Recap / Halo 2022 S 2 E 3 Visegrad

Picking up from last episode, Silver Team approaches Visegrad Relay from the woods, alone with no backup. Entering into the facility, they detect what sounds like a garbled transmission, and Chief's suspicions are seemingly confirmed: the Covenant are on Reach. But before they can enter into a doorway, they're ambushed by UNSC forces, ordering them to stand down for going on an unsanctioned mission. Despite a brief confrontation, Chief enters the door...and there's nothing. No evidence of the Covenant, no slain bodies, no anything. He and Silver Team are promptly sent back to HQ, where Admiral Keyes suspends them from active duty, and orders Chief to perform a full psychiatric evaluation. An enraged Chief, furious that he's being disbelieved, drives the rest of Silver Team away when they believe he's lied to them. Meanwhile, Corporal Perez is picking up a pattern, still plagued by the nightmares of losing her squad.

Elsewhere, Ackerson speaks with his elderly and infirm father, discussing recent events on Reach. Ackerson regrets that he has to leave him behind in the coming days, but promises that he will carry out his father's wish to not let the enemy take him alive. Chief escapes from the Reach facility and seeks out Parangosky, who he realizes still works for ONI as she begs him to fall back in line. Kai speaks to Ackerson and volunteers to step up in Chief's place, as Ackerson is displeased with Chief's recent behavior. Riz attempts to seek out a sense of normal by visiting Louis, and joins him and his husband for a quiet dinner.

Back on the Rubble, Kwan is able to warn Laera that Soren's crew betrayed him and sold him out. Laera attempts to steal a ship to take Kessler and Kwan away, but Soren's ex-crew stops them before they can escape. Laera stays behind and allows herself to be captured to buy time for Kessler and Kwan to escape, but the latter sneaks aboard the enemy ship and kills everyone onboard before they can execute Laera.

Keyes soon discovers the bodies of Cobalt Team, killed by the Covenant. Ackerson tries deflecting the line of questioning by telling the Admiral that Reach is doomed to fall and that all important personnel must evacuate, but the infuriated Keyes won't have it. Ackerson bids farewell to Halsey, who tries turning the tables by revealing she knows the fate of his sister, Julia, but Ackerson deflects right back and leaves the imprisoned Soren with her. He then gives his father a suicide pill, while using the last flash clone of what's revealed to be his sister to give him one last happy moment before Ackerson himself evacuates the planet. Meanwhile, Chief seeks out Perez in a church, where she reveals that the Covenant have sent a broadcast to Reach, informing them of their impending arrival. They promise that they will cleanse the planet to seek out the Halo, and slay Chief where he stands. The episode then ends with the Covenant beginning their invasion.

The Fall of Reach has begun...

This episode contains the following tropes:

• Adaptational Backstory Change: Ackerson in canon is a native of Cleveland, OH and is estranged from his brother. In the Silver Timeline, he had an older sister who died when she was in the SPARTAN program, while his father became an infirm old widow.
• Adaptational Context Change: The Fall of Reach is presented a lot more tragically here. In canon, ONI didn't warn the UNSC of a likely Covenant attack on Epsilon Eradani, giving the enemy an advantage when they discovered Reach's location during said attack (in fact, it's explicitly compared to the Attack on Pearl Harbor by the creative team). That said, the Covenant invasion was a massive surprise to all parties, as The Fall of Reach and Halo: Reach presented both Blue Team and Noble Team doing their damndest to fight to the bitter end as the UNSC evacuated the populace as best they could. The show reveals that ONI was aware for some time that the Covenant would inevitably invade Reach, but chose to keep this information from the public because they deemed the people, the planet, and anyone who wasn't a key asset towards winning the war as an acceptable loss. However, their efforts to hide this actually made the situation worse, as their cover-up drove Master Chief to go rogue, resulting in his squad losing faith in his abilities, the regular UNSC forces being at odds with ONI, and putting their ultimate weapon in serious danger as he's out of armor when the invasion occurs.
• Adaptation Expansion: We get to see some of Ackerson's life in this continuity, revealing he's caring for his infirm father, his mother died some time ago, and his sister perished as a SPARTAN candidate. That said, it is somewhat changed from the canon, since he's an established Cleveland native in the original continuity.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Downplayed in Ackerson's case. He's still manipulative and ambitious, but unlike his glory-hounding canon counterpart, he is the only member of ONI who seems genuinely troubled by the more morally dubious actions that he has to take, least of all leaving everyone to die on Reach so only the key people in the war will live on.
