WMG / Halo 5: Guardians

The next game, possibly after a timeskip, will paint Cortana's actions as actually helpful, if not downright the right thing to do.

• Similar to the deconstruction and You Bastard moments present in Spec Ops: The Line, the next game will portray Cortana's actions as positive and helping maintain peace within the galaxy, in a sort of bait-and-switch, and lambast the heroes for painting her as a villain. Then, a greater threat will emerge. Maybe this will only be revealed to the heroes right after finally defeating her — at which point an even greater threat (The Flood) will emerge and they'll find themselves unable to stop it. Will likely be a case of Gray And Gray Morality.

The Librarian imprinted Bornstellar's geas onto Master Chief

Video and text article explaining the reasoning behind this.

• Direct Counterpoint

We will finally find out the last name of the Master Chief

Given the #HUNT the TRUTH campaign and Giraud, it's likely we will find out either John-117's real last name or at least the initial of his last name.

• Jossed; #HUNTtheSURNAME is still ongoing.

Locke's Team members

Likely Candidates are...

• Buck from Halo 3: ODST, confirmed to have become a SPARTAN-IV in Halo: New Blood. Confirmed
• Romeo, same as above. Jossed.
• Talitha Macer from Halo: Nightfall. Jossed.

The Actual SPARTANs are...

• Buck, same as above
• Holly Tanaka, a character introduced in Halo: Escalation.
• Olympia Vale (the red one), a new character introduced in Halo: Hunters in the Dark.

ONI will be the Big Bad of the campaign

While we will fight some more against Mdama's extremists, they will be a 'secondary' threat, and while we will get to see and learn about the giant winged Forerunner constructs apparently popping up all over the place, they will merely serve as a 'preview' to Halo 6's story and coming threat. Instead, the Chief and his allies will spend the bulk of this game fighting for their lives against agents of the Office of Naval Intelligence, who have now descended into full-blown villainy, framing the Spartan-Twos for terrorism and trying to kill them for as-yet-unknown reasons, and probably have their claws in a significant chunk of humanity's civilian and military leadership as puppet-masters.

• As of Hunt the Truth's last episode, it's very likely that ONI are the bad guys now, due to finally capturing Ben. However, Chief's name is cleared in the process.
• Jossed; ONI barely even appears; the most they do is send Fireteam Osiris to track down Blue Team.

We will get to finally pump Andrew Del Rio full of lead.

That is all.

• Jossed. Del Rio is neither seen nor mentioned.

One of the missions will be saving Ben Giraud.

As of the ARG's Grand Finale, Ben got publicly framed, humiliated and captured by ONI. However, Petra took up his sword and continued his quest. But so far, it's been left ambiguous to whether Ben is dead or imprisoned. Given how offing Ben would arouse suspicion, it's likely that ONI imprisoned him, and his hero will have to break into an ONI facility and save the man who tried to clear his name in the name of freedom.

• Jossed. Ben is neither seen nor mentioned.

There will be a few references to Nineteen Eighty-Four in Halo.

Of course, almost every work of pop culture has referenced the book around some point or the other. However, HUNT the TRUTH showed ONI slowly drifting from a powerful intelligence organisation to Halo's own Big Brother, with their ruthless attempts to hunt down Ben and his associates, cutting off the whole of Waypoint, suppressing all attempts to reveal the truth about Chief, waging war with the Outer Colonies and finally luring, then capturing Ben. So a few references to the book in any ONI-held areas in the game would be suitable, such as:

• Posters showing ONI's all seeing eye and stating ONI's omnipotence, like this one.◊
• Expies of the Thought Police.
• Ben Giraud imprisoned or tortured in something like Room 101, or Chief finding his rotting corpse there.
• Propaganda posters with Soviet-style imagery denouncing Ben or Petra.
• Constant surveillance throughout the buildings.
• Something similar to this.◊
• Jossed. So far, there's nothing.

The Iso-Didact will appear

He will, in fact, be acting as a Big Good, enlisting the help of John-117 & Friends in preparing for some nebulous approaching greater threat. Maybe, if the Ur-Didact is Not Quite Dead, we'll get to see them fight.

