WMG / Halo 4

Halo 5 will see John betray the UNSC

The SPARTAN-IIs, in the end, are not loyal to the UNSC, but to Halsey. The foreshadowing was put in play in Halo 4, with him going against the UNSC when he disagreed with them. Now, he's lost his closest connection, and the UNSC is actively trying to kill Halsey as of the end of season one of Spartan Ops. Perhaps the only person who could find a way to get him Cortana back is Halsey, and she and the UNSC are not exactly friends right now. Seeing as the SPARTAN-IIs see Halsey as their mother, well, who do you think he's going to side with, his bosses, or her? Perhaps Halsey and John (with Halsey as the Voice with an Internet Connection) fighting the Storm Covenant, the UNSC and possibly the Flood, seeing as the UNSC has decided to park themselves on Halo rings, which we know are full of the Flood. Plus, Jen and Steve play off each other too well not to have them still together.

• The ones who arrested Halsey were ONI, who scapegoated her to justify the SPARTAN-IVs. They will eventually decide that they don't need the other SPARTANs anymore, and will try to eliminate them.
• Not entirely off-base, interestingly, as the added cutscenes in the Master Chief Collection give us a preview into Halo 5's story, showing that ONI is tasking their own personal SPARTAN-IV, Agent Locke, to "hunt" the Chief after he's gone AWOL. Granted he says all he's trying to do is "bring him home" and find out why he left, but he says this to the Arbiter, so he may just saying what the Arbiter wants to hear.
• Judging by what we've seen so far in previews, released info, and HUNT the TRUTH, it looks to be going the other way around: the UNSC (under the puppet-control of the increasingly-evil ONI) betraying the Master Chief.
• Partly confirmed; John does go AWOL, but it has nothing to do with Halsey or ONI. Also, the game ends with him apparently rejoining the UNSC (or what's left of it, anyways).

The Composer will come into play...

... to bring Cortana back, or even further bring her back as a physical (if not Human, then VERY CLOSE to Human) being. It is heavily implied that the digitization of a living being causes problems during the digitization, meaning that only corrupt data is available for them to be restored back to their original state. However, what happens if you try to Compose a being that is already digitized? An AI like Cortana would sidestep the issue of organic->digital conversion by not even being organic initially, meaning that she can potentially Compose herself as a bio(logical/mechanical) being, and since even then she's still data can 'die' only to reCompose yet again... making her the perfect team-mate for the next games, potential fuel for funny (constant respawning due to her being new to things, developing a pro/noob dynamic with the Chief/Cortana), heartwarming (touching, and being able to feel), and awesome (Battle Couple with the Chief).

• Jossed. Cortana does come back, but it's more thanks to Domain space magic.

Cortana doesn't really die.

Is it just me or is anyone else suss about Cortana's apparent death at the end of the game? I think we'll be seeing her again in the other 2 games via one of the clones acting as a backup and rewriting a new Cortana model.

• It's far more likely that the Didact survived, with most of her still in his armor.
  • But remember that she cloned herself into the ship/composer. It seems likely that there's one cycling Master Chief's armor and will patch itself onto a new model.
  • That ship, and the Composer, were also destroyed.
  • Note that while that is true there is still the possibility that a one imprinted itself onto John. And as someone below this page has pointed out, Cortana and Chief were seperated at one point by what is left of the Librarian, and to boot chief got some nice composer immunity out of it. So it's not out of the question that Cortana got something or even if Chief got something other than that immunity.
• It's possible that since Cortana used John's "wetware" for processing space and was uniquely bonded with John, Cortana could be "imprinted" on any new clone of Halsey (there were 7 successful clones, remember?), if she well and truly did die on the Composer.
  • Actually, it was mentioned it took Halsey 7 TRIES to get a cloned brain that didn't immediately die. Not saying she couldn't try again, though I'm not sure how likely that is given Halsey's apparent heel turn.
• In short, there are plenty of ways to bring her back. She also seems to be quite lucid when she interacts with Chief for the last time; all the foreshadowing about AI metastability has to be there for a reason.
• My own pet theary involves... Halsey's journal has an entry alluding to creating some kind of AI system in slipspace, which apparently ends in a disaster of some sort. It seems unrelated to almost anything else so far, but then we have Halo 4 where Cortana seems to "die" over some sort of slipsace portal.
• My theory is that the whatever the Librarian did to Chief includes a way of bringing Cortana back. Maybe she was encoded into his DNA or something. The good thing about the Librarian messing with John is that he gets a whole lot of magical powers that can't be explained properly beyond "space magic".
• Remember the Cortana moments in 3? Halo 5 might bring these back, considering that there may still be fragments of her personality inside him. Also, as it turns out Escalation has John and Diadact going toe-to-toe once again. If he survived, Cortana has a chance, too.
• Confirmed; a part of the Mantle's Approach containing her fragments was able to jump to Genesis, where the Domain apparently healed her.