• Adaptational Sympathy: Despite Ackerson's gaslighting, the episode reveals he has a bit more of a reason to despise Halsey compared to his original counterpart's petty dislike for her: His sister Julia was one of the original SPARTAN-II candidates, but died during the augmentation procedure.
• Adaptational Villainy: While ONI has never been portrayed as a very morally minded organization, their goals were still about finding ways to defeat the Covenant. This usually manifested as sending troops on a Suicide Mission without telling them as much, as well as the controversies of the Spartan project. But when it came to minimizing civilian casualties and simply fighting back, even if it's a Hopeless War, they usually stayed out of the way. Here, ONI explicitly writes off Reach — the stronghold of the UNSC military, the single most important human planet besides Earth itself, and the home of the Spartans, who are themselves priceless because they are literally the only reason the Covenant hasn't already won — because doing so makes it easier for key personnel and resources to get out safely.
• All for Nothing: Chief's going rogue to stop a Covenant invasion is rendered moot, since ONI's gaslighting made it virtually impossible for him to do anything.
• Answer Cut: Perez asks Chief if the Covenant are on Reach. The moment she does, the windows of the church she's in are destroyed by enemy fire. The Covenant are on Reach alright.
• Apologetic Attacker: Chief is being escorted to a psych evaluation by two ONI guards and says "I'm sorry" just before clocking them with one hit each.
• Asshole Victim: All of Soren's crew—who sold him out and were about to kill his wife—are killed off by Kwan in one of the most deserving deaths in the series thus far.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Halsey seems to have gotten past Ackerson's facade by telling him the fate of his sister, but it becomes Subverted when he decides to leave her with company: a very pissed-off Soren.
• Bait-and-Switch: The entire episode opens up with Silver Team approaching Visegrad Relay, with both them and the audience expecting a fight with the Covenant. Except when they get to a door that's slamming open repeatedly, they are ambushed—by the UNSC special forces, who have come to arrest Chief for going on an unauthorized mission. It's later revealed that ONI had already retrieved the bodies and cleaned up any evidence of the attack to keep Reach in the dark about the truth.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Ackerson's father asks that his son doesn't let the Covenant take him alive, and is given a suicide pill to honor that promise.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Parangosky promising to be Chief's ally in the first episode was a bold-faced lie. She's still part of ONI, and is just using him to get a one-up on Ackerson, fruitlessly ordering Chief to stand down and go back to being a good soldier.
• Broken Pedestal: Silver Team and Admiral Keyes are both pissed at Chief for going rogue on an apparent hunch that seemingly turned out wrong. Keyes is even more pissed at Ackerson when he learns that Chief was right, and Ackerson's gaslighting resulted in Chief going rogue once again, to say nothing of getting Cobalt Team killed.
• Bullying a Dragon: Halsey thinks she has Ackerson's number when she brings up what truly happened to his late sister. It seems to work, but she forgets he's several steps ahead of her when he brings Soren into the room, prepared to let the SPARTAN beat her to a pulp as a final parting shot before he evacuates with ONI.
• Call-Back: Master Chief once again violates the chain of command and goes rogue, just like he did in the first season.
• Cassandra Truth: Chief is again confronted with this when his unsanctioned mission turns out to be incorrect, even though he and the audience is well aware he's right on the money, and no one believes his claims. Keyes learns Chief was telling the truth, but too late to do anything. Vannak seems to still have some faith in Chief's honesty, as he looks at the board and sees Cobalt Team is still MIA, and suspects something's off.
• Cold Equation: ONI's plan is to evacuate only key, senior UNSC personnel off Reach while letting everyone else perish on the planet. By ONI's calculus, sacrificing millions is better in the long run than risking a full-scale evacuation and losing ships and trained personnel that will be needed in future battles in the immediate aftermath of Reach's fall. There is, however, a strong implication that FLEETCOM and other senior members of the UNSC are only out for themselves.
• Curbstomp Battle: Cobalt Team was caught off guard by the Covenant's forces, and mercilessly slaughtered.
• Cyanide Pill: Ackerson gives his father one, honoring his request to not let the Covenant take him alive.
• Defiant Captive: Laera refuses to break before Soren's traitorous crew. She's lucky Kwan saved her, as they would have suffocated her had she not arrived in time.
• Do with Him as You Will: Implied when Ackerson leaves the imprisoned Soren with Halsey, no doubt counting on the bad blood between the two to make things get ugly.
