The headquarters at Reach are in shambles after the massive energy discharge Makee triggered. Makee, with the Keystone in tow, forces a guard to give her access to a captured Covenant Drop Ship. John tries to stop her, but is headed off by the sight of Riz and Vannak holding Kai at gunpoint. At first, neither of the loyal SPARTANs believe him... but they do believe Captain Keyes, who admits his duplicity and complicity in the event. Their loyalties reconciled, John, Riz and Vannak try to stop Makee, but arrive as she is taking off. Kai, meanwhile, goes after Halsey. She boards the Endymion II and demands Halsey tell her her real name. Unfortunately, Halsey makes it to the escape pod (by taking advantage of Adun's Suicidal Overconfidence in trying to give Kai a Tap on the Head), and Kai has to bail out of the Endymion as it crashes.
John, Miranda, Cortana and Parangosky confer in the lab. Makee mentioned that the Covenant had taken the Second Keystone to the Aspero system, but there's an Absence of Evidence there ... in the sense that no readings are getting in or out due to gravitational distortions surrounding the system. John offers to lead Silver Team there, pointing out that four SPARTANs can sneak where 10,000 Marines would fear to tread, and Parangosky authorizes the mission. As they approach the Negative Space Wedgie, Cortana admits the entire "Meat Puppet" plan to John, telling him she no longer has any interest in it: She has seen John fighting to Be Himself, and believes this is a cause worth fighting for. They struggle through the distortions and discover precisely what they were expecting: a planet capable of supporting life, where the Covenant must be gathered.
The UNSC succeed at capturing Halsey's escape pod, and Miranda goes to her mother with news: the military tribunal has already concluded that Halsey is too dangerous for exile or imprisonment. Their only recourse is Article 72. Halsey accepts the news with equanimity — but later she begins bleeding from her nose and experiencing unexplained seizures. Miranda makes the connection: this is the exact condition that killed "John" and "Kai" and "Soren" and all the other abducted SPARTAN kids who were replaced with flash clones. This isn't the real Halsey. The real one, we learn, is somewhere on Reach, using her contacts to get offworld, and still planning the next step in human evolution.
Makee is ready to trigger both Keystones and reveal a galactic map to the Halo. The Prophets of Truth, Regret and Mercy are all there, praising her for her achievements but discussing in public how they have no interest in her beyond her ability as a Blessed One, and certainly do not plan to bring her on the Great Journey with them. They are interrupted by Silver Team, who quickly establish control over the area. Unfortunately, the Prophets have backup: literally hundreds of Sangheili Zealots come swarming in. Even worse, Makee triggers the Keystone, teleporting her and John to the mental version of Halo. Makee announces she's staying here... but is interrupted when she begins to bleed from her chest. Kai, seeing the Chief ensnared in the vision, did the only thing she could to snap him out of it.
As Silver Team becomes overwhelmed, John realizes he has no ability to both save his True Companions and retrieve the Keystones. So he Takes a Third Option: he becomes Cortana's Empty Shell voluntarily. When Cortana protests that she may not be able to give his body back to him, he merely replies, "I trust you." Thus augmented, the Master Chief becomes a true One-Man Army, mowing through the Covenant troops and vectoring in the Pelican Drop Ship with its More Dakka when sidearms aren't enough. The Chief grabs both Keystones — which do not react — and carries them aboard, and then helps stabilize Riz (who got hit with a Covenant Sticky Bomb) by cauterizing her wound with an improvised blowtorch. The Chief then returns to the cockpit of the Pelican, helmet still on, to bring the Keystones back to Reach.
Kai sits in the co-pilot's seat. "John? Is that you?"
The Master Chief does not respond.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Early Appearance: The Brute first encountered in Episode 5 is affirmed to be Atriox, who was introduced in Halo Wars 2 as the leader of the Banished, an offshoot group of the Covenant. While in canon he did participate in the war, Atriox and the Banished were unknown to the UNSC until long after the Human-Covenant war ended, and never encountered Master Chief until Halo Infinite. In this timelime, he receives his signature cheek scar when Master Chief shoots him with a DMR.