The Enemy...

The antagonists in Halo 4 will be a radical human faction that has exploited Forerunner technology and crafted unique armor, weapons, grenades, vehicles, ships et cetera...their goal is to conquer and annex the entire galaxy and rule it just as the forerunners did, which will bring them into direct confrontation with the UNSC and by extension, the Master Chief. They'd call themselves the "Sons of the Forerunners" or something along those lines.

They would present a new, fresh enemy in that your task would now be to kill rival human soldiers, but at the same time they are "alien" and menacing enough to be a major threat.

• Reading the Forerunner Saga, I think it'll be the Flood (in more varied and Nightmare Fuel forms) and Forerunners (or at least their constructs, led by the Forerunner Master builder, who was never confirmed dead and was racist against anything that wasn't a Forerunner Builder, especially humans).
  • Actually, working off the same books, it's probably the Ur-Didact, who will have been revived by a surprisingly less-than-dead 343 Guilty Spark.
• First person's Jossed, second's half-confirmed, last's confirmed: The antagonists are an Elite-led Covenant splinter faction called Storm, and an army of Forerunner battle droids led by the Not Quite Dead Didact.
  • Further half-confirmed by the fact that the Prometheans are ancient humans (and a few present-day humans) who have been brought back by the Composer.

Locations

The new trilogy will probably explore the Greater Ark (the larger sibling to Installation 00) and Halo Installation 07 (which was used as the preserve dedicated for humans, but was overun by the Flood and is now a repository and memorial for constructs made of preserved human personalities)

• Conventus Facility, as depicted by an ambiguous AI similar to Adjutant Reflex.

Spartan Ops guesses.

My guess is it will start out with pirates and move on to bigger threats.

• Perhaps, some characters that are exclusive to Ops.
• With the presence of a new Spartan team known as Majestic Squad, perhaps when having four players everyone will do something in cutscenes. With one player everyone else will be bots and only you will do things in cutscenes.
  • You might also be able to choose a voice for your character to use in cutscenes.
    • Nope, Crimson is completely silent.
  • Jossed - Majestic Squad isn't player controlled, but they're the protagonists of the weekly episode. Players control Crimson Squad, which consists of the same Spartan IVs used by the players in War Games. There are no cutscenes for players, and playing with a party size of less than four results in a (fairly resilient) marine being added to your squad.
    • Actually, the marine and Spartan NPCs are only added in some sections (like those involving multi-crew vehicles).
    • Also, no pirates, you're fighting Jul's Covenant and Prometheans the whole time.

There will be a secret weapon that you can unlock after beating the campaign on legendary.

• At the end of the game not only will you receive a legendary ending, but it will pull a MW3 and give you the option to go to Spartan Ops or something, then when you do so it turns black and a montage of a weapon will appear, it devastates enemy players in few hits and looks somewhat larger than your standard DMR, it is overall a large weapon that is obviously UNSC. It is a new gun that is like the Guass weapon on the Hog and the MAC, it is a experimental infantry Coilgun which the UNSC is testing to replace the weapons they already use. This can be placed in Forge (which most likely will return) and be one of those ordinance things.
  • Jossed. There are plenty of Legendary rewards, but none of them are weapons:
    • Legendary visor color (same shade as Master Chief's)
    • Mark VI armor options
    • 117 Dog Tag emblem
    • Completing the game solo on Legendary adds three seconds to the ending cutscene - when MC removes his armor, the scene doesn't cut when his helmet comes off, showing you a shaded shot of his eyes.
    • The railgun exists in War Games as a standard weapon drop, found on-map and through ordnance.

Why the Elites are your enemies again

Controversial though Halo: Glasslands may be, it introduces some serious conflict between the "mainstream" Elites led by The Arbiter and advocating peace with the humans, and the "Servants of Abiding Truth", religious fanatics who still blindly worship the Forerunners and want to resume war with humanity. Perhaps, in the years between Halo 3 and Halo 4, the two sides came to blows in a Sangheili Civil War... and the Arbiter's side lost. Now, with the human-friendly Sangheili higher-up and his supporters dead, the Servants of Abiding Truth have full control over the species again and have re-declared war against humanity.