• Dramatic Irony: Everything Chief has claimed up to this point is 100% true, including seeing Makee, Cobalt Team going missing at Visegrad Relay, and that the Covenant have arrived on Reach, but nobody except Perez believes him. The audience knows he's telling the truth, and Keyes (followed by the rest of the planet shortly thereafter) learn the same soon enough.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Admiral Keyes took little pleasure in helping Halsey create the SPARTAN program, but deemed it a necessary evil to protect humanity. He's beyond pissed when he sees the corpses of Cobalt Team, especially so when he learns that ONI knew about the Covenant's presence and hid it.
  • Ackerson is a grade-A manipulator and gaslighter, and he agrees with Halsey's assessment that the SPARTAN program is the next step for humanity. What he doesn't like is that his sister had to die as part of it.
• Fake Defector: Parangosky was never kicked out of ONI for the Halsey scandal like she claimed, and was pretending otherwise to get Chief to fall back in line.
• A Father to His Men:
  • Besides Chief going rogue to get to the bottom of the Covenant invasion, Admiral Keyes is outraged at learning that ONI hid the truth from him and got Cobalt Team killed.
  • As horrible were the choices Halsey made to create the Spartans, she remembered every single recruit by name and in her own way mourned those who died in the augmentation process.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • As Chief is being escorted to his psych eval, he sneaks the communicator Parangosky left him before the guards escort him to the elevator. No points in guessing what he's gonna do to those guards...
  • When Chief reveals to Parangosky that the Covenant are on Reach, she reacts less with shock at this information, and more of the fact that he knew it. This hints to Chief and the audience that Parangosky was never kicked out of ONI in the first place.
• Foreshadowing: Ackerson's father mentions his sister, but the Colonel has to remind his infirm father that both she and their mother died. While this line gives more context towards his behavior, it also hints of the true reason why he has Halsey captive when it's revealed that Julia was one of the unlucky SPARTAN candidates who died during augmentation.
• Gaslighting: The levels at which this is happening becomes a Deconstructed Trope. ONI removes all evidence of the Covenant's initial assault on Visegrad Relay, and puts up a fake flight plan for Cobalt Team to make it seem like Chief had gone rogue as a result of psychosis—all to hide the truth that the Covenant were in fact on Reach and Cobalt Team was in fact sent there to confirm it. This cover-up impacted Keyes' intel as well, which was placing different levels of UNSC and ONI at odds with each other at the moment they needed to be most united. In doing so, Silver Team is separated and most of them aren't battle-ready when the first strike occurs.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Downplayed. Perez reviewed the static in the comms array over and over again until she finally made sense of the underlying message. The result was a desire to go to church and pray. When Chief arrives she shares what she found: a Sanghelli talking of laying waste to all of humanity.
• Government Conspiracy: ONI has been hiding the fact that the Covenant are poised to invade Reach (and have already landed scouts on the ground) for the last few episodes, not wanting to start a panic and deeming Reach a lost cause. At its core, it's implied that they really want to get out of there to save their own rears from being glassed, and hid the truth so they could screw everyone else over while they slipped away unharmed.
• Hopeless War: Ackerson and ONI see the fight against the tactically superior Covenant as a fleeting one. Humanity needs to survive, but they can't do so by fighting to the bitter end, and deems Reach expendable for the greater good of human survival.
• Internal Deconstruction: Last season gave heavy focus towards the UNSC and ONI's willingness to screw their superiors if it meant advancing their own careers, chiefly with Halsey wanting to use her influence to force Parangosky to give her a blank check to carry out any unethical research she saw fit, and Parangosky using the convenient exposure of the SPARTAN program's origins to force her rival out. This time, ONI decides to screw over all of Reach so they can pull out with what key personnel they have and let the Covenant take out what they've deemed as a lost cause. However, their gaslighting tactics to hide the truth resulted in Master Chief going rogue and without his armor to prove he's telling the truth, which in turn has resulted in Silver Team and Admiral Keyes losing faith in Chief's capabilities. Not only does this severe blow to morale leave everyone in a horrific position when the invasion does inevitably start, but Keyes learns that Chief was telling the truth and ONI was gaslighting everyone, putting the military and intelligence divisions at odds. Now, humanity is no longer facing their enemy on a united front, leaving Reach wide open for the slaughter.
• Internal Reveal:
  • Laera and Kwan learn that the UNSC arrested Soren and took him to Reach.
  • Admiral Keyes learns about what ONI has been doing to deal with the Covenant presence on Reach, and he's less than pleased about it.