- An Arm and a Leg: Riz gets stuck by a plasma grenade and severely wounded, with burns across her torso so severe that she's torn open down to the ribcage, and what appears to be a chunk of her shoulder armour missing. John, under Cortana's control, has to cauterize the extensive area to keep Riz alive.
- Blunt "Yes":
- After their confrontation in the hangar, Kai asks Riz and Vannak if they were really going to shoot her.Vannak: Absolutely.
Riz: No question. - Kai then admits she was also ready to kill them, but at least she would have felt bad about it.
- After their confrontation in the hangar, Kai asks Riz and Vannak if they were really going to shoot her.
- Book Ends: Several with regards to the first episode.
- Master Chief had to deal with two elites attacking him in the opening fight and was able to dodge their attacks with little room for error, while in this episode he has to do something similar with 3-4 Brutes in the climactic battle.
- Kwan Ha was targeted for Article 72, an extermination order with the caveat of Make It Look Like an Accident. In this episode Halsey was given an awfully fast military tribunal and pronounced guilty, and given how much she knows of UNSC secrets Article 72 was invoked on her.
- The first episode Master Chief kept his helmet on until the last few minutes, as a sign he was facing his humanity and breaking through his soldier indoctrination. This episode ends with John submitting himself to be taken over by Cortana, and his body becomes a mobile shell for her to use. When the other Spartans remove their helmets inside the Condor Master Chief does not, and also doesn't respond to Kai's question if John is inside.
- Bottomless Magazines: Averted. The Spartans' guns hold a lot of ammunition but the Spartans are facing a regiment of Covenant soldiers and start running out of ammo during the fire fight. The viewpoint switches to first person so we see the counters on their guns hit zero as the guns run dry.
- Broken Faceplate: Master Chief's faceplate cracks after taking several hits from Atriox's gravity mace.
- Broken Pedestal: Miranda Keyes learning about her father Jacob's involvement in the Spartan program leads to her basically cold-shouldering him for much of the episode.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The Phantom hijacked by Silver Team in the first episode, and shown to be under examination in a hangar on the base in the previous episode, is used by Makee to escape Reach.
- Cortana explaining to John the original plan to use him as a Meat Puppet becomes relevant when John invokes it himself.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Atriox manhandles both Riz and John with little effort. Cortana later repays him by bringing in the team's Condor to strafe Atriox and get him out of the fight.
- Deliberate Injury Gambit: Faced with being overwhelmed by Covenant forces, Chief doesn't have the opportunity to regroup his team, escape the planet AND recover the artifact that will immobilize him if he grabs it. But knowing Cortana is capable of taking direct control of his body if his mind is "gone," he allows himself to take a direct hit from a gravity hammer to knock him unconscious. Cortana then takes over, able to one-shot nearby enemies with ease, remote in the Condor drop ship for assistance and retrieve the artifact (as it was established the artifact specifically reacts to John's consciousness, not just his body) in short order. The caveat is that John's mind may be irrecoverable.
- Dying as Yourself: Makee attempts something like this when the Spartans arrive and the Prophets peg her to be an accomplice. She grabs the united artifact, mentally teleporting her and John to the Halo and implies she can take them there physically, trying to find a different option than the Covenant or humanity. But this is interrupted by Kai shooting her in order to deactivate the artifact and get Chief back in action.
- Eye Scream: Atriox gets a bullet through the eye courtesy of John, though it doesn't stop him. Cortana has to strafe him with the Condor to win, and it's not clear if she actually managed to kill him.
- Faking the Dead: Miranda realizes, based on the symptoms Halsey displays when she suddenly suffers a seizure, that she's actually a flash clone and the genuine article has escaped.
- Finishing Stomp: Master Chief does a planet drop right on top of a poor Grunt.John: Afternoon.
- Giant Mook: Multiple Brutes show up in the fight this time, proving to be much heavier hitters against the Spartans compared to the Elites.