• More likely is that they are separate from the covenant and are openly hostile against anyone they don't like, or even more possible is that the religious anti human side lost and a large portion left in isolation to life amongst themselves.
  • I'm getting a Bermuda Triangle vibe from the game. Maybe they're just Covenant that got brought there years ago and simply don't know.
• It's quite likely the Covenant forces on Requiem were stranded there - think...the UNSC Infinity; John and Cortana - before the war was over, and still consider humanity an enemy.
• Another theory that they are pirates who formed out of a detachment that was deployed too far away to be contacted by the rest of the Covenant. They only recently learn about what happen and are disgusted by the fact that humans are now allies. Because they lack the military power to directly challenge the Arbiter's forces and as a result they decided to become renagade raiders and scavengers.
• And now we have a canon explanation: they're a breakaway faction called Storm who still follow the Prophets' ideologies and worship the Forerunners as gods, as well as carrying the Old Covenant's hatred of humanity. The mainstream Sangheili are still humanity's allies.
  • They're technically not called Storm; that was a journalist's mistake. Also, they don't believe in the Great Journey. But yes, they're a breakaway Forerunner-worshiping faction who still hate humans. Also, unlike what most people above were guessing, they've been fully aware for years that the war's technically over (with many of their recruits actually coming from the core Elite worlds).
• To further joss this WMG, the Arbiter is still alive through the entirety of Halo 4, and still (mostly) has control of Sanghelios and the other core worlds, while the Servants seem to have been reduced to a complete non-factor (as even The Thursday War ends with the Servants forced to basically evacuate their homeworld). In fact, the Arbiter's faction is implied to be the most individually powerful among the Elites.
  • In fact, Halo 5 seems to imply that the Servants have been either completely wiped out by the Arbiter's faction or absorbed into Jul's.
    • Actually, the Servants are apparently still an independent group, just a relatively weak one in the big scheme of things.

There will be more Marathon references

• A given, but some will start to get to the point where you wonder where Master Chief and the Security Officer are really the same entity. Of course, this means that Durandal will be there, and help (for a braod definition) Cortana with her rampancy.
  • Well, if Roland went rampant, I'd say he'd be pretty close to Durandal at that point. Sarcastic, snarky AI dick that puts you in situations that could get you killed without telling you (the Lich, anyone?), knows you're just there to kill things and generally just is rude to you while still getting you to listen to him.
• That'd be interesting, since Bungie still holds the rights to Marathon.

Forward Unto Dawn couldn't have been damaged from the Ark's destabilization

• But something far, far more sinister. Knowing the flaws of Atmospheric slipspace jumps, the Arbiter managed to pull out of the Ark's breaking apart just enough to properly execute light-speed travel. Things got suspicious when this new enemy is made out to be worse than any Flood gravemind amalgamation. In short something had to have collided in its path and redirecting Chief and Cortana towards Requiem.
  • It's suspected that 032 Mendicant Bias played a role there; that he redirected the aft portion towards Requiem.
    • Mythos strongly implies that this is indeed the case.

The plot will be even more confusing than that of Marathon

• Because that would be par for the course for these guys.
  • 343 Industries may have many, even mostly former-Bungie employees, but it is not Bungie.
  • While the basic plot is relatively simple, there were a lot of people who expressed confusion about several details that were mostly explained in the expanded universe.

You know what, the reason your fighting the Covenant is because

They were cut off from the rest and didn't get the message for a long time. So of course they will fight you in the campaign, they didn't know that Truth betrayed the Sangheili and Thel finding out the truth of Halo etc, etc.

• Semi-Jossed: The novel Thursday War reveals they are members from colonies cut off from the war. Jul 'Mdama, an anti-human Sangheili, winds up with them and informs them of the Prophets' & Brutes' betrayal, but not the reasons behind it. He informs them of how the Arbiter has "betrayed the Sangheili" by making peace with humanity. Thus, the splinter faction called Storm is formed, with 'Mdama as leader.
  • In fact, by the time of Halo 4, a significant portion of members of Jul's faction actually come from core worlds like Sanghelios, and are fully aware of everything that happened during the Great Schism. On a side note, they're not actually called the Storm (which was a journalist's mistake); they still call themselves simply "The Covenant".

