go, and had their emotions suppressed to ensure total loyalty. By the time they were teenagers they were either absurdly powerful, or the augmentations mutilated or killed them.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: Each Spartans' Mjolnir Powered Armor suit is different from each other in big and small ways. They all appear to have the same undersuit, chest armor, forearms and leg designs, though custom fitted to their body, but have differing helmets, shoulder armor and other modifications relative to their specialty.
• Shoot the Dog: One training exercise saw the individual Spartans given a pet ranging from cats to birds to pigs, then had both them and their animal thrown into the wilderness to survive as part of a competition. Whoever gets in last place has their pet taken from them, and the exercise is repeated. Vannak appeared to have never lost, but at the end all animals were killed anyway to ensure the Spartans stayed loyal to each other and nothing else.
• Super-Strength: Their physical augmentations make them signficantly stronger than regular humans, so much so that a casual backhand can send a grown man flying. This is amplified further by their MJOLNIR armor.
• Super-Toughness: Their bodies are covered in surgical scars because their bones are fused with ceramics and their skin has a subdermal mesh, making them much more resistant to blunt trauma and other forms of damage. A normal person struck Kai in the head with a pipe and she barely flinches, and Master Chief took punches to the face from a fully armored Vannak and was able to rebound quickly. Without their armor Spartans can even survive hits from Covenant plasma weapons in non-vital areas and keep moving, if badly impaired, compared to ordinary humans who explode on any direct hit.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Other than Master Chief, the Spartans depicted are not from the established game canon but taken from deeper archives within 343 Industries. The original naming convention for Spartan fireteams were color based such as Blue and Red, while the show uses metals^note albeit ones with names that tend to be used for colors like Silver and Cobalt.
• Theme Naming: SPARTAN-II fireteams are named after metals, such as Silver and Cobalt.
• Training from Hell: All Spartans were recruited and given military bootcamp as young as six years old. By the time they were teenagers they were surgically augmented to be faster, stronger and more durable than any human could be, but the procedure resulted in deformations and even death to many of the recruits.

Silver Team

In General

A Spartan fireteam lead by John-117 with Kai-125, Riz-028 and Vannack-134.

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• Badass Crew: The best of the best the UNSC has, and with enough Covenant kills racked up in their name to back up their credentials.
• Band of Brothers: They trained and fought side by side since they were kids and thus regard each other as family, at least as much as their Emotion Suppression would allow. A real tragedy in the second season was that Ackerson was able to sow discord through Gaslighting them that Chief had been compromised by Cortana and Makee.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Downplayed. Part of their conditioning is that they're unflinchingly loyal to the UNSC generally and Dr. Halsey specifically. The latter is important because she instituted a secret order for the Spartans, the Zed Protocol, that overrides all directives and makes them answerable only to her. Upon its activation, they will engage anyone, even their fellow Spartans, if Halsey orders them to do so. Only Chief and Kai avoid this due to their hormonal pellets being absent.
• Canon Foreigner: With the exception of Master Chief, the entire team is original to the show.
• Composite Character: Given the Alternate Continuity of the series mix-and-matching aspects of the original canon, Silver Team not only obviously takes elements from Blue Team given their association with Master Chief, but fulfill aspects of Noble Team from Halo: Reach within the plot during the Fall of Reach proper (such as exploring the Visegrad relay to confirm Covenant presence, leading the charge against the Covenant invasion, and so on) ^note compared to Blue Team's Late to the Tragedy where they showed up during the later stages of the invasion of Reach (to the point of barely being on the surface of the planet to take part of the disastrous ground war that killed most of the Spartans) after being caught with their pants down during preparation to carry out Operation RED FLAG to hopefully end the war.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Most of their members wear black armor, but they're on the side of the good guys. Mostly.
• Emotion Suppression: Each Spartan has a device in their spine that's designed to numb their senses and emotions, allowing for complete focus during combat. Chief takes his out after being informed about its purpose by Soren, though not until he realizes that it is affecting his ability to interact with the Keystone. Then it turns out that Halsey had another reason for the pellets being there; it means the Spartans never question orders, even if she orders them to act directly against the interests of the UNSC.
• Genius Bruiser: The team may look like ruthless killers on the surface, but they're just as smart as they are deadly. On their off time, they're seen sharpening their mental skills (like playing a memory game at rapid speeds and playing several games of chess simultaneously). They will also write research papers and are quite adept at analyzing and deciphering the alien technology and environments they find themselves in.
• Manchurian Agent: Their augmentations included memory wipes of their childhood and an emotional suppression pellet to null their senses, making them always on-mission and hyper-efficient regarding orders. While they appear to still have some autonomy, Dr. Halsey also built in a backdoor override to all orders called "Zed Protocol" which makes them assume all upper UNSC leadership is compromised and they respond only to her commands. While not quite mind control, as Kai realized something was wrong because she removed the pellet, this makes Vannak and Riz act out of character even for them to the point they do not even question turning on Master Chief.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Colonel Ackerson had reasoned the current generation of Spartans were too costly to send on vital missions and developed a new generation of Spartans that are cheaper and far more numerous. He might have considered bringing all of Silver Team along to train the new Spartans but since Master Chief was a lot more confrontational over leadership decisions he covered up Chief's assertions that the Covenant had found Reach in order to sow discord in the team. He managed to recruit Kai alone to train the new Spartans and took everyone's armor off world, leaving the remaining members to die when the Covenant invaded while having plenty of material to inspire new recruits to "avenge" Master Chief.

MCPO John-117

Master Chief Petty Officer John-117

Portrayed by: Pablo Schreiber

Voiced by: Raúl Anaya (Latin-American Spanish dub)

A SPARTAN supersoldier hailed by UNSC propaganda as humanity's greatest weapon against the Covenant. After an encounter with a strange alien artifact on the planet Madrigal, long-buried memories of his begin to emerge, prompting erratic behavior that terrifies the UNSC leadership.

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• The Ace: He's been nicknamed "Humanity's Best Hope" by the UNSC and "The Demon" by the Covenant for his unquestionable combat skills and reducing Covenant hordes to nothingness without even breaking a sweat. Case in point? When he and his team arrive on Madrigal, they slaughter the entire Covenant platoon in minutes—the same platoon that tore through 150 colonists just as quickly.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: While the Chief of the main timeline also went through some truly reprehensible abuse at the hands of the UNSC, his Silver Timeline counterpart has an additional ordeal laid on him: having the memories of his life before the SPARTAN program forcibly suppressed. While the game version of Chief has come to grips with it for a long time and knows nothing else, the show version of Chief is outraged at learning the truth.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: In this series, he's had previous (and unremembered) experience with Forerunner technology.
• Adaptational Jerkass: It was noted in the main canon that Spartan-IIs, John included, are disarmingly friendly because of Halsey's insistence they get a comprehensive education. It was the Spartan-IIIs that tended to be more aloof, anxious and unstable due to being more focused on combat training above everything else. In the show, the Spartans are notably ruthless; their emotions have been suppressed which makes them dismissive of human matters. This makes them asocial even to fellow soldiers and willing to ignore the needs of civilians if they have another mission at hand. In the books, when John first learned about Cortana, he expressed numerous concerns about her that Halsey explained in detail before they first interact, where he is more open to her presence. Here, these concerns are expressed in front of Cortana herself, making him come across more callous.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: While Forerunner artifacts and outposts exist across many different worlds, the game version of Chief doesn't know anything about them until they reach Halo. In the show, he had encountered one such artifact as a child on his homeworld, but the memory of it was suppressed by his Spartan augmentations.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Unlike the video-game version of Master Chief — who always speaks in Danger Deadpan — this version of the character is more expressive with his voice and even removes his helmet to show that he has perceptible emotions.
• Animal Motif: Wolves, which he has as his emblem, is shown drawing them as a child, and playing with a dog that looks a lot like a wolf (likely a Husky or an Alaskan Malamute).
• Apologetic Attacker: He apologises to two ONI guards assigned to him before knocking them out with a single punch each.
• Blind Obedience: He and the other Spartans have been conditioned to follow orders without question, believing that their superiors are giving these orders in good faith regardless of how it might appear to him on the ground. The artifact and Kwan start to snap him out of this mindset. While he does go back to the UNSC to warn them about a bigger threat, he's still breaking protocol behind everyone's backs, with only Halsey and Cortana being made aware of what he's doing.
• Born Lucky: John won ten coin toss games with Halsey when they first met, and his luck has held from then on.
• Broken Pedestal: Whatever respect and admiration he had for Dr. Halsey goes out the window when the second artifact brings back the memories of him being kidnapped by the UNSC on her directive. She tries to calm him down to no avail, and would have been pulverized had Cortana not shut down his brain. Even when he's brought back, he still wants to tear her apart. Later, when given the chance, he locks her in a decontamination unit that he sabotages — though that's more to test if Cortana can truly take control of him, and reveals that he never had any intent to kill her.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: One of the most robust and skilled Spartans while also one of the more stoic, he nonetheless has his moments to show a kinder side. He's remarkably gentle with Soren's son Kessler, and his interactions with Corporal Perez center a lot on helping her deal with Survivor's Guilt.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Played With. When Kwan reveals Chief killed her mother, he has no recollection of the target, but he does remember the details of the mission — kill all Insurrectionists due to a possible bomb threat.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: He's lost a number of friends and placed in a position of both a position of leadership and morale boosting legend for the entire UNSC. The focus on his sworn duty above all else means that he doesn't necessarily have the healthiest response to trauma, always in a mindset of either fighting or regrouping to fight again. When Vannak is killed he refused to acknowledge the body or offer a burial until pushed into it by others.
• Consummate Professional: Due to his training and behavioral modifications, he has a hyperfocus on the current mission, whether combat related or more casual, and takes everything as equally serious. When Soren's son playfully marks him with a smiley face stamp as sign of friendship, John's response is to take a knee and express gratitude for that trust.
• Crossing the Burnt Bridge: Despite going AWOL and knowing the consequences, he returns to Reach of his own volition to warn them of the threat posed by keystone should the Covenant find them all.
• Deadpan Snarker: He develops a snarky rapport with Cortana. His overt attempts at humor fall flat, however.
• Determinator: When he goes AWOL, the UNSC try cutting the oxygen in his suit and the ship he's in. He just powers through and commandeers the vessel while also restoring the air.
• The Dreaded: The Spartans in general and the Chief specifically are feared by human and Covenant alike. He's not called "Demon" by the Elites for nothing.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • His cold, merciless attitude aside, he draws the line at killing Kwan, though only after the artifact has broken his unthinking adherence to duty.
  • Once he learns the truth about how he was "recruited" into the SPARTAN program, he's absolutely disgusted at his caretaker.
• The Faceless: Within the franchise this is subverted, after spending most of the first episode in full armor he takes off his helmet in full view for everyone (both in the show and the audience) to see and is generally out of armor more than in it. Within the narrative of the series, The Master Chief is known by his Mjolnir armor and most soldiers even at Fleetcom have never met him personally. During the siege of Reach, Keyes offers a Rousing Speech and invites John out of armor to stand beside him, introducing everyone there to see the face of Master Chief and know they are fighting together.
• A Father to His Men: He's the leader of Silver Team and the highest-ranking Spartan, which he takes very seriously. When Kai is overwhelmed in a battle his response was to charge the enemy line and crush the head of the Elite attacking her. When he recognizes something has gone wrong he defies orders to go after Cobalt Team.
• Fugitive Arc: He has a number of moments when he defies orders and becomes wanted by the UNSC.
  • The UNSC order him to kill Kwan and he refuses due to the Forerunner artifact messing with his emotional state. When they try to bring him in, he escapes with their target in tow. He ends up going back when the goals of the Covenant are made clear to him, but still leaves Kwan in safe hands with Soren.
  • He becomes convinced that the Covenant have found Reach and deploys Silver Team without orders. Afterwards they are relieved of duty and Chief is assigned to a psych evaluation, which he slips away from (after beating down his escorts) to seek an alternative channel for his information.
  • After the defeat of Reach Chief is presumed dead but, due to ONI sabotaging the counteroffensive and civilian evacuation causing infinitely more lives lost, his return is much more hostile.
• Harmful to Minors: He was kidnapped from his home at a young age, had his memories of his old life forcibly suppressed, then surgically altered to become a living weapon for the UNSC.
• In-Series Nickname: Like in the games, the Covenant refers to him as "The Demon" for having slaughtered much of their numbers.
• Large and in Charge: All Spartans are unusually tall, towering over regular marines, but John is notably a few inches above the other members of Silver Team.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The procedure that made him into the Spartan we know locked the memories of his life away. When the Forerunner artifact starts unlocking them, he starts acting far different than normal. And once said memories become fully recovered, he almost kills Halsey.
• The Leader: Of Silver Team.
• Living Legend: He is the Face of the Spartan program, inasmuch his armor and helmet is better known than his actual appearance. This gives him just a little more leeway when he begins acting erratic due to the Forerunner artifact, as the discovery he isn't a perfect, unstoppable soldier would do a lot of harm to moral.
• Military Maverick: In Season Two, John goes fully into Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! territory once his concerns about the Covenant's knowledge of Reach is dismissed by Ackerson, forcing him to take into his own hands a method that would prove to the brass that the Covenant is mobilizing to attack Reach. However, Chief is already far too late to do anything about it as he's detained after coming up emptyhanded, not that it would have mattered as High Command was already well aware to begin with and was in the process of abandoning Reach anyway and makes his effort in breaking protocol All for Nothing.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: He carries every order the UNSC gives him without question. It's when he refuses to kill Kwan that something's revealed as off with him.
• No Social Skills: It's clear that years of military conditioning and bloody warfare haven't exactly done wonders for Chief's socialization. Even after removing his helmet he has difficulty emoting and engaging in anything but the most perfunctory conversation.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: He turns out to be one of few humans able to interact with Forerunner artifacts. This is what keeps Halsey from having Cortana completely take him over, as she worries doing so would cut off their access to the Keystone.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: It's not like Chief to disobey orders, let alone ones to kill. The fact he refuses to kill Kwan reveals that something in his conditioning has broken.
• Platonic Prostitution: In Season 2, it's revealed he's started frequenting a lounge for erotic holographic services to try and recreate Cortana and the rapport he'd built with her in Season 1.
• Secret-Keeper: While he refused to aid in his defection beyond giving him a 5 minute head start, John deliberately kept Soren's intended destination secret from the UNSC in order to give him a chance, and continues to keep his location and survival a secret after returning to Reach.
• Scars Are Forever: The opening sequence shows the numerous surgical scars he has on his body.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Being ordered to kill Kwan drives him to go AWOL.
• Self-Surgery: He uses a knife to pull an emotional suppression device out of his back.
• The Stoic: Before touching the artifact, he's calm, rarely shows emotion, and is more focused on the job at hand. It's when he stops being this way that red flags are set off at the UNSC.
• Throw-Away Guns: He defaults to the MA 5 assault rifle as the weapon he first heads into combat, but tends to switch to something else as it progresses.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Much of the conflict in the second season is him coming to terms with whether he should remain to his duty as a soldier in service of the UNSC or stand in opposition of a clearly manipulative government more interested in their Head-in-the-Sand Management than acknowledge they are in open warfare with an alien threat knocking on their door that they have little chance of defeating. By the season finale, John decides to commit to Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! and Take a Third Option instead by fighting in defense of mankind but by his rules of engagement rather than ONI's by the time he lands on the Halo ring.
• Undying Loyalty: To Dr. Halsey. It may be a part of his conditioning, but he admits she's the only person in the UNSC he trusts to do the right thing. Or it was the case until he learned she was the reason for him being made a SPARTAN in the first place.
• Unstoppable Rage: With his hormonal pellet extracted, he becomes a far greater danger when he gets mad. After he learns the truth about him being chosen for the SPARTAN program and tries to attack the woman responsible, Halsey would have likely been popped like a zit had she not gotten Cortana to shut Chief down in that moment. An Elite who was on the verge of killing Kai was not so fortunate, as Chief smashes its face in to the point his teammate is horrified.
• When He Smiles: Experiencing a flood of memories in his own childhood home cause John to smile, probably for the first time in ages, at the happy times he had.