- Godzilla Threshold: John orders Cortana to take him over completely, knowing it's the only way to secure the Keystones and save his team without the former disabling him, even though it means his mind may never come back.
- Gunship Rescue: Cortana remotely pilots the Condor to strafe the Covenant forces, who are too numerous to defeat through ground combat alone. This only gives them breathing room and a way to escape, however, as it's shown that sticking around too long will not go well even with air support.
- Heal It With Fire: Riz's extensive plasma grenade wound is temporarily sealed by an improvised torch until the team can get her to medical facilities.
- He Knows Too Much: Because Halsey knows too much to be imprisoned or exiled, she's instead been found guilty of treason and is to be executed.
- Honesty Is the Best Policy: Seeing the Spartans in a Mexican Standoff, Jacob Keyes confirms the allegations against Halsey and his own role in it, to get them working together again so they can go after Makee and the Second Keystone.
- Ignored Enemy: The Spartans seemingly make no attempt to target the three Prophets in charge of the Covenant when they're all gathered in the air right above Makee activating the united Keystone. Then again, the Spartans may have had no time to engage the Prophets in the battle (probably justified as each one is a major Boss Battle in the game series), and the UNSC may have no idea yet in-universe as to who or what Prophets are and their importance in holding the fractious Covenant together. In any case, an opportunity for a major decapitation strike is missed, although that wasn't the objective of the mission anyways.
- Improbable Aiming Skills:
- As a sign that Cortana is taking direct control of Master Chief's body, he goes Guns Akimbo with plasma pistols and starts shooting enemies with ultra precision even for a Spartan, and taking out some outside of his direct line of sight.
- Earlier on, the Master Chief drops right on top of an unfortunate Covenant Grunt during the team's insertion from a suborbital height.
- Internal Reveal: Riz and Vannak learn about the history of the SPARTAN program. All the Spartans learn that Jacob Keyes was also involved on a personal level, as does Miranda.
- It's Personal:
- Kai chases after Halsey while the other Spartans attempt to secure Makee, desperate to learn about her past.
- Miranda makes a point of telling her mother personally about the decision to terminate her. Too bad she's not actually her mother, but a clone.
- I Want Them Alive!: The Prophets order the "Demon" taken alive after Makee has been killed, as he's the only other known human with the ability to activate the Keystones.
- Mook Horror Show:
- When Halsey tries to escape on her ship Kai has none of it, leaping onto the ship and smashing her way inside. Halsey's assistant Adun attempts to attack Kai from behind, which only makes her angry and she kills him by throwing him into the ceiling. Halsey only barely manages to escape by getting into an escape pod.
- When the Spartans first arrive at the Covenant's temple, they swiftly dispose of the guards outside. Unfortunately, once the remaining guards notice their presence, they summon hundreds of Elites and Brutes as reinforcements.
- Mortal Wound Reveal:
- Makee is in the middle of trying to convince John to stay with her in the mental projection of the Halo ringworld when they both look down to see red blood starting to spread across her chest. Cut back to the real world in the Covenant temple, and it turns out that Kai fatally shot Makee to snap John out of the vision that was keeping him entranced.
- After carrying Riz and the Keystones back into the Condor and fleeing the planet, John, Kai and Vannak detach Riz's outer armour and start attending to her wounds from the Covenant plasma grenade that she was stuck with during the battle. It didn't seem too bad down on the planet, but it reaches
Squick levels as her left side is basically flayed down to the ribcage from her chest down to her midsection, and John (being controlled by Cortana at this point) improvises a torch from a gas conduit to try and cauterize it all. Ultimately subverted, as although it's a wound that would have killed any other human on the spot, Riz has the enhanced durability of a Spartan, and is still alive as the Condor flees the system to head back to better facilities on Reach.
- Mythology Gag:
- Some of the combat looks like a First-Person Shooter heads-up point-of-view.
- The lead Brute, who challenges John in the final fight and is implied to be the one who retrieved the Keystones on Eridanus II, is identified by John's helmet HUD as "Atriox".