For the whole Reclaimer Trilogy

While in the final Marathon game there was parallel universe travel, at some point in the Reclaimer trilogy there will be time travel. Chief will be the one to activate Alpha Halo and possibly the entire Array personally - this being based off Guilty Spark's lines waay back in the original Halo. After all, he could tell the difference between Reclaimers (as per Halo:The Flood, with the Marine in the library) but he still expressed confusion over why Chief specifically was hesitant - saying "you were with me every step of the way [last time]".

• Spark was already beginning to go rampant. He may simply have "confused" the Chief with the Didact - not unusual, considering both were/are master warriors. Also, maybe...there is a geas involved.
  • As it turns out, Silentium seems to confirm that Guilty Spark was somehow confusing the Chief for the IsoDidact.
• Time-travel does not, IMHO, seem very Halo-like.
  • You'd be surprised: the novel Halo: First Strike actually did have time travel in it, courtesy of a mysterious Forerunner crystal.
• Jossed: The Forerunner Saga is in part a coming-of-age story for the IsoDidact (starting from when he was about twelve), and reveals that he's the one who activates the rings, with Guilty Spark's lines in CE revealed to be him simply repeating something the IsoDidact once asked him.

Cortana will "die" at some point in the new trilogy.

Because let's face it, the odds are not looking good for her so far.

• Yes. She, however, is special - in-game, and in "the real world" -; so, there is a good chance she will [be the second AI, and first human AI to] metastabilize.
• Confirmed; approaching the terminal stage of Rampancy, she splits herself into several copies who bind the Didact with hard-light binds, allowing the Chief to kill him. Then, when the Chief detonates a warhead to destroy the Didact's ship, Cortana uses her last bit of energy to teleport him to safety and say one last goodbye.

Nicole 458 Will be made Canon to the Halo Universe.

I just think it would be cool. Perhaps through cloning. Perfecting the technology so that rather than replacing a real child with a temporary clone that eventually dies, they instead make a long lasting clones and use a process to accelerate the process while undergoing the original Spartan II training regiment and enhancements. Bada bing Bada Boom: 458. Naturally. Mounty Oum will need to be hired so that her appearance can be canon as well.

• Semi-Confirmed: Nicole IS canon, but not because of Monty Oum. She was originally a character in Dead or Alive 4, with an official character profile and everything. Monty used her in the Haloid video rather than John because he thinks Girl on Girl Is Hot.
  • Semi-canon, anyways; while Nicole has been stated to be "based on a 'real' and properly defined Spartan", her original profile basically states her to be a member of the second class of IIs, which is the last major part of I Love Bees that both Bungie and 343 still seem to consider non-canon.

The Prometheans are Forerunners that were transformed/melted into the Prometheans. .

Think about it, if the forerunners populating the shield world arn't there, then a logical explanation would be that the diadect(who I presume to be the big bad.) attacked or betrayed them and made them into his own army of cyborgs so he could kill humanity as revenge for being a part of the reason his wife's death. This also explains the scary skull in the promethean knights head/helmet.

• Actually the Prometheans are already a group in the Forerunner warrior-servent caste. Plus I doubt the big bad is the Didact, at least the original we know, but it is possible it could be this Ur-Didact people speak of, though for all we know it could be the Master Builder but everything is up in the air at this point.
• Pretty close. The Prometheans are humans who have been transformed into mechanical constructs.
  • In fact, the original WMG is even more correct than that: the terminals show that the first Promethean Knights were created from Forerunner volunteers in order to create troops that couldn't be infected by the Flood.

Cortana is responsible for everything.

Because she wanted an excuse to wake up Chief. As she slipped into rampancy, she remembered the good old days, when they dismantled the Covenant together. Her sense of reason and morality falling apart, she puts the pieces in play for an epic conflict while Master Chief is asleep, so she can fight alongside the Chief one last time before Rampancy destroys any last vestiges of her identity. Hence the fact that the Covenant are coincidentally right there when the Chief wakes up (playing on his nostalgia for Covenant-killin'), and the fact that a ship full of Spartans just so happens to be cruising by the Legendary Planet (to play off of Chief's desire to protect his fellow soldiers). All in all, it will be the perfect plan...until Chief inevitably realizes that he's been betrayed by his best friend, probably after he's already cut a bloody swath through all of the bad guys and saved the day.

• Probably jossed; for one thing, the Covenant were already trying to get into Requiem years before the events of Halo 4. If anything, Mendicant and a half-conscious Didact were the main people pulling the strings.

Master Chief will die at some point in this new trilogy.

How else to show how fucking serious things are then to kill the main character and have a new protagonist.