PO1 Kai-125

Petty Officer First Class Kai-125

Portrayed by: Kate Kennedy

Voiced by: Miriam Aceves (Latin-American Spanish dub)

A Spartan who serves as the Silver Team's sniper.

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• Canon Foreigner: Has no game counterpart to speak of.
• Composite Character: She takes the sniper role of Linda from Master Chief's Blue Team in the original canon, but ends up with a role where she trains a new generation of Spartans, similar to Kurt for the SPARTAN-IIIs and Jun for the Spartan IV's.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: She adds two streaks of red to her hair using gun oil after removing her hormonal pellet. It's described as a mild act of defiance.
• Freak Out: She's accustomed to combat with a pellet in her spine that mutes her emotions, artificially giving her Nerves of Steel. After she removes that pellet, when a battle starts going wrong she has a panic attack and unable to do much before getting overwhelmed. With a few more episodes learning to comprehend her new emotions she's managed to retain her cool again.
• Friendly Sniper: Takes this role for her team, keeping from afar and providing support, but also proves to be more outgoing and social than the others.
• Genki Girl: Relative to a Spartan, when she removed a hormonal inhibiter pellet in her back her personality starts developing into someone more brash and enthusiastic. It's especially notable seeing her excitedly describe the mechanics of a Needler while Vannak and Riz remain The Stoic.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Kai, seeing the Curb-Stomp Battle that the Covenant are inflicting upon the UNSC fleet that arrived as The Cavalry, decides to stay behind on board the cruiser instead of leaving with Master Chief and the surviving SPARTAN-IIIs, doing a ramming maneuver instead on the assault carrier leading the fleet to even the tide of the battle. That said, she is shown to still be relatively intact drifting in space in the closing moments, leaving it uncertain for the time being if she survived her kamikaze run.
• Not So Above It All: After recovering from her battle injuries, she casually pulls a engine with a chain lift, and later a fully loaded Warthog, to bet money on, showing how she's bonded with the troops now that her emotions have been restored.
• Number Two: She is generally viewed as the closest with John-117 and is the second highest ranking officer of Silver Team.
• Odd Friendship: Begins to form one with Miranda Keyes over shared frustrations with Dr. Halsey after she removes her hormonal pellet.
• Sense Freak: Not to the same extent as John, but she's clearly thrilled at the new wave of emotion and feeling she begins to experience after removing her hormonal pellet, particularly when gushing about her favorite Covenant weapons to Miranda.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Her role as a female sniper makes her similar to Linda-058 from the main canon's Blue Team.
• Undying Loyalty: As with the rest of Silver Team, she will follow the Chief's lead no matter what. When she sees him secretly removing his hormonal pellet, she follows suit shortly afterwards, despite it being strictly forbidden. Because of that, she's the only one of her team not to question the Chief's loyalty when Halsey activates the Zed Protocol and orders the others to turn on him. Even during the second season when she suspects the loss of Cortana has negatively affected him, she ultimately believes him when he reveals the truth behind the Fall of Reach.

LTJG Riz-028

Lieutenant Junior Grade Riz-028

Portrayed by: Nathasha Culzac

Voiced by: Adriana Loza (Latin-American Spanish dub)

A Spartan who is Silver Team's scout and hand-to-hand combat expert.

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• Ascended Extra: She gets significantly more focus and character in the second season following the removal of her pellet and the injuries she received at the end of the first season.
• Canon Foreigner: Doesn't have any counterpart in the prime reality.
• Career-Ending Injury: After being injured in the first season finale she has notable lingering pain she is trying to hide. In the battle of Reach she ends up shot in the back, she barely survives but after surgery is on crutches and clearly incapable of further Spartan-level action. She decides to retire and join the community on Aleria, knowing she would be a hinderance to whatever fight Chief sets out for and wants to build a new life.
• Communications Officer: Her armor has a prominent antenna on the helmet and backpack, allowing her to facilitate communication as the team's recon and scout.
• Cunning Linguist: It's said that she knows most of the languages and dialects on UNSC colonies. She also picked up a few alien phrases used by Covenant enemies in battle, which proved to be helpful with Miranda's efforts to translate Sanghelli.
• Dented Iron: She sustains horrific injuries at the end of Season 1 that leave her with chronic pain and mobility issues. She's does what she can to hide it and maybe pushes herself too far to prove she's okay, from climbing a rock cliff in the rain to jumping out of a building you can see her clutch her side before pushing forward. In Season 2 she's further crippled while recovering Vannak's body, barely surviving and requiring crutches following her surgery.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: After getting injured by a sticky grenade she's recovered enough to go back into the field but is suffering chronic pain that's she's trying to hide from everyone else. They all know she's struggling but her pride is on the line, and rejects Kai's suggestion to get the pellet implanted again to help with the pain. Louis calls her out on this, berating the Spartans as warriors who won't admit they need help.
• Guns Akimbo: The opening mission has her field dual magnums as her primary firearms, using them effectively against the Elites. She does so again while diving towards a squad of Jackals to recover Vannak's body.
• Hidden Depths: The post-Episode 3 version of the series' official website^note The website is something of an ARG that changes and updates with every episode reveals that during her shore leave she wrote and submitted for publication (under an "approved pseudonym") a research paper about applications of genetic modification in wildlife conservation.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Her role as recon and scout makes her similar to Kelly-087 from the main canon's Blue Team.

LTJG Vannak-134

Lieutenant Junior Grade Vannak-134

Portrayed by: Bentley Kalu

Voiced by: Carlos Reynoso (Latin-American Spanish dub)

A Spartan who is Silver Team weapons and assault expert.

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• Animal Motifs: In the first season a story is shared of Spartan training where a pet was given to each recruit and subsequently taken away if they lose a competition, and Vannak never lost (though his pet was killed anyway to prevent outside attachments). The second season after getting his pellet removed he admits to appreciating animal documentaries, and is later shown feeding pigeons he all had names for. Birds can be seen flying during his death scene, and again on Aleria for his funeral.
• The Big Guy: Chunkier looking even by Spartan standards, and can deadlift an Elite impaled on a pipe and toss it a fair distance.
• Big Guy Fatality Syndrome: He's the first of Silver Team to die in the series, defending the Chief from the Arbiter.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: After pulling his pellet, he confesses that he's started watching programs about animals but doesn't go into specifics. He's also shown feeding pigeons at FLEETCOM.
• Canon Foreigner: Has no counterpart in the games.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Episode 4 reveals that his study of Elite plasma swords helped the UNSC Marine Corps develop stronger shielded vests.
  • Following the removal of his pellet, he begins watching programs about animals.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He clearly enjoys using the Needler, and grabs one and fires at the Arbiter to protect the wounded Master Chief. The Arbiter yanks out one of the shards embedded in his armor and stabs Vannak with it.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The Arbiter stabs him in the heart with a Needler round that Vannak shot him with, which then explodes and kills him.
• Not So Above It All: Even with the pellet in place, he dryly acknowledges Kai's joke that a particular phrase might be the Sangheili name for a needler, or it might mean "Oh, Crap!", given that they hear it when a Spartan picks one up. He clearly enjoys using the Needler when he gets the opportunity.
  Oh yes, come to Papa.
• Pipe Pain: He arms himself with a long piece of pipe when his DMR isn't too effective against Elite shields. Managing to impale it easily and lift it up before discarding it.
• Scary Black Man: From the Covenant's perspective, certainly. He's the largest of the Spartans (who are all significantly larger than the average human already) and has easily the deepest voice of any human character in the show. His helmet also looks the most intimidating when the Spartans are in full armor.
• Smart People Play Chess: He's shown playing a multi-tiered chess game with Riz when John returns to the barracks. In addition, the post-Episode 3 version of the series' official website^note The website is something of an ARG that changes and updates with every episode reveals that during his shore leave, he made an unauthorized connection to the civilian internet to compete in ranked chess matches.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: His role as the CQC specialist makes him similar to Frederic-104 from the main canon's Blue Team. His status as The Big Guy, his numerical designation, and death are also evocative of Samuel-034.
• Undying Loyalty: To the Master Chief. When the Chief goes rogue, Vannak is convinced that he had a good reason and never wavers. He also accepts without a second thought that Silver Team may have to fire upon UNSC personnel after Halsey orders them to protect him at all costs.
  "If they go after Chief, they're not friendlies."
• The Worf Effect: Killed by the Arbiter, establishing the Elite as a considerable threat.
• Worf Had the Flu: As the Spartans were without their armor when Reach was attached, Vannak was unarmored and easily impaled by a single Needler shard. Had he been suited up, he'd have easily shrugged off the blow.

Cobalt Team

In General

A Spartan team introduced in season two.

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• Interservice Rivalry: They have an intense rivalry with Silver Team, believing Dr. Halsey played favorites and they exchange some aggressive but semi-joking threats towards each other. That said, Master Chief doesn't engage with that talk and Cobalt shows immense respect for him personally.
• Sacrificial Lamb: They have a scene where they banter with Silver Team in the barracks, but otherwise demonstrate some personality and comradery with Chief. Communications with them go dark and Chief assumes the worst. They are next seen in the morgue with plasma burns.
• The Unfavorite: They are annoyed at being treated as second best while Halsey was in charge, and are overlooked for the doing the same type of evac missions that Silver Team gets paraded for.
• The Worf Effect: As a Spartan team very little can threaten them. When Master Chief gets wind that something is wrong he immediately deploys for a rescue mission, knowing the Covenant must be close. Visegrad confirms the Covenant easily killed them in an ambush regardless.

Val-015

Val-015

Portrayed by: Thomas Dominique

Leader of Cobalt Team.

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• Consummate Professional: While engaging with playful jokes, he does show Master Chief respect and affirms they will be on their toes with a routine comms array check.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: He's the leader of a rival Spartan team to Silver Team, and expresses joking annoyance over them getting all the credit for civilian evac missions.

Yaz-112

Yaz-112

Portrayed by: Karen Connell

Member of Cobalt Team.

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• Jerk Jock: She takes pleasure in getting Riz riled up, although neither Riz or Kai seem to appreciate the banter.

Karim-002

Portrayed by: Nathan Wiley

Member of Cobalt Team.

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• Jerk Jock: He and Yaz takes turns antagonizing Riz in a form of locker room insults.
• The Narcissist: He seems to have a heightened opinion of his looks, especially used to insult Riz.
• Oh, Crap!: While mocking Riz, Vannak says he is "Going to wear you like a sock" which earns a brief moment of fear from him.