- Elites in the show have a more homogenized armor designed compared to the games, mostly subtle differences in coloring rather than really diverse helmets and shoulder pieces. The Praetorian Guard Elites on the other hand use the Zealot class armor design from the games, an indication of something more ornamental.
- Negative Space Wedgie: The Covenant planet is surrounded by a gravitational anomaly that shields it from outside observation and makes approaching it near-suicide without precise navigation.
- Not Quite Dead:
- The Endymion with Kai on it crashes in a huge ball of fire as she futilely tries to regain control. Then Kai crawls out into the open, showing she jumped out before it impacted.
- The Prophets are fuming over how their Brute has killed the "Demon", removing their only other means of finding the Halo, when he suddenly gets to his feet again under Cortana's control.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Adun tries to Wrench Whack Kai from behind, only to realize that was a very bad idea when it barely staggers her. That bad idea ends up costing him his life when Kai slams him up into the ceiling head-first. If that didn't kill him, the ship crashing sure did.
- Silver Team is surprised at the low security on the Covenant's holy planet. Turns out hundreds of soldiers are barracked inside the mountain where Cortana couldn't detect them.
- Praetorian Guard: The Elites guarding the Prophets are dressed in the elaborate Zealot class armor from the games and even referred to as such, contrasting the more subdued armor used by regular infantry.
- Red Shirt Army:
- Parangosky wants to send twelve battalions of Marines into Covenant space, but John bluntly points out that she could send 10,000 Marines and would only get back 10,000 corpses. He recommends Silver Team, as they're tough enough to do the job.
- Hundreds of Elites vs. Silver Team results in lots of dead Elites, though they clearly would have won through attrition eventually.
- Sadistic Choice: John is facing the choice of trying to take the Keystones, which might save humanity from destruction, or helping his injured teammates evacuate. He does not have time to do both. He takes the third option of having Cortana take over his body which makes him fast and deadly enough to do both, as well as removing the obstacle of his touch activating the Keystones, which would freeze him in place.
- Scenery Porn: The sacred Covenant world is in a nebula which constantly shifts and distorts due to gravitational lensing. Just getting there gives us the image of the Condor being pelted with cosmic streaks.
- Sequel Hook:
- John takes enough harm that his mind is functionally "gone" and Cortana takes over. Master Chief is functionally just a shell now, and unless or until his mind returns, even with enhanced abilities they can no longer use the artifacts.
- Both the Spartans and the Covenant are privy to see the star map the artifact projects into the sky, showing the location of Halo, although the gathered Prophets complain that it's incomplete when Makee is shot.
- Dr. Halsey manages to distract UNSC troops with a clone of herself so that she can slip away and go into hiding.
- Shoot the Dog: Makee was a non-combatant, but her interfacing with the artifact was affecting Master Chief too and preventing him from assisting with the immediate threat. Desperate for an answer, Kai shoots Makee to force her to let go of the artifact.
- Take That, Audience!: Gamers have complained about John taking off his helmet in the first episode, instantly defining him as a Rounded Character as opposed to the Featureless Protagonist Narrator they had played as for twenty years. In this episode, John finally becomes the thing we're used to seeing — The Faceless Silent Protagonist — but the transformation is framed as a tragic (if hopefully temporary) Character Death. It is critical of the audience for wanting the Master Chief to be an Empty Shell that someone orders around — in other words, a Player Character.
- Tap on the Head: Subverted; Adun attempts to knock out Kai when she is demanding answers from Halsey but this only surprises her, and she turns around and kills him in short order. It's clear that Spartan augmentations are very thorough and even with her helmet off she is very resilient to blunt force trauma (or the blow just bounced off her armour instead).
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
- It's clear that the real Halsey doesn't give a damn about her loyal assistant Adun and uses him and a flash clone of herself as a distraction, leaving them both to their deaths.
- The Prophet of Mercy makes it clear that the Covenant is just using Makee to find the Halo and intend for her to burn with the rest of humanity. It becomes a moot point when Kai kills her minutes later.
- Zerg Rush: Hundreds of Elites emerge from underground and swarm the temple when Silver Team's presence is revealed.