• It Is Beyond Saving: With the Covenant bearing down on Reach, ONI has deemed protecting the planet a lost cause and has chosen to covertly evacuate important assets while allowing the planet to fall, rather than attempt a mass evacuation.
• It's All About Me: While ONI claims they're evacuating Reach with only the best UNSC personnel they need to win the war, deeming Reach and her people an acceptable loss, it's clear that everyone except Ackerson is bailing because they see the writing on the wall and don't want to get trampled in the ensuing chaos should a mass evacuation be implemented.
• It's All My Fault: Kwan feels immense guilt at having failed Madrigal and her people, especially when the Covenant glassed it.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Chief going rogue did come with the caveat that he knowingly lied to his team about being sanctioned and cleared for duty, but Keyes realizes too late that Chief was dead right about the Covenant being on Reach. Now all he has to show for it is Chief going rogue, Cobalt Team lying dead in the morgue, and the UNSC at odds with ONI over their deception.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: As Laera is being suffocated in an airlock in an attempt to torture the location of Soren's stash out of her, her captor suddenly finds his jugular spraying over the airlock window. Cut to Laera waking up to find all but one of them dead and Kwan covered in blood.
• Kill the Ones You Love: Though heartbroken over having to do so, Ackerson does honor his father's request to take his life before he evacuates.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: After Chief learns that Parangosky never left ONI, he rebuffs her attempts to talk him down and moves to leave. Her escorts attempt to intervene, but she quietly waves them off, not wanting to make a scene in a battle she knows they'd lose.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Ackerson says that Chief is Not Himself, given his recent behavior and pattern of disobedience, despite Chief's behavior being pretty consistent with his character in the games. One has to wonder if the writers were taking a potshot towards Chief's behavior in Season 1, where he wasn't acting like he did in the games.
• Let Them Die Happy: Ackerson brings in a flash clone of his sister, Julia, so his father can "see" her before he dies from a suicide pill.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Ackerson says that there is no hope of defending Reach against the Covenant so he's quietly diverting assets off planet and covering up any knowledge they knew of the attack in advance. This is called out as hard as possible by Keyes, telling Ackerson "Go fuck yourself."
• Mythology Gag:
  • Ackerson agrees with Halsey's assessment that the SPARTAN program is the next step in human evolution. He was the leader of the SPARTAN-III program in the original canon, with the hint that he may be planning to do the same here.
  • Keyes mentions the Winter Contingency, a protocol involving civilian evacuation and defensive positions once the Covenant had found Reach. This was first mentioned in Halo: Reach and the title of the first mission. Here, Ackerson dismisses the protocol, believing Reach is lost and intends to leave everyone behind before the Covenant arrive.
  • Ackerson intends to get rid of the bodies of Cobalt Team and list them as MIA, so their actual cause of death won't be revealed. This was the official stance on all fallen Spartans in the main canon, with a type of Badass Creed of "Spartans never die, they're just missing in action."
  • Chief's lines to his ONI escorts highly resembles the random NPC chatter in the games. "You get any closer, we're gonna have to talk about our feelings."
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Calling ONI a hero is a bit of a stretch, but they and Ackerson spent the first two episodes gaslighting Chief about the Covenant's presence on Reach because they didn't want to raise any alarms, claiming that he just went off the rails due to the trauma he experienced. In doing so, they've left Silver Team demoralized and having lost faith in their leader, and Chief himself is out of armor and nowhere near UNSC facilities when the inevitable invasion does occur. Now that the invasion has begun, humanity's last best hope is in no shape to fight back in top form.
• Not Himself: Ackerson claims Chief is acting erratically because of Cortana and Makee, but it's another form of Gaslighting as he's deliberately handcuffing Chief to prevent passing information the Covenant is about to attack. Chief knows this and goes AWOL, which doesn't improve the situation with his team.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • Kwan manages to kill all of Soren's crew offscreen aside from one.
  • A villainous example, but the Covenant ambushed and killed Cobalt Team without issue.
• Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Silver Team is angry at Chief for lying to them about the Visegrad mission, coupled with an official reprimand from Keyes they split up to their own ways. Deconstructed, since ONI's unwillingness to disclose the Covenant presence on Reach lead Chief to go rogue in the first place, and the severe blow to morale has left Silver Team and the UNSC forces wholly unprepared to deal with the invasion, to say nothing of Chief not having his suit on when the attack begins.
• Precision F-Strike: When Ackerson tries to convince Admiral Keyes of his plan to abandon Reach instead of offering any sort of fight, Keyes tells him "go fuck yourself."