• Killing the protagonist is getting boring and stale, I doubt 343 would do it.
  • Jossed. Chief lives, Cortana dies.
    • Maybe not. Chief's voice actor, Steve Downes, said that he hopes Chief will have a hero's death in Halo 6. There's still two more games, after all.

Dr. Halsey, who is confirmed to be in Halo 4◊, will die in said game

Just making a prediction. How, why, and at the hands of whom remains to be seen, but it may be done to give the Master Chief another reason to want to kill the game's Big Bad.

• Jossed. She only briefly appears in a cutscene before the game begins, and never shows up again.
  • The trailer for Episode 3 of Spartan Ops features Halsey, so she might still end up on the chopping block.
    • Jossed again. She nearly gets executed by Palmer at the request of ONI, but Palmer is not an incredible shot, and Halsey only ends up losing an arm.

The Ancient Humans destroyed the Flood Cure when the Forerunners went to war

Because they saw the Forerunners as Ungrateful Bastards since they were doing them a favor by destroying Flood infected Forerunner worlds. "You want to fight the Flood? Fine. You do it the way we did. Through years of blood, sweat, and pain."

• Confirmed in the expanded universe. The humans used suicide bombers with tainted DNA to poison the flood and win the Human-Flood war, but required the sacrifice of 1/3 of their population of billions. Humanity destroyed the weapon (as did their allies, the Prophets) in a final act of resistance before being devolved. Of course (Primordium spoilers), the "cure" doesn't actually work; the Flood apparently retreated from humanity only because they felt that the Forerunners should be "tested" first.

The Flood will return

If the Flood is of interstellar origin, what's to say there hasn't been some more samples floating in from the interstellar void and infecting a planet or two on the edge of the Galaxy.

• 343's confirmed there will be no further Flood. Four games with them is enough.
  • They were confirmed out in Halo 4, specifically. The rest of the trilogy is yet to be seen.
    • Also a no-show in Halo 5, but given their importance to the myth arc (and the details revealed in The Forerunner Saga), we may yet see them in what 343i is now calling a saga (implying more games than just a trilogy).

Cortana achieved Metastability in her final moments

Just a nice thought, and it makes her immediately-following death even more bittersweet.

The Composer worked during the Flood-Forerunner war, but the personalities of those it turned into Prometheans had more control than expected

Each of the humans that were Composed soon realized what happened to them. While they could not directly get revenge on the Forerunners, they could under-perform just enough as Prometheans that they would be destroyed. Hell, they may have played a role in Mendicant Bias being contacted and later turned by the Gravemind.

• This would explain the relative stupidity of the Promethean Knights in-game. They're underwhelming and clumsy compared to what you might expect from a true Promethean (biological or otherwise) because they're trying at least partially to resist their digital enslavement and the directives they're being forced to act under.
• Maybe jossed; Word of God indicates that the Prometheans in 4 were represented as less powerful than they canonically were; 5's Prometheans are much more powerful, to the point of being more like Hunters than Elites.

We haven't seen the last of Cortana.

Somehow, some way, we'll see her again. And since Forerunner "ancillas" seem to last centuries without going rampant, maybe she'll be able to survive in the same way Chief survived the Composer: with help from some Forerunner tech.

• Confirmed in 5 (though "Precursor tech" may be a more accurate term, given the true nature of the Domain).

Halo 6 will feature multiple endings like mass effect 3.

However, knowing how the fanbase reacted to it, they will take some lessons from that. While there might be some amount of a Gainax Ending (possibly as a Marathon Infinity reference) they will be more emotionally satisfying.

The Red vs. Blue Easter Eggs represent a timeline in which the Blood Gulch crew were all recruited into the SPARTAN-IV program

I mean, they've become surprisingly badass in the later seasons, after all.

• Jossed. Red Vs Blue is canonically detached from the Halo universe. There is no SPARTAN-IV program in their verse, and no Freelancer program in the Halo verse.
  • Like I said, it's an alternate timeline, like how RvB in general takes place in an alternate universe version of Halo.

Crimson will die, and be replaced as player characters by Shadow Team

.Episode 5 ends with Crimson hugely outnumbered. While some sort of last-minute rescue would make sense, them all dying would be interesting. At the very least, it would create tension aboard the Infinity, with Roland and Miller having sent them off on a series of missions that ended with them getting killed while Palmer was away. Meanwhile, Episode 5 also introduced us to Shadow Team, a group of Spartans badass enough to board and destroy a Covenant capital ship. I'm guessing the fact Crimson ends up in what looks to be a no-win situation and their introduction takes place in the same episode isn't a coincidence.