Others

Louis-036

Portrayed by: Marvin 'Krondon' Jones III

A Spartan candidate who was blinded during the augmentation process. He remained with the program as a physical trainer and therapist.

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• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: He says that he didn't tell anybody about his fading vision because he didn't want the other candidates looking at him differently while he still had sight.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: He takes out a Wraith by rushing towards it with a bandolier of grenades.
• Handicapped Badass: The loss of his sight has not diminished his Spartan strength in the slightest, and he still works with the UNSC as a trainer. He is also lethal in combat by using his remaining senses to locate the Covenant and land accurate shots.
• Happily Married: He's found a very peaceful domestic life with his husband, and he enjoys every minute of it.
• Hiding the Handicap: He could tell his vision was fading as soon as he completed the augmentation process but he tried to ignore it and didn't tell anybody until he went completely blind.
• I Just Want to Be Special: A part of the reason he kept his encroaching blindness a secret: he wanted the chance to enjoy his augmentations and feel like a Spartan even if the opportunity only lasted a few days.
• Mellow Fellow: He exudes calmness and lets jabs against him just bounce off. He credits this with his seeking out help to deal with his personal anger and grief after going blind and losing the chance to see active service.
• Mythology Gag: The Fall of Reach explicitly mentioned that loss of sight was just one of the many possible risks of the augmentation process. Louis was unlucky enough to get hit with that very side effect.
• Nice Guy: Louis is probably the only guy in the UNSC who doesn't have a mean bone in his body, being open, understanding, and willing to help Riz with her problems.
• Sacrificial Lamb: He's given some screentime across multiple episodes with a longstanding relationship with Spartans like Riz, but he and his husband die early into the fight on Reach to make it clear the cost of the battle.
• Straight Gay: Louis remains devoted to his husband without any extravaganza concerning his marriage.
• Together in Death: After learning of his husband's death, he remains behind to fight the Covenant, dying in the process.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: With Riz struggling with her injuries and fearing for her future as a Spartan, Louis gently tries to show her that there is more to life than being a killing machine. He later welcomes her into his home to show that he's found love and settled into domestic bliss.

SPARTAN-IIIs

In General

Supposedly the next generation of SPARTAN Super Soldiers. Thousands are raised up from adult volunteers after the Fall of Reach to take the fight to the Covenant.

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• Adaptational Late Appearance: The SPARTAN-IIIs were introduced in the original canon in 2536, a little over a decade into the Human-Covenant War. The Silver Timeline's version appears after the Fall Of Reach.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Since the SPARTAN-IIIs primarily consist of internal recruits from the UNSC, they don't have their canon counterpart's strict adherence to their mission, and are notably more friendly and less aloof.
• Adapted Out: Noble Team, the most famous team of SPARTAN-IIIs from the canon and amongst the most notable defenders of Reach, aren't present in the Silver Timeline.
• Composite Character: The series' SPARTAN-IIIs compresses aspects of SPARTAN-IIIs and Spartan IV's. Ackerson was responsible for the SPARTAN-IIIs and they had hundreds of recruits in several companies taking orphans from the glassed colonies with a faster training turnaround, lesser augmentation and less advanced armor (sans the likes of Noble Team) but were also being deployed on missions years before the Fall of Reach. Spartan IV's showed up after the Human Covenant war and were established career soldiers with similar augmentation but using next generation MJOLNIR armor. Ackerson is still responsible for the third generation and they have the lesser armor, but are arriving fairly late in the timeline and appear to be standard recruits like the IV's. They don't appear to have any external augmentation either, which makes them more like better equipped soldiers like the ODST's.
• Decomposite Character: Because the SPARTAN-IIIs were introduced later than they were in canon, the SPARTAN-IIs picked up the former's trait of being aloof, anti-social, and focused on their duties.
• In Name Only: The canon SPARTAN-II Is were trained from childhood like the SPARTAN-I Is, and given lesser augmentations than their predecessors that still put them above the average human soldier. In contrast, the ones in the show are just normal adult soldiers, trained by SPARTA Ns (in this case, Kai) and equipped with power armor of their own.
• Suicide Mission: It's eventually revealed that the IIIs are meant to be entirely expendable, with ONI willing to throw hundreds, if not thousands, of them at Covenant forces. Unlike other Spartan generations they have no added augmentation and are focused on one goal using slightly better armor than standard troops. This is because they're meant to be a stop-gap until true successors to the SPARTAN-IIs can be trained and augmented.
• Theme Naming: SPARTAN-III fire teams are named after pointed ranged weapons like Javelin and Arrow.
• We Have Reserves: Because thousands can be raised up quickly, ONI — or namely Admiral Parangosky — is willing to throw enormous waves of SPARTAN-IIIs into no-hope situations and win battles through attrition. This is evident in that Corporal Perez, a communications officer with little combat experience, is among the first trainees. They aren't sending the best, they're sending as many as possible to get the job done.
• Zerg Rush: SPARTAN-IIIs are trained to use swarm tactics, with large teams attacking Covenant ships so that some can get past the defense cannons, those survivors then rushing the bridge, and any remaining delivering a data spike meant to disable the ships' systems.

Javelin Team

CPL. Talia Perez

Corporal Talia Perez

Portrayed by: Cristina Rodlo

A communications officer and linguistics specialist in the Navy.

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• Action Survivor: Her specialty is in communications and is not experienced in combat, next to Master Chief she can hardly do much except hide behind him. But while on the verge of a Freak Out several times, she is able to grit her teeth and help where she can.
• Adaptational Badass: Perez's canon counterpart never became a SPARTAN, whereas this one did.
• Ascended Extra: The name Corporal Perez came from a minor character from Halo 2, he was more of a Recurring Extra for some dialogue during the Battle of New Mombassa and Battle of Installation 5. Here Perez is given a Gender Flip to female and a recurring confidant with Master Chief personally. She even becomes a SPARTAN-III candidate.
• Communications Officer: She was introduced under Covenant attack while trying to access a comms array. She heard something in the static, though it took her multiple episodes to translate it.
• Morality Pet: While she does have a greater role in the story, much of her character is Master Chief having someone more "normal" to confide with.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: She's badly traumatised by losing her squad on Sanctuary.
• Sole Survivor: Of her squad on Sanctuary, with the others being killed by Elites. And later, tragically of her entire family.
• Took a Level in Badass: When introduced, she's a communications specialist who's never seen combat and can barely keep from freezing up when under assault. After experiencing the Fall of Reach, she volunteers for the SPARTAN-III program and becomes much more aggressive and able to keep her cool — at least in training simulations.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: She's noticeably more surly when training to become a SPARTAN-III, angrily confronting and talking back to Kai, despite the SPARTAN-II being her instructor and senior in rank.
• Trauma Conga Line: Her entire squad is killed, she sees the Arbiter's squad and Makee in the mist and questions her sanity, she's tormented by the message she intercepted on Sanctuary, and just as she begins to come to terms with it all, her family is killed and she effectively has to kill Keyes to get the last civilian transport off Reach.

United Nations Space Command

In General

The military and scientific branch of the UEG, its objective is to protect humanity. Alongside the UNSC is the Office of Naval Intelligence, ONI, which spearheaded the Spartan program and controls a lot more military decisions than officially known.

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• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Zig-zagged. The UNSC has always been portrayed as ruthless and authoritarian in the Halo expanded universe, particularly with regards to the SPARTAN program and the Office of Naval Intelligence, but the series generally chose to focus on their heroic defense of humanity, with their overall portrayal trending heavily towards antiheroic. The Silver Timeline retains this same moral ambiguity but gives much more focus and attention to their war crimes and oppression of the colonies, causing them to come across more as well-intentioned anti-villains.
  • In Season 2, this trait is given specifically to the Office of Naval Intelligence, when it's revealed Admiral Parangosky and Colonel Ackerson decided to not only abandoned Reach and let billions of people be slaughtered by the Covenant, but they go to extreme efforts to gaslight Master Chief and everyone he's allied with to keep word from leaking out. While they claim its a Cold Solution in a Hopeless War, as it's better to evacuate key personnel and equipment to give humanity a fighting chance, it's heavily implied they only care about saving their own necks and screwing over everyone else in the process. Later, it's revealed Parangosky is willing to sacrifice their entire program of SPARTAN-IIIs and a good chunk of their fleet to destroy Halo and wipe out the Covenant with them.
• Artifact Name: The UNSC was founded back before the United Nations reformed into the Unified Earth Government, but the name stuck out of tradition.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: As their villainous actions are given more focus here, it's revealed in Episode 4 that they gave their SPARTAN cadets pets, and would take them away if they failed a challenge to survive in the wilderness. Even if they did make it through all the way, they had them kill the animals to further detach them from anyone but their teammates.
• The Conspiracy:
  • They're determined to keep the truth behind the SPARTAN program's dubious methods a secret at any cost, knowing that they risk unleashing the wrath of several highly-trained super soldiers. Master Chief learning the truth proves that their paranoia about it isn't without justification, as Halsey would have been killed had she not directed Cortana to turn off Chief's brain. When it's exposed, they're quick to throw Halsey under the bus for it.
  • In Season 2, it's revealed ONI had predicted that the Covenant would eventually invade Reach. Rather than alert the public to evacuate them, they decide to sacrifice everyone to the Convent, deem the planet a lost cause, and gaslight Chief from finding out the truth while they evacuate all key personnel off world. Deconstructed, since it leaves all parties left behind horribly demoralized due to driving Chief to go rogue and leaving him out of armor when the invasion occurs, and it's highly implied they only kept the truth so they could save their own skins.
• Deadly Euphemism: Article 72, which calls for the execution of any threat to humanity. In Kwan's case, she's threatening to blame the UNSC for killing her people instead of falling in line and getting the Insurrection to fight against the Covenant.
• Good Is Not Soft: By and large, they're the "good guys" in this series, but only because the Covenant is bent on total genocide of humanity. Morally speaking, they kidnapped and altered human children into becoming super soldiers, and are willing to off the teenage daughter of a dead rebel leader, because they feel it's their best chance of survival. Kwan may be right that they're just an authoritarian regime in all but name, but they're no pushovers.
• Hypocrite:
  • Their top brass is not willing to let Dr. Halsey perform illegal science experiments (such as Cortana), but they're perfectly happy with ordering the murder of a teenaged girl because she won't fall in line, even though what they're doing is blatantly illegal in itself^note Specifically Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, which prohibits the inhumane treatment of prisoners, including torture and up to execution without a fair trial.
  • Though they claim to be working to protect all of humanity, ONI demonstrates in Season 2 that they're willing to screw over millions of humans if it means saving the few who could fight the war best, with the added implications its more or less about saving their own necks.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: They default to having Kwan Ha killed when she refuses to play ball, even though they've barely spent any time trying to convince her.
• One World Order: They are the military branch of the Unified Earth Government, a governing body formed out of the old United Nations that manages humanity's extrasolar colonies. The colonies aren't thrilled by this arrangement, especially the outermost colonies, which live in abject poverty due to the heavy tariffs and production quotas placed on them to support Earth and the inner colonies' massive resource consumption rates.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: They are, at best, a morally dubious galactic power who has no qualms about going to any lengths necessary to survive, but they genuinely want humanity to survive against the Covenant.
• Would Hurt a Child: When the teenage Kwan Ha, daughter of a now-deceased rebel leader, refuses to make a public statement urging cooperation with the UNSC (instead threatening to falsely blame them for the deaths of her friends and family unless they grant her homeworld independence), they immediately order her captor to execute her.

Dr. Catherine Halsey

Dr. Catherine Halsey

Portrayed by: Natascha McElhone

Voiced by: Rona Fletcher (Latin-American Spanish dub)

A genius scientist and the head of the SPARTAN program.