• The Purge: The Covenant promise that they will do this to all of Reach, especially Master Chief.
• Refreshingly Normal Life-Choice: Riz finds that the normal life Louis and his husband live is a lot more enticing than being the ever-demanding SPARTAN super-soldier ever was, and takes comfort in joining the two for dinner.
• The Reveal:
  • Ackerson was having Cortana run simulations about a possible Covenant invasion of Reach, and ONI was fully aware that the Covenant was on Reach. They kept things quiet from everyone due to not wanting to cause a panic, but the real twist was they saw Reach as a lost cause and were leaving everyone open to the upcoming Covenant attack.
  • Parangosky was never booted out of ONI; she's still in it.
  • Soren's crew sold him out to the UNSC so they could get what they felt was owed to them: a stash of Soren's treasure. Soren himself is on Reach as Ackerson's prisoner.
  • The flash-cloned girl sent to tend to Halsey is of Ackerson's sister, Julia, a SPARTAN-II who died a result of the augmentations. The implication is that Ackerson is trying to rub Halsey's nose in what she did to him and his family — though, of course, Halsey being Halsey, it doesn't work.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: All of Soren's crew are mercilessly slaughtered by Kwan. As they sold their boss out to the UNSC and were about to kill his wife, they deserved every bit of it.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand:
  • Parangosky was not drummed out of ONI but has lost most of her power. She's looking for information to sabotage Ackerson and regain her position.
  • Admiral Keyes was given false information to prevent any sort of corroboration of Master Chief's story. When the bodies of Cobalt Team show up, he is royally pissed at Ackerson.
• Sacrificial Lamb: The bodies of Cobalt Team were found in the woods near Visegrad with plasma burns.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: Perez was able to translate the underlying message being buried in those comm towers. She describes it as a prayer and offers a translation as Chief listens to the message in Sanghelli, where it describes burning all of humanity in service of "the great journey of my people." Extra points as this is being shared in a church.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Ackerson's father is suffering from some form of Dementia or Alzheimers, as he has trouble remembering a lot of key things. At times, this even includes the fact his wife and daughter are both dead.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Chief refuses to submit himself to a psych eval when he knows he has to stop the Covenant, so he beats down his escort and escapes.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Ackerson and most of the key UNSC personnel evacuate Reach before the invasion begins, though it's strongly implied that they were covering their own asses.
• Shoot the Dog: Ackerson only evacuates key UNSC personnel instead of trying to front a full evacuation of Reach, believing that the planet is lost and that there is no chance of winning. His only strategy is to live to fight another day with their best minds still alive, even if the cost is millions of innocent lives, his ailing father included.
• Slashed Throat: Kwan kills at least two of Soren's former crew by slashing their throats.
• Slow Doors: Though Laera makes a valiant effort, Rubble's main docking bay doors close just fast enough that she has to slam on the brakes before her stolen ship slams into them.
• Took a Level in Badass: Kwan was previously an Action Survivor, relying on running away and surprise strategies to survive. Here, she rescues Laera from Anteres' crew by splitting them up then killing them with just a knife. She doesn't appear happy about it, but it's a marked increase in her previous skillset.
• Unperson: Parangosky warns Chief that screwing with ONI and FLEETCOM is a good way to get himself killed, then have all record of him existing wiped.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: ONI throws Reach to the Covenant's mercy, but Ackerson genuinely believes that he has no choice but to do so, since the war is hopeless and nothing they do will end in victory. All he hopes is that by saving those who can best fight the war, humanity will survive, even if it pains him to do so.
• Wham Shot: Just as Perez asks Chief if the Covenant are on Reach, the church is hit in a massive explosion. The invasion of Reach has begun.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Admiral Keyes and Silver Team give Chief an earful for lying to them about getting clearance to head to Visegrad. The only reason Chief isn't facing a court martial is because Keyes stood up for him. Unfortunately, they have no idea that Chief was right...
  • Keyes later gives one to Ackerson for keeping everyone on Reach in the dark about the Covenant's presence, and how ONI has decided to abandoned everyone to the enemy. He then bluntly tells Ackerson to "Go fuck yourself" before storming off.
• The Worf Effect: Cobalt Team are a team of highly-trained SPARTAN soldiers. They're ambushed and killed by the Covenant, having failed to see their attack coming. (In the next episode, Keyes confesses that two of them didn't even get a chance to fire their weapons, which either downplays or exaggerates the trope depending on how you think SPARTANs are supposed to handle themselves.)

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