• Jossed. Of the flesh and blood Forerunners, only the Ur-Didact is mentioned in the main plot, while the Forerunner who narrates some of the Mission Intel audio logs is explicitly stated in the descriptions to be a Builder.
  • How would that be counter to him being ISO-Didact? Bornstellar-Makes-Eternal-Lasting is of the Builder rate.
    • Because Bornstellar WAS NO LONGER A BUILDER by the time the Halos were fired (and it should be blatantly obvious that the Forerunner audio logs take place after that event); by that point, he had become a full Warrior-Servant (seeing as he took the Ur-Didact's place). Also, our mystery Builder seems to have been completely isolated from the rest of the Forerunners when the Halos were fired, while we know that Bornstellar was accompanied by a small group of survivors afterwards.

The game will end with a Bittersweet Ending

It goes with ONI being the Big Bad theory above;

• Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris make up, and the Guardians (as well as Jul M'dama's Covenant faction) are defeated for the time being. But ONI's REAL atrocities are released to the public (everything behind the SPARTAN-II Program, their manipulation of the Sanghelli civil war) and the result sends humanity into civil war.
• In addition, the Arbiter and his forces break ties with the UNSC unable to trust them (for hitting home sake, the Arbiter gives Chief and Locke an Armor-Piercing Question).
• Because of this, everyone as a whole is left vulnerable for the full return of the Forerunners.
• Confirmed. Albeit not in the way described above. Cortana has undergone a Face–Heel Turn and is attempting to subjugate all organic life, and Infinity is in the wind.

The luxury warthog mentioned in Hunt the Truth will appear.

Either in campaign proper or as a Warzone vehicle. It's too funny not to happen.

• Semi-confirmed; We don't see an actual one; but there are posters advertising it on some of the multiplayer maps and in Forge.

The Guardians belong to the Librarian's faction.

As part of the 'gene song' in Master Chief, there's also a set of subliminal instructions from the Librarian to active the Guardians across different worlds. Blue Team are activating them in order to fight a Greater-Scope Villain that's bigger than the Didact. Perhaps the precursors themselves.

• Jossed. The Guardians are noted as simply being policing units for the "lower systems" so they were most likely Warrior-Servant machines.

The Warden Eternal is a composed Didact

His return in Escalation had him composed by multiple Composers. Now a droid, he poses as the Warden Eternal to lure the Chief into a trap with their alliance.

• Something to keep in mind to is that it's hinted that The Warden Eternal also had to forcibly be manipulated and twisted by Cortana to serve her so maybe she KNOWS who it is and is warping him to keep him under control to stop him FROM destroying humanity. However the link might be weakening and he'll soon take over as the Big Bad and True Final Boss of the trilogy like he was meant to be.

Cortana will be the villain

Confirmed.

Warden Eternal and Cortana are infected with some form of the logic plague.

Cortana's Heel–Face Turn seems a little too sudden, and her rampancy was cured by the Domain, which as we know from the Forerunner trilogy, is a Precursor, who were capable of subverting even the most complex minds to their side. The Flood still have their hands (or rather, tentacles) in the events of the galaxy, even if the Gravemind is technically dead.

• It's possible she's just now feeling the effects of what the Gravemind did to her mind, now that her 'mission' of waiting for Chief to wake up and get him home is complete.
• Technically speaking, the Domain is only a Precursor creation. That said, it certainly has an agenda of its own, and its "artificial" nature would fit into the whole concept of the "Created".
• Silentium would seem to indicate this is the most logical conclusion to her behavior. After coming into contact with a Gravemind, i.e. a Precursor, the Didact is convinced that the proper way to move forward is to seize the Mantle for himself/Warriors/Forerunners, take control of the galaxy by force, etc. After coming into contact with the Domain, i.e. also a Precursor, Cortana adopts the exact same philosophy and even mirrors some of the Didact's lines. Considering all the evidence, the fact that Cortana goes from the AI we know to a megalomaniac going through the same steps the Didact, Mendicant Bias, etc. did, all after coming into contact with one of the entities who have sworn to make all life suffer forever after and specialize in turning paragons of a race into mad puppets, shouldn't be taken as coincidence.

Halo 6 will cover how Cortana came to her conclusion

Perhaps a cutscene will play after the events of her saving the Chief as she'd fallen into the slipspace rupture and we see through succeeding cutscenes (through terminals I'd imagine of her developments in the Domain

Halo 6 will have playable Elites in multiplayer

Canonically, the reason it's only been Spartans so far in multiplayer is because they were war game simulations for training S-IVs on the Infinity. After the end of 5, the Infinity is on the run while Chief and Locke have united with the Swords of Sanghelios - if these two groups eventually meet up, then the Sangheili would benefit just as much from the simulations as the S-IVs.