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• Adaptational Dye-Job: In the time period of the main games Halsey was either going grey or completely white, but usually shown to be a natural brunette. A few works, notably Halo Legends would depict her as a natural blonde. Here she is blonde in the present and in the past.
• Adaptational Villainy: Halsey proves to be the most antagonistic figure within the UNSC, as she has noble intentions but uses that to justify immoral actions and treasonous behaviors. While she is a complicated figure in the game canon, much of it being the Scapegoat for any ONI project she was involved with, she was always highly regarded by the SPARTAN-IIs. In the show when the truth of the Spartan program comes out none of Silver team take it well and become hostile to her. Her characterization here is closer to how she is portrayed in the Halo: Glasslands trilogy (where she is reviled by the main characters and treated as if she were a science-fiction Josef Mengele figure, even being referred to as such in-text) as opposed to her personality in the rest of canon. ^note In fact, she's shown here as being arguably worse than Parangosky, the head of ONI. Canon has Parangosky throw Halsey under the bus while using her research to do far worse things. Among other examples:
  • Canon Halsey does believe that her SPARTANS are the next step in human evolution, but unlike in the show, she's not particularly interested in directing said evolution.
  • Halsey is implied to have lied to the SPARTANS about them being orphans. With the exception of Glasslands, Halsey made a point of being honest to the SPARTAN-II trainees and explicitly told them the purpose of the project, and that they were kidnapped. Most of them didn't care.
• Age Lift: In the main canon, Dr. Halsey was responsible for creating the Spartan program 30+ years prior and was an elderly woman with gray hair by the time of the games. In this show, Halsey is reimagined as significantly younger, closer to 50 than 70.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: Halsey ends up being infected by a Flood spore during the second season finale but is placed into cryosleep before the infection can take root and transform her into a Flood form, leaving her in a curious position in hopes of finding a cure.
• Composite Character: Sort of. She overall resembles her game counterpart, but has blonde hair like her depictions in the Halo Legends anthology series and a British accent like Cortana was originally supposed to have in the games.
• Consummate Professional: She treats everyone with clipped, professional courtesy, only really showing warmth for her Spartans. Captain Keyes says she prefers to focus on business to the exclusion of all else. Considering that her own daughter is in the first group, this isn't always the best look for her.
• Control Freak: Described as such by Miranda, who notes that her mother has a grand vision for the future that she expects everyone to follow along with. Her creations that act cold and emotionless give her peace; if they don't, she gets very nervous, and will act to make them fall in line. Chief being such an example of going against her grand design demonstrates this.
• Evilutionary Biologist: A Downplayed example. Halsey is the mastermind behind the SPARTAN program, which secretly kidnapped and indoctrinated numerous young children across UNSC-controlled space so they could become merciless super-soldiers in their war against the Insurrection. But just like in the source material, the severity of Halsey's deeds are tempered by the fact that she maintains a motherly disposition towards her Spartans and goes out of her way to assure their safety even if it means superseding direct orders from her superiors.
• Face–Heel Turn: After the UNSC kick her out, Halsey decides she's going to use the Artifact and take control of the Halo for her own goals of forcing humanity's evolution, everyone else be damned. She thus activates a backdoor protocol in the other Spartans to force them to capture Chief and Makee and steal the artifact for herself, which is only foiled because Cortana couldn't stomach the idea.
• First-Name Basis: She is the only character to refer to the Spartans by their given name, rather than their rank or number designation. This gives her an unusually personal tone when interacting with them, as everyone else just views them as military hardware.
• For Science!: She pursues cloning and AI projects in spite of multiple orders and laws denying her permission, all because she thinks humanity is at an evolutionary dead end.
• Good Is Not Dumb: For being so consumed in her work, she's not blind to others trying to get her to fall in line. When Admiral Parangosky has Halsey's own daughter work on studying the artifact behind her back, she secretly hacks the servers and shuts them down to put Miranda behind while she conducts her own work. Even when she's kicked out of ONI, she's smart enough to leave herself backdoors.
• Hidden Depths: Despite the Adaptational Villainy she suffers in the Silver Timeline, during the Fall of Reach proper, Halsey receives an immense amount of pathos over the course of "Reach" as she witnesses the death and destruction all around her as Soren escorts her to safety, leading to a massive Break the Haughty when Keyes sacrifices himself to save civilians in an evac ship while she begs him to run, and finally breaks down when seeing the devastated skyline of the city during a lull between the combat, revealing for all of her ego in thinking herself the only one capable of saving mankind, she feels genuinely powerless to protect anyone when the chips are down.
• It's All About Me: Halsey's convinced herself she's the only person who can get humanity to evolve to a higher level of being, and no one else can possibly understand her goals. It's to the point that she's willing to turn on the entire UNSC rather than let them cut her out.
• Karma Houdini Warranty:
  • She was allowed to get away with virtually anything she wanted because of her connections to the admiralty, including flash-cloning herself to make Cortana and turning innocent kids into super soldiers through horrific means. Once John uncovers the truth and questions her about it, Halsey confesses to everything—which Parangosky uses to make her the scapegoat of the entire program and gets her Reassigned to Antarctica, stripped of privileges and clearances, and locked out of her own lab. That said, it's Downplayed due to her being clever enough to keep some backdoors available.
  • While she escapes the UNSC at the end of the first season, she's eventually captured and imprisoned not long before the second.
• Laser-Guided Karma: She's very enthusiastic about investigating the aliens who left the artifacts behind, but makes the mistakes of thinking the Forerunners and the Flood are connected and that the Flood spores they find are the key to Forerunner technology. In the season finale, she's infected by the Flood. For bonus points, she's potentially spared by being sealed in a cryotube by her daughter, who she had intentionally held back and seen as less intelligent.
• Last-Name Basis: Everyone refers to her as Halsey, including her own daughter Miranda.
• A Lighter Shade of Grey: The Spartan program was largely spearheaded by her and by any metric was unethical and immoral. In season one her efforts to stay ahead of other UNSC groups put her at odds with the likes of Parangosky, making the head of ONI come across as more moral and rational than her. But ONI was still the one who approved and bankrolled the Spartan program, making Halsey just one cog in a very sketchy organization. By season two Halsey is either a prisoner or fugitive, and Parangosky proves that Halsey was just one asset they struggled to control and are perfectly capable of horrible decisions on their own.
• Mama Bear:
  • She goes against direct orders to assure John's safety, ordering the other members of his unit to fire upon UNSC personnel if they pose a threat to him.
  • Even though she can barely be considered a parent to her biological daughter Miranda most of the time, when she sees Miranda in danger in the middle of a Covenant attack, she doesn't hesitate to run from the safety of her ship to help drag Miranda inside.
• Motherly Scientist: Par for the course in the franchise, she is the only person who always treats the Spartans as human (including other Spartans). She almost exclusively refers to them by name, both when talking to them directly and discussing them with others. Most other people refer to them by number, and fellow Spartans typically use their rank.
• Necessarily Evil: She views moral and legal barriers as something to bypass in pursuit of her higher goals, from the Spartan program and kidnapping children to the Cortana Project and making flash clones. There is no question that what she has done is morally wrong, but upon threat of being exposed she knows much of the UNSC leadership is equally culpable for letting her do it. She also freely admits that she has made numerous personal sacrifices, like ignoring Miranda, and is willing to sacrifice anything for her goals to pan out.
• Pet the Dog: As ruthless as she can be For Science!, she is not without her softer moments.
  • When Miranda came under Covenant attack Halsey didn't think twice about running out to help her to safety.
  • As with the games, she is also very affectionate towards her Spartans. She seems genuinely pleased to watch John's emotional journey after removing a hormonal pellet even though she is equally terrified of losing control of him.
  • When she sees Keyes about to give his life, she frantically tries to run to him and has to be dragged to safety by Soren.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Halsey feels, not without justification, that she can pretty much do whatever she wants because her work is absolutely vital to the survival of humanity, and enough high-ranking officers agree with her. She has no problem repeatedly ignoring orders and breaking laws in the pursuit of her Cortana AI, and feels comfortable demanding things at the drop of a hat with only the barest of explanations as to why. She does make an effort to be diplomatic when it counts, helped along by sympathetic officers. This grates on Parangosky, who would like to cut Halsey out but knows she can't, especially when Halsey is willing to namedrop Lord Hood, the most important single officer in the UNSC. It doesn't last forever though, as, even with blackmail, Parangosky is able to get her kicked out of ONI and shunted off elsewhere when John confronts her on the truth behind the program.
• Uncertain Doom: The second season finale sees her infected by the Flood and sealed in a cryotube by Miranda in an effort to slow or stop it long enough to find a cure.
• Would You Like to Know How They Died?: She tells Ackerson how his sister Julia died from the augmentation process for the Spartan program.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: For all her affection for John, she's willing to let Cortana take over him completely once Makee becomes available as a means of controlling the Keystones. Her willingness to sacrifice everything, even loved ones, in the pursuit of her goal had already been lampshaded a couple of times by her own family.

ADM. Jacob Keyes

Admiral Jacob Keyes

Portrayed by: Danny Sapani

Voiced by: Gerardo Reyero (Latin-American Spanish dub)

A captain and later admiral in the UNSC Navy, heavily involved in the activities of FLEETCOM and ONI. A close confidant of Dr. Halsey, a romantic engagement produced their daughter Miranda.

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• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • The Jacob Keyes of the source material was a Reasonable Authority Figure who had a tendency to bend or outright break protocol in order to do the right thing. The TV show's incarnation of Jacob on the other hand is portrayed as a By-the-Book Cop who genuinely believes the kill order put on Kwan by UNSC Command is a necessary evil for the sake of winning the war, much to the dismay of his daughter Miranda.
  • In the second episode, he's the one suggesting punishing the Master Chief once they retrieve him, while everyone else seems to think that doing so would hurt morale too much. In the games, Keyes is one of the Spartans' primary supporters. Of course, it might be that the admirals wanted John disappeared, since Keyes' option would be too public.
• Adaptational Job Change: While he did assist Halsey in scoping out SPARTAN-II candidates in the original canon he captained a variety of different UNSC ships, getting The Pillar of Autumn just before Halo: Combat Evolved. Here he is stationed on Reach and part of Fleetcom, more directly involved with the Spartan program before getting promoted to Admiral in season two.
• Broken Pedestal: Is this to his daughter in "Transcendence", when he revealed that he was part of the dark secret behind the SPARTAN program with Halsey.
• Composite Character: Initially he was a close approximation of the Captain Keyes from the game, just with a slight job change and a Race Lift to being black. By episode 5 he goes into the field and it's revealed he has a longstanding combat history with Chief, the fatigues (also patrol cap) combined with the Race Lift makes him similar to Sgt. Johnson from the original Halo trilogy. His greater involvement with the Spartan program has him share a few traits with CPO Mendez (who does exist in this timeline too), and in the second season he is promoted to Admiral, allowing him to take on some attributes of Lord Hood.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Keyes doesn't even make it off Reach before it falls, dying when trapped by a squad of Jackals outside an evacuation ship and ordering Perez to take off, despite knowing doing so will ignite the fuel lines he just unplugged.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Faced with the choice of being murdered by Jackals or perishing in an inferno as the last civilian evacuation ship takes off, Keyes chooses the latter, pulling out his pipe and asking the confused Jackals if they have a lighter, before Perez fires the ship's engines and burns them all to hell.
• Everyone Has Standards: In Season Two, Ackerson revealing the plans of High Command to abandon all of Reach to instead save valuable assets and people, leaving millions to die at the hands of the Covenant, because the coming battle will be a lost cause has Keyes immediately swear him off and instead chooses to stand his ground with the planet rather than join the secret evacuation team.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Doesn't hesitate to leave the last civilian transport to unplug the fuel lines, nor to order it to take off without him despite knowing this will ignite the fuel he just unplugged and kill him.
• Honor Before Reason: Just before the attack on Reach Keyes was informed by Ackerson that they have made a Cold Equation and are moving key personnel and assets off world, leaving the planet with millions of people open to an imminent Covenant invasion. Keyes was invited to join, but he refuses and stays behind to help coordinate an evacuation and counterattack to try and save as many people as possible.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: He is a heroic leader and loving father, but Jacob is fully aware of many of the unethical things the UNSC does, and has allowed himself to become complicit in those actions and those of Doctor Halsey because he believes the UNSC fights for the greater good of humanity. He is forced to admit his wrongdoings to both his daughter and the Spartans, and sides with John and Miranda when Halsey goes rogue.
• Parents as People: For all his faults, he is genuinely invested in Miranda's well-being, to the point he doesn't want her involved in any of the more morally dubious tactics the UNSC is involved in. Once Halsey gets kicked out and Miranda takes over her old position, he shows a genuine interest and support of her work.
• Precision F-Strike: He gives one to Anderson after learning he believed or suspected the Master Chief's fear that Cobalt Team would encounter the Covenant, and that he didn't tell them.
• Race Lift: White in the games, black in the Silver Timeline.
• Rank Up: He gets promoted to Admiral in the Time Skip between Season 1 and 2.
• Redemption Equals Death: Throughout the series Keyes participates in the more morally ambiguous actions of the UNSC, particularly against John, straining their relationship. Choosing to stay behind on Reach results in his death.
• Rousing Speech: He gives one to the Marines defending Reach, and pulls the Chief into it too.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Frequently forced into a moral dilemma between his conscience and his loyalty to the chain of command. Favoring the former, its not until Ackerson reveals ONI's nightmarish plan during the invasion of Reach that he chooses to be good.
• Token Good Teammate: Across the UNSC leadership he's proven to be the one who at least has some regrets for what he has participated in. He was the one to reveal the truth of the Spartan program to the rest of Silver Team, and freely admitting his involvement with it.

CDR. Miranda Keyes

Commander Miranda Keyes

Portrayed by: Olive Grey

Voiced by: Iarel Verduzco (Latin-American Spanish dub)

The daughter of Jacob Keyes and Dr. Catherine Halsey, who's in charge of the alien research division.