• Jossed. Crimson is alive and kicking.

Gek will be Spartan Ops Season One's Final Boss.

Just be fun to fight and he would have a cool unique model. Plus they wouldn't want to kill of 'Mdama too soon.

• Just to add to that; what if he had some fancy one-of-a-kind Forerunner toys that were given to him by the Didact or Jul?
  • Like a special armor or weapon?
• Jossed; He gets unceremoniously killed off in Episode 8's cutscene.

Either Dalton or Miller will die.

To serve as a Player Punch. Probably Miller due to the fact that he has more of a character than Dalton.

• Dalton's pelican is completely destroyed in the last mission of Episode 5, and in such a way that even a Spartan would be unlikely to survive.
  • Wasn't that just a standard Red Shirt pilot?
    • Yep. It's strongly implied that Dalton is not piloting any of the ships that support Crimson; instead, he's coordinating them from within the Infinity, similar to Miller.
• Jossed. Both survive.

Parisa from Paradise Hotel will play a major role in a future game.

• On its own, that story could've been seen as a standalone look as what the Spartan program can make you lose, as well as a look at Chief's past.
• However, because 343 has stated that they want to explore Chief's human side, as well as Cortana's apparent death, it would make sense that Parisa's connection to Master Chief has become a Chekhov's Gun waiting to fire.

Crimson will be on the run from the Covenant and cut off from Infinity

at the start of Episode 6.

• Since Palmer is shown to be fighting on what appears to be Infinity, it may be that the Covenant manages to board the ship at the same time Crimson is ambushed. Deprived of even Miller and Roland's support Crimson will have to take the initiative and survive on their own without weapon drops or solid intel as they traverse Requiem to find Thorne and get back to Infinity. The last level of Episode 6 will either be a cliffhanger where Crimson secures transport to Infinity or retakes the ship alongside Palmer and Majestic.
  • Jossed. Roland locates them and they're back on-line within the course of a mission. They're sent on Ops behind enemy lines in a stolen Phantom with Marine Lt. Murphy (whom they rescued) as their pilot, and use it later to return to Infinity when it's under attack.

Halo 5 will be the last game in the series in which the Covenant are enemies.

• I imagine the plot of Halo 5 will involve the Chief, back on Earth and without Cortana, being commissioned with the job of eliminating what's left of the Covenant. In a neat bit of symmetry with the second installment of the previous trilogy, the Arbiter will return in a major role, for the story reason of him wanting to have a hand in eliminating the rebellious Sangheili and for the gameplay reason of giving Chief some one to talk to during missions now that Cortana is gone. This will give 343 a chance to explore the new dynamic between humanity and the rest of the galaxy's species after the war (both through cutscenes and maybe by having some in-game allied ex-Covenant with UNSC gear and guns), allow for the introduction of different environments (Kig-Yar pirate vessels, anyone?) and weapons (like the energy cutlass from the novels), and build up to a final conflict between all of the galaxy's species and a huge Promethean force, which would be featured in Halo 6.
  • Not quite confirmed, though surprisingly accurate at parts; The Arbiter does play a major role in eliminating Jul's Covenant in 5, but it's Spartan Locke who helps him do so, with the Chief off doing his own thing which doesn't involve the Covenant very much. Also, outside of Sanghelios, the game doesn't really explore human-Covenant relations in-depth. That said, things do seem to be building up towards a major confrontation against the Prometheans in 6, though it's very questionable how united the galaxy's species are.

The final, pre-Halo 5 Spartan Ops mission...

• Will be played as the Master Chief, with Kelly, Fred, and Linda as teammates.

and/or

• Will have "Arrival" played during the big climactic battle.
• Jossed; you're Crimson all the way to the end.

Brutes will make a surprise appearance.

• In the opening Prologue cutscene, we see a Brute Chieftain fighting John. So that's confirmation they've got a Halo 4 Brute model. One might have predicted that Jul 'Mdama would appear in Spartan Ops due to his appearance in the Terminals. Specifically, what guaranteed it was the fact he had a model and was not a Flash cutout like the other Elites in the Terminal scene were. Thus it may be a similar situation here.
• Jossed; the prologue is the only place we see any Brutes.

GEN2 armor has a slot that completely hides the Spartan's combat knife.

Not only does it explain why it doesn't appear anywhere on the armor, it also explains why Crimson's knives weren't confiscated along with the rest of their weapons when they were captured.

