Kwan has ended up at The Rubble and marked for indentured servitude. She removes her tracking chip but after being pursued manages to kill her owner in desperation. Knowing she can't stick around she says goodbye to Kessler.
Chief sees that Cobalt Team was listed as "Standby" which sends him to Ackerson in fury, demanding to know what happened. Ackerson deflects all questions and makes it clear he sees Chief as compromised and refusing to send Silver Team to any significant combat zones. Chief visits Corporal Perez to inquire about why she didn't corroborate the Elite attack on Sanctuary, and gets roped into a meal with her family. She privately reveals her guilt as the only remaining member of her team and that there was something in the relay stations she couldn't isolate. Chief believes she found a buried message and this is a standard procedure for the Covenant to cut off communications. He starts a new training pattern with Silver Team, pushing Riz to her limits despite the fact she was struggling. He wants to be at peak performance when the Covenant make themselves known.
Riz is cleared for duty but still struggling with lingering injuries. Kai suggests reinserting the spine pellets to help her manage the pain but Riz adamantly refuses. A trainer and former Spartan recruit, Louis, offers advice and takes her to someone to help her recognize her pain and come to grips with being a wounded Spartan.
Halsey is in a picturesque room and a young girl brings treats and a board game to play. As Halsey inquires as to who sent her, the girl has a nosebleed and shortly dies. Unfazed, this happens multiple times before Halsey gets to meet Ackerson, as they seem to be running some strange experiment in a holographic chamber using flash clones to interact with her. Ackerson then meets with Cortana, who is limited by lacking a connection with the outside world but has been running simulations and predicts a 97% chance of failure.
Chief reviews flight logs for all Spartan teams hoping to figure out what Cobalt Team was up to. Finding a flight log to the Visegrád Communications Relay on Reach but all other information deleted, he deploys Silver Team against orders to try and rescue Cobalt Team. He knows that the Covenant is on Reach.
At Sword Base a squad of marines are sequentially killed by a single, highly skilled Elite. Perplexingly, Makee is there as well giving directions on where to go. Inside a room is the larger Forerunner artifact that held the location of Halo...
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim:
- A couple of men on Rubble try to take Kwan Ha back as she's still an indentured servant. She beats most of them up, jettisons one into space, and stabs the ringleader with the tag. Seeing as they were willing to hurt a teenager, it's played as well deserved.
- Dr. Halsey is subjected to Gaslighting by Ackerson when he takes her captive. He's a horrible human being for sure, but her own crimes don't make the punishment any less satisfying.
- Darkness Equals Death: In Sword Base, a squad is sent into a dark corridor. Gunfire ensues, ends, and then nothing but silence. The commanding officer sends the next squad. This time, an Elite slaughters them with a plasma blade. He extinguishes the blade, only to then reappear right in front of the commander.
- Deadly Nosebleed: The clones sent to Halsey's room quickly die if Halsey tries pressing them about anything they saw outside the room, indicating by a persistent nosebleed moments before they collapse.
- Dented Iron: Riz is still a Spartan but her injuries from the previous season are nasty and she is struggling with chronic pain.
- Famed In-Story: Spartans have become legends with propaganda being spread everywhere. When Chief goes to visit Perez, her family takes note of his size and eventually deduce he is not just a fellow soldier but a Spartan. Her brother talked about bringing over his friends to get a picture with him.
- A Father to His Men: Chief is outraged when it seems that Cobalt Team has lost contact, and goes behind the UNSC's back to figure out where they are so he can rescue them.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: The name of the communications relay that Cobalt Team were sent to: Visegrád Relay. Even if you don't recognise its significance from the games, it's pretty clear that the Covenant are likely there even before John states so out loud.
- Gaslighting: Ackerson is doing this to the captive Halsey on purpose, locking her up in a Gilded Cage and sending in flash clone assistants to tend to her, who die if she tries pressing them about her captors.
- Handicapped Badass: Louis is a former Spartan recruit but his augmentations lead to blindness. He never saw combat but adjusted extremely well; assisting as a trainer, calling out Riz's ego and otherwise interacting with the world with a proficiency very close to someone who could actually see.
- Hiding the Handicap: Riz desperately tries to conceal just how badly her injuries are affecting her, even though it's obvious to anyone who interacts with her that she's in a lot of pain and barely controlling it. Louis eventually talks her into seeing a specialist to help alleviate the pain.
- Implied Death Threat: Ackerson makes it darkly clear to Chief that he's just a man in a suit, and they don't necessarily need him to be in it if he continues to step out of line.
- It Never Gets Any Easier: The Chief tells Perez that the pain of losing comrades doesn't actually fade, it just gets further away.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Ackerson's not-so-subtle threat to Chief that he's just an easily replaceable guy in a suit harkens back to how Chief was designed to be in the games—a guy in the suit that anyone could be while playing.
- Mythology Gag:
- It was mentioned in The Fall of Reach that one of the risks of the augmentations to the SPARTAN candidates was possible blindness (specifically via the increased blood flow to their eyes). Louis was blinded as a result of the procedure, being one of the 12 unlucky candidates that survived, but were crippled as a result.