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• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: While the relationship between her and Halsey was rather strained in the canonical timline, it's a non-factor in any of Miranda's actual screentime, as by the time of the games, the two have stopped interacting with each other altogether (with Halsey merely keeping a distant eye on Miranda's career). This show brings these issues closer to the surface, given the two now work in the same UNSC complex together.
• Adaptational Job Change: Miranda Keyes in the video games is a frontline officer commanding a warship. Here, she's an intelligence officer serving as the head of a science division tasked with studying Covenant technology and biology.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: She issues one to Kwan Ha on behalf of the UNSC, asking her to issue a public statement renouncing the Insurrection and urging all rebels in the colonies to surrender and help the war effort against the Covenant, with the implied promise of freedom and amnesty in exchange. That being said, she's shocked and appalled when her superiors respond to Kwan's furious refusal by immediately ordering her execution.
• The Bus Came Back: She returns late in the second season, having been working on Onyx.
• Improbable Age: Someone as young as her would be quite unlikely to have such a high rank, let alone be leading her own research team. This is acknowledged, as she harbors personal doubts about her qualifications and worries that she was only promoted due to being the daughter of both Jacob Keyes and Catherine Halsey^note This situation also largely applies to her canonical counterpart (including the in-universe suspicions of nepotism), but is comparatively downplayed due to her "only" commanding a small frigate and being a frontline officer in a war that has already killed most of the officers who might otherwise have taken her place.
• Nepotism: She believes she got her current position because of her parentage, but Jacob assures her that's not true... albeit because her mother is blocking her promotion.
• Put on a Bus: She doesn't appear at the beginning of the second season, with her father only stating that she's "safe" when queried.
• Race Lift: She goes from white in the primary timeline to mixed race in the Silver Timeline.
• Rank Up: After Halsey is kicked out for her role in kidnapping children and turning them into super soldiers, Miranda is given her mother's old job, and the promotion to go with it.
• Token Good Teammate: She's much more against some of the UNSC's morally dubious actions, whereas everyone else is fine with crossing some lines so long as it gives them enough time to survive against the Covenant. When her father reveals they've issued an Article 72 on Kwan Ha, she tears into him for letting the hit go through. Later, when her mother is kicked out of ONI for her role in the SPARTAN program's origins, she ascends to the position of their handler, allowing her to delve into this trope further.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: After discovering the full extent of Halsey's crimes, she makes a point of personally informing her mother of the decision to have her executed. Halsey notes that her attempt to isolate her daughter from her actions has only served to harden her heart.
• Uncertain Doom: She's last seen facing down several Flood forms in the second season.

Cortana

CTN 0452-9 "Cortana"

Voiced by: Jen Taylor, Erica Edwards (Latin-American Spanish dub)

An artificial intelligence program designed by Dr. Halsey to act as a combat enhancer for Master Chief, and, should the need arise, take control of him.

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• Adaptational Modesty: Her design for this series gives her human skin and makes the rest of her body appear more like clothes instead of depicting her as being virtually naked (her game iteration covering up when she went crazy notwithstanding).
• Adaptational Villainy: Downplayed, as Cortana (her prime counterpart's Face–Heel Turn aside) is still a hero, but she was never programmed to take control of the Chief if he stepped out of line. It's then subverted when she ultimately chooses John over Halsey when Halsey tries to go rogue.
• Art Evolution: In the first season she was full CGI with natural human skin tone and hair color along with a UNSC branded outfit. In the second season she retains the outfit but is a consistent blue/purple coloring with a different face and hair design. While voiced by Jen Taylor throughout, Taylor provided Motion Capture for the first season while in the second season Christina Bennington does full performance capture and is the basis of her appearance.
• Ban on A.I.: While AI in general is used throughout the UNSC, Halsey's proposal to create Cortana — a much more sophisticated, "human" AI —is nominally banned because it requires flash-grown cloned tissue as a basis for her neural net, but Dr. Halsey manages to talk her way around it.
• Composite Character: She has the original Cortana's origin and purpose, but takes cues from The Weapon from Halo Infinite where she has a more formal appearance with a UNSC label. Master Chief's apprehension towards her is also more like The Weapon, whereas he and Cortana took to each other rather quickly in the main canon.
• Deadpan Snarker: She still has her dry wit about her during her interactions with Chief, even if it's to his exasperation.
• Everyone Has Standards: As she sees Halsey wax poetic about ensuring she, and only she, will force humanity to grow beyond stagnation, she starts to get visibly uncomfortable. And then when she sees Halsey turn on a protocol to force the other Spartans to turn on the UNSC and capture Chief and Makee to steal the artifact and go to the Halo, she refuses to take control of Chief in full like she was programmed and lets him in on what's going on.
• Heel–Face Turn: Downplayed, as she is on the UNSC's side, but she was made to be The Mole for Halsey. It's when she sees her creator go mad with power and try to sabotage the war effort for her own ends does she get fed up with it and warns John.
• The Mole:
  • Per Halsey's orders, she has to act as one for the ONI scientist and gain John's trust to see what he will do to learn the truth behind both the artifact and his true origins. If he gets too close, she'll fulfill her function and step in to stop him. John quickly figures this out and is able to confirm his suspicions when he traps Halsey in a decontamination unit he sets to malfunction, preventing Cortana from being able to save her until he acts. Though when Halsey is kicked out of ONI, she reveals that she designed Cortana to act around any clearance restrictions and keep herself in the loop through her creation. However, when Halsey decides she's going to steal the Artifact, puts the Spartans under her control with a secret backdoor protocol, intends to force Makee to take her to the ring and have Cortana take complete control of John, she stops playing nice with her creator and warns John.
  • Parangosky uses her as one in the second season, leaving her on Reach to be claimed by the Covenant and transmit from one of their ships, a deal she coaxed out of Cortana in exchange for the Chief's safety. As with the previous season, Cortana is still ultimately loyal to John, helping him get to the Keystone on Onyx.
• Nice Girl: She is very courteous and polite to everyone, even John, in spite of his misgivings of her.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Having been designed to co-opt John completely, she thinks nothing of simply appearing whenever she feels like it or transmitting her voice directly inside his brain on a whim.
• Projected Man: The implant containing her program also allows her to project herself as a hologram in proximity of the Chief, no other equipment required.
• Turned Against Their Masters: Cortana is the most-sophisticated AI ever created but utlimately meant to be subservient to Halsey and (nominally) UNSC leadership. However, being partnered with John-117 and seeing his undying dedication to protecting others turns her to side with John and humanity as a whole.
• Villain Override: Cortana isn't merely an assistant to the Spartans, but will actually have the ability to override their free will. Halsey limits this ability in Cortana when installing her in John, as she wants to test how the Keystone reacts to him specifically. She only has the ability to render John unconscious on command, though John is able to figure out this limitation. Halsey intended to allow Cortana to have full control, but Cortana ultimately decides against it and warns Chief of what their creator is doing.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: While she can manifest as a hologram around John she also has real time access to UNSC computers, helping him bypass security locks with ease. This also allows her to remotely hack and pilot UNSC vehicles like Warthogs.

ADM. Margaret Parangosky

Admiral Margaret Parangosky

Portrayed by: Shabana Azmi

Voiced by: Rebeca Manríquez (Latin-American Spanish dub)

An Admiral of the UNSC and head of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).

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• Adaptational Heroism: Parangosky is one of the most vile members of the UNSC in the main timeline, engaging in numerous questionable actions and outright going behind the back of the head of the UNSC to advance her agenda. Here, she is shown to have animosity toward Halsey, which leaves it vague on if she's opposed to it morally or that Halsey is bypassing her authority. In canon, most of her hatred of Halsey stems from one of her friends committing suicide over the SPARTAN-II project, which didn't stop Parangosky from greenlighting the Spartan-III project. Season two realigns more closely with her canon self, as she greenlights the SPARTAN-III program that is far more ruthless in approach.
• Death by Adaptation: While Parangosky in the original canon lived out the entire war and successfully retired peacefully, becoming a Karma Houdini for all she did as the head of ONI in the process, Parangosky in the Silver Timeline suffers a Cruel and Unusual Death being mauled by and potentially assimilated into the Flood.
• Gaslighting: At the start of season two it seemed like she was drummed out of ONI and Ackerson took her place, and she becomes a spy contact for Master Chief. After a few episodes Chief realizes that she never left ONI, and this was a method of trying to get him to play nice with Ackerson while thinking he was getting something else done.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Despite Season 1 making her seem more of a Reasonable Authority Figure, she's still the head of ONI and responsible for numerously unethical and immortal decisions. Season 2 shows her true colors when Chief learns she not only removed Cortana, but it was the Admiral who spearheaded the effort to leave Reach to the Covenant's wrath and keep everyone in the dark about it. She is also behind the SPARTAN-III program, taking that SPARTAN-IIs and somehow making it worse.
• Jurisdiction Friction: She is the head of ONI, but is highly annoyed at how Dr. Halsey sees her as a consultant rather than a supervisor. This leads her to try and undermine Halsey whenever she can, including setting up separate research teams to keep new developments in her line of sight. Much of her apparent good qualities may be just trying to assert her authority over the more morally questionable Halsey.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Spends most of the first season lying, ducking and blaming others to avoid being made into the scapegoat for the entire Artifact and Spartan fiascos. By season two, that's exactly what happened. Or so she claims.
• A Lighter Shade of Grey: If she comes off as noble, it's mostly just because her primary foil is Doctor Halsey. She is still complicit in many things that are considered illegal and unethical even in the UNSC, and much of what Halsey has done in the SPARTAN program has been under Parangosky's oversight. It's firmly Subverted in Season 2, where she's presented as even worse than Halsey.
• Manipulative Bastard: In Season 2, she claims to be working independently to protect humanity, playing into John-117's suspicions towards ONI and UNSC High Command to gain intelligence. John eventually realizes that she's still a part of ONI and has been using him as an asset.
• Race Lift: Is of Caucasian descent in the game canon, but is Indian here.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Some morally ambiguous moments aside, she is very against the Cortana project due to its illegality and moral issues. She's forced to endorse it when she's put in a corner by Halsey during a High Command meeting and agrees to use the Chief as a test trial, though it doesn't stop her from having Miranda start her own project to study the artifact behind Halsey's back, wanting to have to rely on her less. She finally gets her way in Episode 6, and is able to boot Halsey out of the program, allowing Miranda to take over.
• The Scapegoat: She claims she was made this in Season 2, building up a rapport with John, but after he confronts her with the knowledge the Covenant are on Reach, he realizes she's still with ONI.
• Token Good Teammate: Downplayed. She's still the head of ONI, a group dedicated to more dubious actions the UNSC can't publicly carry out, but she's against crossing any serious legal lines like flash cloning or making A.I.s. That said, she does back down and let Halsey make Cortana, but only when she's forced to do so, and she still tries to make it so she can force Halsey out eventually by supporting Miranda. Come the second season, it turns out without Halsey around she is perfectly capable of making horrific decisions that result in the deaths of tens of millions all to take control of the war effort her own way.

COL James Ackerson

Colonel James Ackerson

Portrayed by: Joseph Morgan

A UNSC officer before joining ONI, he replaced Dr. Halsey as the head of the Spartan program and peripherally accelerated Parangosky's forced retirement. While he has an immense respect for the Spartans and their capabilities, he sees fundamental flaws that he is looking to rectify.

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• Adaptational Backstory Change: What little was shown of Ackerson's backstory in the original canon was that he was born in Cleveland, Ohio and had an estranged brother who he rarely spoke to. Here, he's implied to be a native of Reach and his family life is heavily altered and expanded on, him being the caretaker for his elderly father and his sibling being a Spartan candidate whose augmentations killed her.
• Adaptational Job Change: Sort of. He's still a part of ONI like he was in the games' timeline, but he was in charge of the Spartan-IIIs, not the IIs nor the Spartans as a whole.^note Parangosky in the games did note she wanted to make him head of the then-future Spartan branch; possibly making this trope a Mythology Gag. That said, he eventually creates the SPARTAN-IIIs like he did in canon.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Downplayed. The Ackerson of the original Halo timeline was little more than a conniving, opportunistic sociopath whose only act of unambiguous altruism^note Feeding his Covenant captors false intel about a sacred artifact hidden in his hometown so that they wouldn't glass it immediately, seemingly in the hope that it would buy his brother time to reach safety came right before his death. While he's still a sociopathic jerk in the Silver Timeline, his motivations are made far more sympathetic and he appears at least somewhat conflicted about his worse actions. Once the Flood are introduced, Ackerson becomes far more genuinely altruistic compared to his canon counterpart once he realizes the story they are in.
• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: In the original Halo timeline, Ackerson's relationship with Halsey was little more than a one-sided professional rivalry on his part, driven mainly by jealousy over her success. Here, he personally despises her because his sister was a Spartan candidate who died from Halsey's augmentations.
• Adaptational Sympathy: His original self despised Halsey for her success out of petty jealousy. His Silver Timeline counterpart has a good reason to hate her due to the fact his sister was one of the unlucky Spartan candidates who died during the augmentation process.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: His sister was a Spartan-II candidate who died during the augmentation attempt. This gives him a special hatred of Dr. Halsey, and was not present in the original canon.
• Ascended Extra: Although a relatively minor character in the Halo canon, he's given a significantly larger role here as the new head of the SPARTAN-II program following Halsey's disappearance.
• Cold Equation: Knowing that Reach is doomed, he chooses to abandon the planet and its people to the Covenant to save ships and military personnel that would be needed for fullscale evacuation for future battles.
• Composite Character: While Parangosky still exists in this universe, Ackerson takes her position as a member of ONI who hates Halsey due to losing someone they cared about to the SPARTAN program. While Parangosky lost her friend due to him committing suicide over guilt relating to the program, Ackerson lost his sister when she was conscripted and rejected by the augementation process.
• Everyone Has Standards: He's a generally ruthless and unscrupulous man who isn't above sending the SPARTAN-IIIs on suicide missions to disable Covenant ships, but even he baulks at Parangosky's plan to sacrifice every single one of them at once in a single battle to destroy a Covenant fleet.
• Gaslighting: This is a favorite tactic of his to advance his own agenda, often twisting words or otherwise ignoring other characters, while putting the idea in their head that what he's saying is right. He dismisses Chief's report about encountering a massive squad of Elites as him just hallucinating over having Cortana taken out, which Chief himself wonders if he's indeed seeing things (though it turns out he was right).
• Heel–Face Turn: While more of a Hazy-Feel Turn at first when Ackerson is balking at the sheer callousness of Parangosky and her We Have Reserves policy, once the Flood emerge and turn the whole series into a Cosmic Horror Story, Ackerson drops all pretenses of being able to control the war and instead tries to save as many people as possible, including Soren's family, even at risk to himself.
• Kill the Ones You Love: He spends much of his free time helping care for his ailing and increasingly-senile father. After it becomes clear that Reach is doomed, he provides his father with a Cyanide Pill, respecting his wishes to not be taken alive by the Covenant. The man is lucid enough to understand the situation and gladly accepts it, but his shaking hands are unable to get it into his mouth, forcing a visibly heartbroken Ackerson to feed it to him.
• Manipulative Bastard: He's very good at gaslighting and playing mind games with others, even capable of putting the Machiavellian Catherine Halsey — whom he's holding captive — on the backfoot and off-kilter. It goes both ways, as he arranges the simulation for the SPARTAN-IIIs to end once they complete their mission, rather than after they exit the Covenant ship they're tasking with infiltrating, something he claims will give them the hope they need to do so.
• Promoted to Scapegoat: Realizes too late this is him when Parangosky points out that if word gets out Master Chief is alive, people will wonder how much was known about the fall of Reach. When Ackerson says, "We don't have to worry about that," Parangosky just smirks. "We?" since, as far as everyone is concerned, Ackerson was in command at Reach, and Parangosky isn't in ONI anymore. The look on his face shows Ackerson never realizing he was being set up to take the fall.
• Slave to PR: His arrival sees a massive increase in propaganda material, with Master Chief in Mjolnir armor one of the key figureheads. This is one of many things he and Chief clash over, as it coincides with Spartans being used for civilian evacuation missions rather than the truly hotspot battles where they can make a difference. Ackerson eventually makes a veiled threat that Chief is "just a guy in a suit" that they can replace.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Ackerson (and High Command) is already very well aware that the war with the Covenant is a lost cause at the present time and Reach is doomed to fall regardless of any of their decisions, so rather than fight a losing battle or order a full-scale evacuation, Ackerson plays a manipulation game to move valuable assets and people off of Reach and the whole planet's populace at the Covenant as a stall tactic so the rest of humanity can live to fight another day.