• Plausible.

Halsey is helping 'Mdama unseal the Librarian...

Because she, unlike 'Mdama, knows that the Librarian is, unlike the Didact, on humanity's side, and when she gets out she won't be happy at all upon finding out what 'Mdama and his people have been doing to the humans.

• Twenty credits says that the first season will end with the Librarian getting unsealed and 'Mdama reacting badly.
• Sort of Jossed. Halsey does help unlock the terminal to meet the Librarian's AI remnant, but she seems unconcerned about the Covenant and merely offers humanity, via Halsey, access to vast Forerunner technologies.

Roland, the Ship's AI very well may be going Rampant

• Early on, he was more stoic, now, with the newest episode, Episode 7, he is acting seemingly more like Cortana, and also Durandal from Marathon if anyone else remembers that.
• Also, something this troper realized after writing the first part of this. Roland very well may have already gone through the first stage, Meloncholy, early in Spartan ops he s how running a ship is boring, he'd like to run more ops.
• He's not rampant, just generally eccentric. The only time he really glitched was when Halsey overrode him, and even then he was able to (literally) pull himself back together after a while.
  • In fact, 5 shows him remaining loyal to humanity even after the AI uprising.

Gabriel Thorne will be a major character in Halo 5

• Spartan Ops is going out of it's way to make you like Thorne despite Fireteam Majestic not being a shining example of military discipline; He is the only Spartan-IV that Dr. Halsey seems to have any respect for, he is shown to be immensely competent in much the same way as Noble Six was implied to be, and he has a curiosity about and evidently a deep respect for the Spartan-IIs. This seems to be building him up to be an especially talented teammate for John in Halo 5, possibly even meant for a player to take control of him in a co-op campaign.
  • Almost confirmed, but ultimately Jossed: He was going to be part of Fireteam Osiris, but his voice actor had other commitments, and he ended up being replaced by Edward Buck.

The final RvB easter egg of Season 1...

...will be the Chupathingy music, which plays when you get into a Warthog. Search your feelings, you know you want it to be true.

• Sadly Jossed, though we do get Georgia.

In the future, Master Chief will be forced to kill Halsey

At the end of Spartan Ops, Season 1, Halsey betrays the UNSC and sides with Jul 'Mdama. Chief finds out about the events that happened over the course of the season, including the kill order on Halsey. At first, he believes that Halsey is innocent, but is then showed evidence of her collaboration with 'Mdama as well as her hijacking of Roland, thus prompting the Prometheans to invade the Infinity, killing who knows how many crew members. Chief then concedes that she deserves punishment, but insists on coming along, hoping that he can talk her into surrendering peacefully. When he catches up to her, she gives a Motive Rant, and he realizes that there's only one option left.

• Likely jossed: Halsey rejoins the UNSC in Halo 5 after setting up Jul 'Mdama to be killed, and her and Chief are happy to see each other again at the end.

Halo 4 was a fanfiction written by one of the characters in Puella Magi Madoka Magica or Halo 4 was based off/ or IS 343's response to Madoka

1: Master Chief and Cortana's characterization NEARLY paralells with Madoka and Homura's.2: It involved Jerkass aliens.3: Sayaka and Del Rio both stubbornly fail to heed vital advice from Homura/the Chief, with disastrous results.4: The ending is the same.5: witches are magic girls/promethians are humans, contract=enlistment into the UNSC army, with the only way out is death6: The setting is a place that LOOKS nice, but in actuality, is a Crapsack world filled with evil creatures.

The Big Good from Halo 5 onward will be the IsoDidact.

The Silentium epilogue appears to have confirmed his survival, and he seems to be benevolent towards humanity. It'll be interesting to see him assist humanity and eventually go toe-to-toe with his original self.

• He's a no-show for 5, but we'll still have to wait and see.

Characters who are potential SPARTAN-IVs, on account of their competency and possible survival of the Human-Covenant War:

• Jun (so that's where he went)
  • While he might not be officially a IV, Initiation confirms that Jun's been training the IVs.
• The entirety of Buck's squad
  • Confirmed in New Blood for Buck, Romeo, and Mickey. Dutch decided to retire from service instead, and the Rookie would have been recruited, if not for his death.
• Sergeant Stacker
• PFC Chips Dubbo
• Jan James