- The communications relay that Cobalt Team were sent to, and that Silver Team head for at the end of the episode, is Visegrád Relay. In Halo: Reach, this was where Noble Team discovered that the Covenant were on Reach.
- One of the Perez cousins asks John if he played Spartan Attack, apparently some kind of arcade game. However that game plays, at least we got that at home...
- The Covenant are shown invading Sword Base for the relic stored there - they again did so in Halo Reach.
- Neck Snap: The Elite snaps the commander's neck at Sword Base after Makee gets tired of his sadism.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: Riz takes several hard falls during their training session, which would easily be fatal to anyone, but not a Spartan in Powered Armor.
- Not So Stoic: While having dinner with Corporal Perez's family, her brother starts asking about video games and Chief sternly says he doesn't keep score. After a brief, uncomfortable moment he gives a sly grin to let them know he's messing with them. Her brother appreciates the joke, though says he nearly crapped himself.
- Pet the Dog:
- The Chief holds back from shooting at Riz when she's about to grab the marker, trying to let her have the win, but her injuries get the better of her and she loses her grip before she can finish the climb.
- Later, Chief goes to confront Perez about why she didn't corroborate his report. When he sees that she's suffering from severe PTSD over losing her squad, he immediately becomes sympathetic to her plight, and tells her It Never Gets Any Easier.
- Properly Paranoid: Cortana is seemingly compliant and agrees to any request Ackerson makes of her, but he still knows better than to allow her access to any online servers, even if it would (as she claims) improve her ability to predict the scenarios she's been tasked with.
- The Reveal:
- Perez didn't corroborate Chief's story with Ackerson because she's too shell-shocked from losing her comrades, and is in too much disbelief at what she saw. For his part, Chief understands that feeling all too well.
- Halsey was recaptured by the UNSC, and is being gaslighted by Colonel Ackerson for an as-yet revealed purpose. He's also using Cortana to run simulations of an upcoming event — all of which end in failure — rather than locking her up in a vault.
- The Covenant are indeed planning something big: the invasion of Reach. And Chief wasn't hallucinating about Makee, as she's somehow still alive and leading their forces.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: After putting together the pattern of Covenant attacks and realizing they're on Reach, Chief takes Silver Team to intercept them and lies that he's doing so under orders. They're clearly suspicious, Kai in particular, but they ultimately go along with his orders.
- Spotting the Thread:
- Halsey deduces from the presence of the tree in her simulation that it would have only been included if someone understood its importance to her, as she burned the tree down as a child and got away with it. That can only mean Ackerson has access to Cortana, the only being other than herself that would know about it.
- The Chief himself is able to confirm there are other communications relays being investigated and deduce not only which one Cobalt Team went to, but that it's on Reach and the Covenant are likely there too.
- Survivor's Guilt: Perez was the Sole Survivor of her team, only barely making it off planet because of Master Chief. Her being awarded a medal for bravery as a PR stunt did absolutely nothing for her emotional state.
- Training from Hell: Master Chief has Silver Team do a tracking mission where they chase after Riz, who is trying to retrieve a tracking beacon placed on a high ledge. They appear to be using live ammo and Riz also takes a couple of really hard falls from 50-100 feet up. One of which has her land flat on her back and appears to knock her unconscious for a moment. The fact they are in full armor during the exercise mitigates it a little, but watching it happen and see them so casual about that kind of impact is unsettling.
- Too Dumb to Live: The Marines in Sword Base advance, one squad at a time, into a pitch-black hallway with no flashlights, which allows a single Elite to slaughter them all with ease.
- Unexplained Recovery: Chief was previously seeing Makee in the shadows, convincing himself he was going crazy with hallucinations. In the final scene she shows up in person directing and conversing with an Elite, affirming she was physically back despite being shot and killed at the end of the last season.
- The Unreveal:
- Just how did Ackerson manage to recapture Halsey? Why is he tormenting her like this? And what simulations is he having Cortana run? There's an implication that the latter has something to do with the upcoming invasion of Reach, but it's not made clear.
- How exactly did Kwan Ha end up back on Rubble, and in indentured servitude?
- How Makee was brought back (if it even is her or a flash clone) is never explained.
- We Want Our Jerk Back!: After realizing Ackerson has no intention of putting any Spartan team on the important missions they were designed to do, Silver Team starts reconsidering their opinions on Dr. Halsey just a little. Kai in particular is the one to voice that opinion, after being the one feeling most betrayed by the truth of their origins.
- Wham Line: Chief is certain the Covenant are targeting comm relays as part of a training strategy. It almost always happens right before they attack, even if they are just going to start glassing the planet. When he finds that Cobalt never left the planet and was sent to a relay station, he tells the team "The Covenant's on Reach."
- Wham Shot: Two near the end of the episode.
- For fans of the games, the communications relay that Cobalt were sent to: Visegrád Relay.
- Makee shows up interacting with an Elite who just eliminated a squad by himself. Immediately after, they find the larger Forerunner artifact being held at Sword Base.