Outer Colonies

The Insurrection

Members of various colonies that desire independence from the UEG.

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• Adaptational Heroism: The mainline continuity, for the most part, depicted the Insurrection as selfish, bloodthirsty extremists whose grievances with the UNSC were rapidly overshadowed by their acts of mass murder and terrorism, not to mention their boneheaded attempts to sabotage the war effort against the Covenant out of a misguided belief that they could appease them. The Silver Timeline, by comparison, portrays them as genuinely well-meaning and sympathetic rebels fighting the authoritarian oppression of the UNSC, whose darker qualities gain much more focus and critique. The Covenant are likewise not nearly as well-known to them, to the point of being thought of as rumors by the people of Madrigal, and when the threat becomes known to them, they stop their war entirely because they're scared shitless of being slaughtered by them, even if it means living under Vishner Grath for the time being.
• Ascended Extra: The entire organization is at best a footnote in Halo lore, serving as the impetus for the Spartan program but the Insurrectionist power bases were among the first attacked by The Covenant and were a distant memory at the time of the games nearly 25 years later and there was only a handful of names associated with the movement and Outer Colony politics in general. The show extends their relevance by making the Covenant War not nearly as all-encompassing and genocidal, thus when they attack Madrigal the Insurrectionists are surprised that decades of "propaganda" was real.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: On the receiving end of one via the Covenant. Within seconds, their entire garrison is slaughtered by a horde of Elites, and only Kwan survives thanks to the Master Chief and Silver Team arriving. It's the fact they get beaten so badly that they let Vishner Grath rule over Madrigal without any resistance.
• Deconstruction: Of La Résistance and Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters. While the Insurrection has plenty of legitimate issues with the UNSC, their opposition to said organization during an Alien Invasion involving Scary Dogmatic Aliens who want to Kill All Humans comes off as way Too Dumb to Live and only serves to divide mankind at a point where it must stand united to survive. Tellingly, their efforts on Madrigal are All for Nothing at the start of Season 2, as the Covenant glassed the planet, forcing the survivors to settle on the Rubble.
• Genre Refugee: Downplayed in that they are already part of the lore, but the Insurrection is a faction more suited to a Space Opera or a something like Gundam than one where mankind is facing an existential threat from aliens. This was done because the show is focused more on the UNSC politics than the day-to-day war effort against the Covenant. Emphasizing this is how their actions on Madrigal in Season 1 are rendered completely meaningless in Season 2 because the Covenant just glassed the planet, and refugees inevitably ended up at The Rubble.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: They've held out pretty long, but they're using ancient equipment against the far more technologically-advanced UNSC, and most of their members are either barely of fighting age or getting close to retirement age. It winds up being Deconstructed in Episode 4, where Vishner Grath's actions cause the once mighty resistance on Madrigal to fall in line the moment he shows up, and nobody wants anything to do with standing against him, in spite of Kwan Ha's insistence, because the Covenant are a much greater threat than they know they can handle.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: To the UNSC, they're a bunch of rabble-rousers who are refusing to fall in line. To the Insurrection, they're defending their rights to independently run the colonies without UNSC interference.

Kwan Ha

Kwan Ha

Portrayed by: Yerin Ha

Voiced by: Martha Martínez (Latin-American Spanish dub)

The teenage daughter of General Jin Ha, leader of the rebellion on the planet Madrigal. The sole survivor of the Covenant's massacre on the planet, she is rescued by the Master Chief, and eventually becomes his accomplice in escaping the UNSC.

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• Action Survivor: She is not a trained soldier, but started the show as a teenage girl doing stupid stuff with her friends. The reason she escapes various dangerous situations is a combination of luck, constantly staying on the move and a little bit of ingenuity.
• All for Nothing: Despite her attempts to free Madrigal and restart her father's crusade, all of that fails when the Covenant glass the planet off-screen in Season 2, and she's captured and sold into indentured servitude.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • She and Laera arrive in Soren's ship to save Soren, Riz, Halsey, and the Chief from a Brute Chieftain.
  • In the second season finale, she and Soren rescue Laera, Kessler, and Ackerson from a Flood-infected guard.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: While she has some good reasons for her behavior, foremost that her mother was killed among other Insurrectionists in a Spartan attack, she is still fairly young and argumentative with any sort of authority figure she comes across. A key part of her character arc is that her rage is fueled by her immaturity, and she has to grow up if she desires to continue her father's legacy.
• Broken Pedestal: She suffers this when she learns her father's true reason for independence.
• Bullying a Dragon: When Miranda Keyes "asks" that she renounce the insurrection and urge her fellow rebels to surrender and cooperate with the UNSC against the Covenant, she instead threatens to falsely blame them for the attack on Madrigal unless the planet is granted independence. This gets her marked for death almost immediately.
• Canon Foreigner: Neither she, her family members or other Insurrectionist members appear in the main continuity.
• Combat Pragmatist: Kwan is generally smaller and weaker than most people she fights, and usually takes them out stealthily. Or with a really big gun.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • While it's perhaps understandable given that she's just had the worst day of her entire life and is being held prisoner by the soldier that killed her mother for protesting, her attempt to threaten and blackmail the UNSC after they ask her to issue a statement supporting them was fairly boneheaded for a number of reasons.
  • She tries to sneak out from Soren's care and return to Madrigal to help take down Vishner Grath. What she fails to realize is that Soren is a trained soldier who himself is a runaway, and who can either crush her skull or turn her in for a very large bounty if she tries to steal a ship under his nose. She tries bribing him to take her, but he just reminds her that he can turn her in—the only reason she's still alive is because he promised John he wouldn't let any harm come to her.
  • For that matter, her desire to help is based on the belief that some Insurrectionist sympathizers must have survived Vishner's purge, and she reasons she can link up with them. Soren and his wife rightfully point out that she's more than likely to be killed for no meaningful benefit. They're proven right, as all of the Insurrection has turned a blind eye towards Grath's regime for their own safety—that and her father ran out of money to pay for the war effort.
• Idiot Ball: Granted, she's a teenager suffering from a great deal of tragedy, but she grabs the ball pretty hard throughout the series in trying to continue her late father's war against the UNSC when the universe is showing why that's a bad idea in the middle of a genocidal war against humanity. Even Soren, a Nice Guy all around, barely tolerates her presence and eventually decides to force her to work for him when her ill-advised venture goes south and costs him a ship.
• I Will Fight Some More Forever: Kwan's Fatal Flaw: She refuses to stop fighting for the Insurrectionist cause, and assumes her people will rally around her based on her heroic example. Unfortunately, she is a teenage girl with fewer allies than she can count on one hand, and the people of Madrigal have much bigger problems than the UNSC to deal with, in the form of The Covenant. She eventually realizes that she will need to cooperate with some of her enemies for the greater good.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Kwan is a genuinely good person who simply wants to help her people. Unfortunately, she is also hotheaded, impulsive and prone to indulging in personal insults whenever things don't go her way. Soren even has to threaten her with physical violence just to get her to shut up.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Regardless of her miserably brazen attempt to effectively blackmail an entire galactic superpower, Kwan is right to recognize that the UNSC just wants to use her as a living Propaganda Piece to persuade the rebelling colonies to unite back under their banner with the Covenant being a convenient reason to do so. Her initial hesitance to trust the Chief even after he saved her life is also justifiable since he's the one who assassinated her mother during an organized protest and has no reason to believe he won't do the same to her if she doesn't play ball.
• Made a Slave: Following the offscreen glassing of Madrigal, she retreated to the Rubble and was sold into servitude. She manages to rip out her slave tag and kill her owner shortly after this is made known.
• Orphan's Ordeal: She lost her mother to the Master Chief and his fireteam, while her father was killed by the Covenant.
• Sole Survivor: She's the only person from her refuge who survived the Covenant's assault on Madrigal. It's later doubled down in Season 2, as the Covenant glass the planet, making her the only known survivor.
  • She's also The Only One willing to continue the fight for independence, while the rest of the Insurrectionists are either dead or accepted Grath's regime.
• Spanner in the Works: Halsey refers to her as an unexpected variable that revealed that Spartans are susceptible to rebellion and independence even after years of indoctrination and sensory numbing.
• Took a Level in Badass: She gets significantly better at fighting when taking on Grath and his men (alongside Soren) and then takes another level by Season 2, frequently and stealthily killing numerous enemies. By the season finale, she takes on the Flood, though she is eventually overwhelmed and only spared through the Mother's intervention.
• Touched by Vorlons: Mystics on Madrigal introduced her to a vision-state using deuterium water that let her understand the Forerunner ruins her family had been protecting for generations. While the first season showed her to not be able to use the keystone artifact, the second season has her talk of "monsters older than your gods" and seems to have an instinct in deciphering Forerunner mysteries that puts her in the same arena as Dr. Halsey and Miranda. The specter of the Mother she sees calls her "the Protector".
• You Killed My Father: John-117 murdered her mother at a pro-independence protest when she was a young girl, an event she apparently witnessed firsthand, and she's quick to confront him about this once she's let out of her cell. The Chief, for his part, doesn't remember the details of the incident beyond the fact that he was told his targets were terrorists planning to bomb the place — a fact that he seems to be questioning now.

Soren-066

Soren-066

Portrayed by: Bokeem Woodbine

Voiced by: Guillermo Rojas (Latin-American Spanish dub)

One of the only Spartans to ever defect from the UNSC, Soren-066 now operates as an insurrectionist pirate on the hidden space station known as "The Rubble".