Halo 5 or Halo 6 will see ONI become an antagonist

• We know that ONI's actions are already questionable at best. Based on recent events from the novels and Spartan Ops (instigating civil war amongst the Elites, putting a kill order on Dr. Halsey), it seems as if they're being set up this way as well. They will for whatever reason put a kill order on Chief as well, and will send a black ops force (to deny involvement) to do the deed.
  • In addition to regular human mooks, the ONI forces will consist of hostile Spartans as well (it would be boring fighting only marine type enemies).
  • Things revealed in leaked info, previews, and HUNT the TRUTH seem to be pointing quite strongly in this direction, with ONI framing the Chief for terrorism and declaring him and his Blue Team as AWOL, as well as thoroughly and violently suppressing attempts to clear the Chief's name.
  • Teased, but ultimately jossed for 5; ONI is mostly absent from the main plot, and the enemy forces are all Prometheans and Covenant. They do send Fireteam Osiris to chase after Blue Team, but the two make nice fairly quickly after realizing who their common foe is (which ends up not being ONI). Even with regards to the smear campaign against Chief, the real target was actually Ben Giraud, with ONI themselves helping to clear the Chief's name after accomplishing their real goals.

Cryogenic freezing ages you faster.

Not while you're frozen per se, but the constant freezing and thawing stresses your body, producing much more wear and tear than there should be. There is some evidence for this since Lasky is allergic to the process. Maybe it hurts everybody to some degree, it's just people like Lasky are affected more by it. Notice quite a few people who look worn beyond their years in Halo-verse. Dr. Tillson was stated to be 51, but she looks like she's pushing 70. And IIRC, Master Cheif is only supposed to be 40-something, but in the legendary ending, his hair is greying, and he has a lot of wrinkles, he looks almost 60.

• Alternatively, it accelerates skin damage similar to aging, but not more important body functions.

Master Chief will become an expy of Kiritsugu Emiya.

Assuming that Halo 5 will become darker, Master Chief will start using shocking methods of pragmatism to get the job done, like Kiritsugu. Also, like Kiritsugu, the Chief lost all those who mattered to him, including Cortana (and in a Madoka homage of a sendoff, no less). When the Japanese voice director replaced MC's seiyuu with Rikiya Koyama, he said he had a reason...

• Jossed for 5, despite what the marketing would have you believe.

The Spartans of Fireteam Crimson are Spartan-IIIs.

It's mentioned in the backstory that surviving S-IIIs were offered the chance to be moved into the S-IV Corps. It would certainly help explain Crimson's professionalism and competency compared to the other IVs.

Cortana will return in Halo 5....As a Villain.

By now, Cortana's return has definitely a popular WMG amongst the Halo fandom, and there have been plenty of theories as to how exactly 343 will make it happen. Heck, bringing back Cortana is implied to be (at least one of) the Chief's primary goal in the Halo 5 teaser. No matter how you look at it, it seems pretty likely that we haven't seen the last of everyone's favorite AI.

But who said she'll still be the same AI we know and love? She could come back evil for a few reasons.

1. Bungie already used the 'Rescue Cortana' story arc for Halo 3. If Halo 5 becomes a quest to bring her back exactly as she was, it would just be a rehashing, and I don't think 343 wants to go down that road.

2. Also, if they were going to resurrect Cortana just the way she was, then what was the point of killing her off in the first place? From a narrative standpoint, her death had to serve some kind of purpose. It may have been to force the Chief to develop, and if this WMG turns out to be true, it was also to set up a possible villain.

3. Cortana was rampant right before dying. Yes, her last scene seemed to subtly imply that she had become metastable, but we don't know that for sure.

4. This one ties into her rampancy. Parts of her were in the Composer when she died and it was destroyed, right? Well, what kind of effect do you think a digital horror factory like the Composer can have on an AI's already-delicate-from-Rampancy mind? Rampancy + Composer = Megalomaniacal AI.

5. It would make a great twist, plain and simple. The Chief goes on his quest to bring back Cortana, and half-way through the game, he succeeds.

Oh, and just for extra flavor, 343 will take the romantic subtext in Chief and Cortana's relationship and ramp up the creepiness by making Cortana totally Yandere for John. She may attempt to kill several female characters out of sheer jealousy and is determined to make John hers.

And for the final touch, she'd even come back with her own body; a twisted form based on Promethean aesthetics, that's still kinda sexy in a weird way.

• Base WMG is CONFIRMED.

What the Librarian did to John

• She apparently didn't just make him immune to the Composer, but also treated the devolution on the human genome that the Forerunners imposed on humanity - what this actually means is unclear, but undoubtedly will be important later on in the conflict against the Ur-Didact.