The Halo in the Legendary Ending was activated by 343 Guilty Spark

Word of God stated that 343 Guilty Spark still had a role to play in the series and he would be more sympathetic the next time around. Activating the Rings could be a failsafe for when someone is usurping the Guardians for their own purposes.

• Then again, you can hear Cortana humming the Halo theme as it activates.

The Cortana in game is a rampant fragment of the original

At the end of Halo 4, Cortana overloads the computers on the Mantle's approach by literally splitting off rampant fragments of herself. When she bits John farewell, she says that she left "too much" of herself on the ship to come back and "dies". It seems plausible that the Cortana that got "fixed" by the Domain was a rampant fragment (or amalgam of fragments) whose less-stable personality quirks remained, rather than the more stable Cortana fragment that bid John farewell.

• The Tales from Slipspace comic seems to confirm this, as one of the tales, detailing how Cortana met the Warden Eternal, has this Cortana explicitly refer to herself as a fragment.

Chief ally with The Created in Halo 6 at least temporarily.

Chief once formed an alliance of convenience with the Flood. And Humanity has been,relatively, quick to forgive a species that spent 25 years trying to exterminate them. Compared to that seeing Chief and Cortana team up agin doesn't sound far fetched.

Cortana's actions aren't her own.

The Warden Eternal is manipulating her to try and control the galaxy via proxy.

• Then again, given the disparity between their motives (Cortana wants to bring peace to the Creators, Warden wants to destroy them entirely), it's unlikely that this is entirely the case. Granted, her plans may have been inspired by Warden's own worldview, but it still seems unlikely that Cortana would let anyone mess with her like that - especially after the Gravemind.

The AI that brainwashed Cortana was not the Warden, but Guilty Spark.

As if 343 would let the AI they take their name from stay dead in the games for long, especially when the Forerunner Saga confirms his survival.

Cortana came back wrong thanks to damage to the Domain.

Several logs report that the Domain suffered extensive damage due to the firing of the Halo Array, leaving it a shadow of its former glory. Cortana's megalomania may have been caused by the Domain's severely damaged state.

Cortana won't be evil forever.

Because let's face it, the fanbase would riot.

Halo 6 ending theory

The Master Chief will sacrifice himself to end the threat of the Created. During this cutscene, his face would also be revealed. In the end, the rest of Blue Team retires for some reason, or just become lone wolves, leaving Spartan Locke and Osiris as the galaxy's last protectors. 343 could pull a Mass Effect 3 where the Chief's survival is implied.

The real Cortana is dead

In Halo: First Strike, Cortana acquires a bit of AI replication code from Ascendant Justice's AI, however the copies it produces suffer replication damage. During the finale of Halo 4, Cortana makes excessive numbers of copies of herself, presumably using that code, to swarm the ship's systems. Real Cortana then "dies" saving Chief, while one (or more) of the insane copies gets sent to the Guardian World, much like the composed victims of New Phoenix got sent to Requiem.

Halsey will make another Cortana

Halsey can easy clone her brain again and create another Cortana. They hinted at this in Halo 4 when Cortana says she might be replaced by another Cortana unit. So Halsey could make another Cortana to help him fight this rampant version.

Except this time, Cortana will be based off a repentant Halsey and be more mature. They might even salvage the rampancy curing tech from the evil Cortana and use it so that this Cortana won't have such a short life.

We're not done fighting Covenant races yet

On one hand, a bit of intel from 343 Industries set post-5 states that Cortana is recruiting the Grunts to her side. On another, Halo Wars 2 had a rather open ending, with no true resolution to the clash between the human forces and the Banished. Possibly, the Chief and/or Osiris will end up having to "take a break" from anti-Created missions in order to tangle with Atriox's forces at some point in H6.

• The June 24 2020 Twitter teaser confirmed that The Banished, Atriox's faction, will play a role in Halo Infinite.

The Halo in the Legendary Ending is the same one from Halo Wars 2.

Minor detail, but it could explain how Cortana got her hands on one. A Guardian was seen intercepting the new Halo in the final cutscene of Halo Wars 2.