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• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: In the main continuity, John and Soren don't really have any sort of relationship beyond both being SPARTAN-II trainees. Here, they were close friends and nearly defected together during training until John had second thoughts.
• Ascended Extra: The Soren-066 of the original continuity was a minor character who appeared in a single short story that ended with his survival uncertain. Here, he plays a major role as a former friend of John-117 and his only trusted contact outside of the UNSC. Halsey says he had natural leadership qualities and the respect of the other Spartan recruits, implying he may have been the leader of the Spartans over John had his augmentations taken properly.
• Badass in Distress: He's captured by the UNSC in the premiere of the second season.
• Badass Longcoat: Wears one over a set of MJOLNIR Power Armor he stole during his escape from the SPARTAN-II program.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: His sidearm is a gold plated golden revolver.
• Beware the Nice Ones: As friendly as he can be, he makes some not-so-subtle threats to Kwan to stay put instead of going back to Madrigal and trying to help out the resistance against Vishner Grath. He also makes it very clear that if it weren't for his promise to Chief, he probably would have killed her. Later, his partner Squirrel tries badmouthing him in front of everyone on the station and accuses him of going soft. Soren drops a forklift pallet on his foot to remind him that, no, he hasn't gone soft—and for Squirrel's sake, he's better not accuse him of it ever again.
• Body Horror: His left arm was horrifically mutilated as a side effect of his body rejecting Halsey's augmentations, with his pointer and middle fingers fusing, ring and pinky fingers fusing, and a large gash along the forearm revealing the sub-dermal armor beneath. Thankfully, this seems to have done little to deter him from achieving his goals.
• Civvie Spandex: Of a sort. In his defection he took his Mjolnir armor with him, but years without proper maintenance leaves him mostly with just the chestpiece intact. His overall look has him wearing the Mjolnir chestpiece and underarmor paired with a Badass Longcoat.
• Deadpan Snarker: He really unleashes the snark on Keyes when they meet.
• Defector from Decadence: He ran away from the SPARTAN-II program during training in search of freedom, feeling that the program was stripping away the humanity of its subjects.
• Handicapped Badass: His Spartan augmentations warped his left forearm with elephantism and a mutilated hand. While he favors his right arm for obvious reasons, he still has his Spartan training and is an excellent shot.
• Happily Married: Not only did Soren get hitched after escaping the UNSC, he also had a son with her, making him the only SPARTAN-II in this continuity to have gone on to sire children after augmentation.
• I Just Want to Be Free: Why he left the SPARTAN-II program in the first place, as he knows the souls serving it had no choice in the matter. He's accomplished this goal, and is very happy because of it.
• I Just Want to Be Special: For all of his anger towards the UNSC, Halsey, and the SPARTAN program, Season 2 reveals that he never stopped yearning to be a full-fledged SPARTAN like John and puffs his chest out when speaking about the tough training he endured and how it molded him into a man. He's even willing, if only for a moment, to see his son go through the same experiences to try and live vicariously through the child.
• Jumped at the Call: Season 2 reveals that he was the only SPARTAN candidate who actually volunteered rather than being forcibly recruited. Soren downplays this by pointing out he was six, but Halsey still frames it as Soren being confident of his purpose even then.
• One-Man Army: Even with only parts of his armor and a bad arm, he's a force to be reckoned with. It takes being outnumbered thirty to one for him to overwhelmed, and about a third of them died before that happened.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: He wields a revolver as his main weapon, and befitting a Spartan is a fantastic shot.
• Running Gag: In the second season, he keeps having to ally with ONI personnel to escape the areas he finds himself in as they're familiar with the layouts and he isn't.
• Self-Made Orphan: One of the memories he recollects is of him killing his father.
• Space Pirate: After successfully fleeing from the SPARTAN-II program, Soren grew up to become an infamous pirate who assists the Insurrection in their fight against the UNSC.
• Tempting Fate: After they seemingly drive off the Covenant in a firefight, he taunts any that are still alive (granted, mainly as a way to see if there are any). Seconds later, a Brute Chieftain drops through the roof.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Halsey says that Soren's charisma meant that he held sway over all the other SPARTAN candidates during training. When his augmentations failed and he became bitter and rebellious, she allowed him to abandon the program or else there was a risk of him damaging the confidence of everyone else in the program.
• Truer to the Text: In the franchise's main canon, Soren-066 is a SPARTAN who was relegated to a desk job because his augmentation failures were debilitating. This resulted in depression and resentment as he got to see others become SPARTANs and led to rebellion. In the series, Soren is introduced as a failed SPARTAN candidate who deserted the program because of philsophical resentment towards what he saw as a corrupt and manipulative system. Season 2 recontextualizes this to show that his anger towards the UNSC and ONI is because he was going to be washed out of the program before ever getting the chance to prove himself and the institutional resentment he holds is him trying to self-justify his desertion.

Laera

Laera

Portrayed by: Fiona O'Shaughnessy

Soren's wife.

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• Action Mom: A Downplayed Trope, as she isn't much of a physical fighter without her husband's authority to throw around, but she pilots Soren's ship to save him, Halsey and Silver Team from the Covenant during the Fall of Reach.
• Ascended Extra: She's much more prominent in the second season through her search for Kessler and Soren after they both go missing.
• Big Damn Heroes: Her and Kwan showing up to rescue Silver Team, Soren, and Halsey in Soren's gunship.
• Heroic Sacrifice: She's infected by the Flood in the second season finale, and locks a door behind her to allow her husband and son to get off Onyx before walking away.
• Mama Bear: Do not threaten her son, or allow hurting her son to be even remotely possible. Soren's suggestion that Kessler being subjected to the kind of training he was potentially being a good thing earns him a tongue-lashing from her.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She berates Soren for his carefree attitude after both the Fall of Reach and their son going missing.

Vinsher Grath

Governor Vinsher Grath

Portrayed by: Burn Gorman

Voiced by: Gabriel Ortiz (Latin-American Spanish dub)

A power-hungry politician on Madrigal who claimed to support the Insurrection's goals, but not its methods, and privately desired to cut a deal with the UNSC. With the death of General Jin Ha, he signs a treaty with the UNSC and begins ruthlessly cracking down on dissent.

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• Actor Allusion: An Ax-Crazy man with ambitions of power who is aligned with an Earth government, kills those associated with an open rebellion against it for years of mistreatment, and is played by Burn Gorman? Look no further than Aldophus Murty, a very similar character from The Expanse.
• Ax-Crazy: His Establishing Character Moment in Episode 2 sees him personally executing his opponents in the street with a smile on his face while reciting a sing-songy limerick about Jin Ha's failures as a leader.
• Blatant Lies: While he talks about negotiating peace with the UNSC on TV, a rebel remarks that he's giving the people "false hope". Sure enough, when he's given the position of governor of Madrigal, he starts executing Insurrectionist sympathizers.
• Canon Foreigner: Has no counterpart in the game canon.
• Character Death: He's incinerated by a refinery explosion set off by Kwan and Soren.
• Delusions of Eloquence: Often shown waxing poetic about what's happening.
• The Generalissimo: He becomes the dictator of Madrigal, complete with UNSC backing and a scene where he goes down the line personally shooting dissidents in the head.
• Jerkass Has a Point: The Insurrection never liked him to begin with for being a UNSC kiss-up, but no one dares question him again when he takes over Madrigal after the Covenant attack. Like him or not, he has the backing of a galactic power with the actual weapons and resources to stop a wholesale slaughter of humanity, SPARTAN soldiers included, and it's better to have a tyrant in charge who can protect them from annihilation than a independent leader who can't.
• The Purge: He has all of Jin Ha's generals and other loyalists executed after taking power (save one he's implied to have bought off), leaving Kwan no allies when she comes looking. He wants her eliminated, too, just to make sure his power is secure.
• Putting on the Reich: Vinsher himself and his officers wear uniforms that resemble nazi longcoats. Given that they sort of function as Les Collaborateurs, that's pretty appropriate.
• The Quisling: Even before General Ha's death, he was despised by the Insurrection for being a UNSC apologist who wanted to appease them. The moment he gains power, he proves all of their suspicions correct and then some.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Replaces Jin Ha, who desired the best for his people, and starts executing Insurrectionist sympathizers.

The Covenant

In General

An alien empire that desires to exterminate humanity and excavate artifacts of unknown origin.

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• Adaptation Personality Change: A minor one. While the Covenant are still waging a genocidal war against humanity, they aren't above indoctrinating a human to operate Forerunner technology that they themselves cannot, since in this continuity the ability is rare even among humans, as seen with Makee. Even then, they still plan to kill her once they have no use for her.
• Aliens Are Bastards: Their mission is to exterminate any human they see. Including kids. Even the one human indoctrinated in their ranks, Makee, isn't exempt from this, as they see her as only a tool to be used and plan to kill her once her usefulness to them dries up.
• Alien Invasion: The Covenant are invading human-controlled space, exterminating any human they see, for a reason currently unknown to humanity.
• Aliens Speaking English: Averted compared to other parts of the franchise^note Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo: Reach had them never speaking English for tonal reasons, but for ease of storytelling they will speak English in most other places. None of the aliens speak English, with important dialogue being either subtitled or a character providing a translation. Makee also spends most of her time with them speaking an alien language and doesn't speak English unless she is with humans.
• Conflict Killer: When they're present, the Covenant do a scarily good job at forcing every character in the series to drop their grudge and fight them.
• Orbital Bombardment: John mentions that they've glassed planets before.
• Kill All Humans: As noted above, this is one of their primary goals.
• Outside-Context Problem: As far as the UNSC is concerned, they basically just showed up one day and started killing.
• Plasma Cannon: Their primary weapons that are first seen in the show are plasma-based. Unlike the games, their larger ones can vaporise a person in a few shots.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: A theocracy composed of several different alien races (with a caste system) that is bent on exterminating humanity.
• Would Hurt a Child: Their first victims during the raid on Madrigal are Kwan's friends. And they go out of their way to slaughter defenseless children they find hiding in a vault without hesitation, with only Kwan making it out of there while trying to save her father.

Makee

Makee, the Blessed One

Portrayed by: Charlie Murphy

Voiced by: Andrea Soto (Latin-American Spanish dub)

A young woman who was abducted and indoctrinated by the Covenant as part of their search for humans capable of activating Forerunner technology. Hailed as a "Blessed One", she holds a high position within the Covenant's religious hierarchy, answerable only to the Prophets themselves.

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• Back from the Dead: She somehow returns to life in Season 2 after she's killed by Kai in Season 1.
• Body Horror: After John briefly gets her to make a Heel–Face Turn, she rips out the small plasma blade underneath her fingernail. The results aren't a pretty sight.
• Boomerang Bigot: Appears to share the Covenant's contempt for humanity, while still being human herself. Given her backstory, it's hardly surprising.
• Boyish Short Hair: She has a neat, androgynous haircut.
• Canon Foreigner: Beyond her name, which is similar to Mahkee from Halo 5: Guardians, Makee has no direct canonical counterpart in the games and was created for the series.
• Decoy Damsel: She launches an attack on the Gladius by pretending to be the Sole Survivor of a Covenant prison ship that was abandoned. The moment she's cleared to come aboard, she unleashes hordes of Lekgolo on the Marines and kills everyone onboard.
• Every Scar Has a Story: Has a shock probe scar on her back from being tortured as a child.
• Evil Counterpart: To Master Chief, being taken in by a galactic power at a young age, are undyingly loyal to the people that raised them, are heavily scarred on their back, are trained killers, have a parental figure of high authority (Dr. Halsey for Chief and Mercy for Makee), and can activate ancient artifacts with a single touch.
• Foil: As noted above, she and the Master Chief are remarkably similar. However they're also remarkably contrasting; John had a happy childhood on a verdant planet but was abducted by humans against his will to become an enhanced soldier and is largely loyal owing to the pellet embedded in his spine. Makee grew up in a garbage heap abused by humans and was liberated by the Covenant, desired for her mental attributes and being an ordinary human that is fiercely loyal to the Covenant religion.
• Freudian Excuse: Her hatred of humanity stems from being forced to live on a junk planet where the residents were slaves who had to work cleaning up trash or be subject to horrific torture.
• Going Commando: Is revealed to be wearing nothing under her Covenant religious garb when she undresses in the second episode.
• Happily Adopted: Mercy took her in at a young age and raised her, to which she is grateful and forever loyal to the Prophets.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Chief is almost able to make her do one when he shows her kindness she hasn't received in a long time, even to the point she refuses Halsey's offer to force humanity to evolve, but Miranda then reveals Makee was responsible for destroying the Gladius. After that, she decides Halsey's right and goes right back to her old ways.
• Humans Are Special: According to Mercy, she's able to bring artifacts to life, just like Chief.
• "Leave Your Quest" Test: Having become disillusioned with both the Covenant and Humanity, she joins with John in the Halo vision and urges him to go there with her. She's apparently shot dead before this can happen, and by the time of the second season is revived and back serving the Covenant.
• Morality Pet: The Master Chief becomes this for her. Even in the second season, she stops the Arbiter from killing him twice, claiming it isn't the time yet.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: She was identified by the Covenant to be capable of interacting with Forerunner artifacts, and this quality elevates her to the title of "The Blessed One." This is shared with Master Chief, and after isolating that particular genome Miranda speculates they are "Two in a billion."
• Scars Are Forever: Like with the Chief, her backside is covered with various scars, only these are from having a cattle prod shoved into her back as a child.
• Starcrossed Lovers: Having a shared ability to access Forerunner artifacts in addition to other similarities in their backstory (taken from home and manipulated to serve another purpose) incites a romantic connection between her and John. This is doomed to fail because of her indoctrination to the Covenant and John's responsibilities as Master Chief.
• Synchronization: John and Makee both feel it when the other touches the Keystone. If it goes on too long, they join together in a shared vision of the Halo.
• Token Human: She's the sole human member of the entire Covenant, all the more shocking by how they are effectively an Anti-Human Alliance.
• Tragic Keepsake: She keeps a book of fables that belonged to a boy she liked. He was murdered by the guards on her planet shortly before the Covenant showed up.
• Tragic Villain: Makee isn't a bad person so much as she's a damaged, misguided person who's lead a really unfair life. Even though she ultimately survives the first season finale, she was sold out by the people who raised her and rejected by the only person she still has any emotional connection to. While she finds another person to connect with, that being the Arbiter, he dies at the hands of the Chief.

Mercy

The Prophet of Mercy

Voiced by: Julian Bleach

A high-ranking prophet of the Covenant.

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• Actor Allusion: This isn't the first ruler of an alien power that Julian Bleach has played, nor is it the only one where he's in a hover chair, having played the Dalek creator Davros on Doctor Who.
• Ascended Extra: Out of the three High Prophets in the games, Mercy is easily the least prominent. Here, he's the most prominent of the three and the main one to interact with Makee. Truth and Regret have minor roles and the latter only gets a major speaking role in the season 1 finale, "Transcendence".
• Adaptational Ugliness: While he's certainly not great-looking in the game canon, his appearance here takes it to another level, adding more pronounced wrinkles and human teeth.
• Cool Chair: Much like in the games, Mercy moves around using a gravity throne.
• Faux Affably Evil: Is introduced treating Makee in a sympathetic manner, but as the season finale reveals, he, along with the other Prophets, intended to dispose of her along with the rest of humanity once she's led them to the Halo.
• Greater-Scope Villain: He and the other Prophets don't appear in the second season, but Makee and the Arbiter are constantly answering to or fearful of them.

The Arbiter

Arbiter Var ‘Gatanai

Voiced by:

A mysterious high-ranking Covenant commander that Master Chief encountered on Sanctuary, posing a great danger to come to humanity at large.

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• Adaptational Early Appearance: The Arbiter was not introduced until Halo 2, after the Fall of Reach and the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. In canon, though, he was the supreme leader of the forces that took Reach and were on the first Halo, so the second season sets up the Arbiter in sequence with those events. In addition, the original Arbiter gained that title because he failed in the battle at Halo and was sent out to reclaim his honor, whereas this Arbiter gained that title sometime prior to Reach and both Reach and trying to kill Master Chief was part of his mission.
• All There in the Manual: He was addressed only as "the Arbiter" in the credits listing in the first couple episodes or on social media posts. His name and title were first spoken in Aleria.
• Arch-Enemy: He serves as this to Master Chief in Season 2.
• The Atoner: The title of Arbiter is an elite who was disgraced before the Prophets and sent on an impossible mission to reclaim their honor, typically resulting in their death. Here he sought to kill Master Chief and recover the keystone artifacts, and failed to deliver on both fronts.
• Canon Foreigner: He is an original character with the title of Arbiter, but that title is a Legacy Character already and thus is a Composite Character of other Arbiters in the main canon, but primarily that of Thel 'Vadam.
• Composite Character: The Arbiter here is a fusion of the Legacy Character role known in the canon, but the unnamed Elite Field Marshal that hounded Noble Team during Halo: Reach as the closest thing to a recurring antagonist faced by the focused Spartan team. As for personality, the Arbiter here takes traits from Ripa 'Moramee in his intensely brutish Blood Knight nature in normal combat, objective focus, and treatment of his fellow Covenant but is tempered with a few of the more Honor Before Reason traits that would come from his successor in Thel 'Vadam in how he sees the Master Chief as a Worthy Opponent and stays his hand more than a few times when he could have easily disposed of him earlier on, in addition to having 'Vadam's position as the one who spearheads the invasion of Reach (albeit as Arbiter and not before being given the title). Consequently, he is given a unique name. He also shares a thread with the Heretic Leader, Sesa 'Refumee, he takes learning the truth the Prophets were hiding from him badly, and defecting from the main Covenant in the process. And, like 'Moramee, he dies at the end of the season he's introduced.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: In contrast to rank-and-file elites wearing a blue-ish grey armor, he wears more vibrant blue armor with gold trim. This serves a similar purpose as the game canon Arbiter in making him stand out, though his armor was said to actually be older and outdated.
• Everyone Has Standards: He was clearly looking forward to dueling John in Reach and is so annoyed by a fellow Elite shooting him before they can clash blades that he promptly beheads the offending Sangheili. That said, it also didn't stop him from trying to kill the Chief afterwards.
• Evil Counterpart: To the Master Chief in a combat fashion, as one of the most experienced and skilled Elites in the series, who eventually rebels against his superiors. He also has a vision of Halo, granted one shown by Cortana rather than experienced through the Keystone.
• Evil Is Bigger: As shown during "Reach", The Arbiter stands a head taller than the already impressively tall Sangheili which, combined with his unique armor, helps him stand out considerably.
• Evil Sounds Deep: In his service to the genocidal Covenant, he has a very deep and intimidating voice, not unlike David Sobolov and Keith David when they voiced their respective Arbiters.
• Face Death with Dignity: After being beaten and horribly maimed by Chief in their Duel to the Death; Var only pleads with Master Chief to give him a warrior's death to end his shame despite Makee's protests, and in spite of the language barrier, Chief understands well enough to oblige.
• Hero Killer: He's presumably the one who killed Cobalt Team without any response and onscreen does kill Vannak with a needler shard.
• Honor Before Reason: Despite his devotion to the Covenant cause to wipe out all of humanity, the Arbiter displays a genuine respect for the Master Chief when he stands his ground outside of his armor during "Reach" and gives him ample time to prepare and grab an Energy Sword so they can continue their fight—only to be enraged when another Elite nonchalantly shoots Master Chief in the abdomen, which the Elite in question cannot express the level of horror in his face before the Arbiter decapitates him for interfering with their duel.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: After taking an energy sword slice across his left pectoral, he barely reacts to the injury and switches to wielding his sword with his right hand.
• Laser Blade: Like most Elites in the series, the Arbiter wields an energy sword.
• Mark of Shame: Unlike in canon, where Thel 'Vadam was forcibly (and more painfully) branded, Var 'Gatanai brands himself before he rebels against his orders and kills those of his kinsmen who do not follow him.
• Master Swordsman: He bears the suffix "-ai" at the end of his name, denoting his skills with an energy sword.
• Noodle Incident: As with Arbiters in canon, he dishonored himself in the past and seeks penance in his service as an Arbiter, though the details of when and how he received the Arbiter title are never revealed.
• Off with His Head!: One unlucky Elite who interrupts Arbiter's duel with the Chief is punished for his transgression, with his boss delivering a quick swing to the neck.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He is the responsible for Makee's resurrection, but he makes it painfully clear that his charge is little more than a pawn towards his efforts to regain the Prophet's favor, and would dispose of them without a second thought. However, in Onyx, he visibly looks away from Makee when the Priest is grilling him over her, suggesting he may care, or at least value her, more than he claims.
• The Rival: To the Master Chief in the second season.
• Villain Respect: Though he is bound in his mission to destroy "The Demon", Arbiter sees Chief as a worthy warrior, and fights him when Chief is absconded of his armor and willing to stand against his foe. The Elite who tries interrupting quickly loses his head.
• Worthy Opponent: The Chief notes to Ackerson that the Arbiter possessed qualities worthy of a leader just from a glance. The Arbiter seems to regard the Chief the same way, given his reaction to another Elite shooting him. He considers his death at his hands to be an honourable one.

Atriox

Atriox

Voiced by:

A Brute Chieftain, and a recurring foe faced by the Master Chief.

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• Adaptational Early Appearance: Atriox in the games didn't appear until well after the Human-Covenant War, but in the series he's still serving the Covenant.
• All There in the Manual: His name comes from ancillary material and isn't spoken in the series.
• Establishing Character Moment: Drops out of a Spirit and almost kills the Chief with a single swing of his gravity hammer before claiming the artifact.
• The Rival: To the Master Chief in the first season.
• Uncertain Doom: He gets a Condor strafing run on him, but his fate isn't confirmed.

Uto 'Mdama

Priest Uto 'Mdama

Voiced by: Jamie Beamish

A Sangheili priest stationed on the Arbiter's ship.

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• Hate Sink: In comparison to the conflicted Makee and the badass Arbiter, 'Mdama is an utter bastard to them, and is particularly eager to kill Makee for the slightest offense.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Makee stabs him in the heart with an energy dagger.
• Laser Blade: He may be a priest, but he's still an Elite, and is armed with an energy dagger.
• Mythology Gag: 'Mdama is the surname of Jul 'Mdama, the leader of the Covenant remnants from the Reclaimer saga of the games.
• Non-Action Guy: Subverted Trope. His lack of the "ee" suffix in his surname (denoting Covenant military service) suggests he's this, as does his role as a priest and his lack of armor, but when the Arbiter turns against him, he's right up there with the other Elites in the scuffle with his own energy dagger.

The Flood (Unmarked spoilers)

In General

The Flood

A parasitic alien species uncovered from a Forerunner laboratory on Onyx, hinted to have existed millennia ago.

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• Adaptational Early Appearance: The Flood are hinted at before either Makee or the Master Chief reach Halo, and are unleashed by humans on Onyx before Halo is reached, as opposed to the Covenant on Halo itself.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Due to the majority of the show being more a Government Procedural than the Space Opera the games were, a majority of the human antagonists could not be combated due to the chain of command, allowing characters like Parangosky to get away scot-free repeatedly for their malicious scheming—the Flood however, being both a Conflict Killer and a massive Knight of Cerebus so significant they cause a Genre Shift into a Cosmic Horror Story, ends up resolving this issue fairly quickly in their opening acts by wiping out nearly the whole of the ONI brass, Parangosky included before they realize they were surrounded to begin with.
• Body Horror: Humans infected by the Flood display, in order, Tainted Veins, thoroughly disgusting lesions on their flesh, and growths that sprout pale, lumpy tentacles. They also can reshape human bodies at ease, as shown with the infected Janine, who literally squishes her whole body through thin bars as though it were gelatin instead of flesh and bone as she begins to morph into the earliest stages of a Combat Form.
• Combat Tentacles: A few infected humans sprout one of these, though they haven't mutated to the point of becoming full Combat Forms yet.
• Conflict Killer: Every conflict between the human factions is dropped to deal with them.
• The Dreaded: They're spoken of with absolute terror in the Forerunners' writings, and the mere allusion to them is enough to send Kwan Ha, who doesn't even know what they are at the time, fleeing from the room.
• Eviler than Thou: Once unleashed, they easily spread through the base on Onyx, infecting Parangosky.
• Explosive Breeder: It goes from a sample inside a small container, assimilates a single person, and quickly spreads throughout the Onyx base in what is at best a few hours. That said, they haven't yet been seen doing the literal variant of this the Carrier Forms do.
• It Can Think: The Flood very quickly establishes itself, like canon, to be far more than either humanity or the Covenant can deal with explicitly because of how cunning they are, even without a Gravemind directing their course yet.
  • The infected Janine mutates and contorts her body to begin slipping through the bars of her cell and reach more victims.
  • In general, despite being "a feral batch" separated from the higher intelligence they are known for in canon, the Flood here still demonstrates a frightening ability to strategize and adapt, using the psychosis initial infection causes to disarm and cripple personnel until they are fully infected, at which point then they start Playing Possum to disorient the response team into a false sense of security before overwhelming them and infecting them in turn. By end, despite lacking a Gravemind, the Flood very quickly takes over all of Onyx before the top brass of ONI even realizes they are surrounded.
• Knight of Cerebus: The second season - between the Fall of Reach and the slaughter of the SPARTAN-IIIs - was already dire, but the release of the Flood on Onyx throws the base into complete chaos and brings a new level of Body Horror to the already violent series.
• Orifice Invasion: Rather than injecting spores into their host with tentacles, the slug-like forms seen in the series can simply invade the human body. One unlucky woman has one enter through her eye.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Downplayed Trope. Like the Flood in canon, they're considerably faster than stereotypical zombies, though by the time the series was made, speed had become more common in Zombies. Their appearance in the second season finale also depicts them as capable of spreading their infection through injury.
• Parasite Zombie: Courtesy of the small slug-like forms and even smaller spores, though it's currently ambiguous as to whether their spread is airbone or solely contact-driven.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Their spores were sealed in a sample canister held by the mummified Forerunner scientist in the laboratory on Onyx. Thanks to Miranda and a careless scientist, the can is opened.
• Spawn Broodling: Unlike the main series, which requires the Flood to mutates their hosts into Carrier Forms to properly do this, infected humans are shown disgorging small slug-like forms which can simply enter a host to infect it.
• Spanner in the Works: They completely derail everything happening on Onyx during the finale of the second season, infecting most of the humans on the base in a matter of hours after Kai turned the tide of the battle against the Covenant.
• Tainted Veins: Infected humans first demonstrate blue veins before their bodies begin to mutate.
• Technically-Living Zombie: Their hosts are still alive to some degree, but Kwan notes that they don't breathe and the Flood consumes them from within to form more effective means of infecting others.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Infected humans tend to freeze in place as the infection takes hold, giving this impression. As it's currently unclear how it affects the minds of the infected in this continuity, it's not clear if they're experiencing it.
• Transformation Horror: Downplayed Trope, as only a few infected humans - Janine and Ackerson's guard - begin sprouting tentacles, presumably due to the early stage of their infection. The infected Janine also horrifically contorts her body to fit through the bars of her cell.
• The Virus: An alien one, and more so than usually as presented in the main canon, as they're transferred through their slug-like infection forms and wounding a victim. It's unclear if the larger Infection Forms exist or if the spores can infect hosts while airborne, as both Halsey and Laera are wounded, while Miranda is in the same room as several infectees including Janine, Patient Zero of the outbreak, and outright examining Flood spores yet is seemingly uninfected (though safer than Janine).
• Walking Spoiler: It's nigh-impossible to discuss the Flood's existence in the series considering they come almost out of nowhere in the second season's finale, and debut on Onyx instead of on Halo (though it's suggested by the Monitor that they're imprisoned on Halo too).