YMMV / Halo (2022)

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Does Halsey's flash clone truly share her justification of "The Needs of the Many" and "For Science!", or does the added perspective of being another one of Halsey's test subjects change that? The clone who becomes the basis for Cortana admits it feels different sitting on the other side of the table, and the second one that was used as a decoy told Miranda she was wrong to push her away, and Miranda needs to let her go.
  • After Halsey first meets The Flood, she rambles on about the potential discoveries to be found in a Hive Mind with such clear and massive mutational and adaptational powers. Is she truly that obsessed with "For Science!"?... or is she trying to find a way to make something positive out of what she just saw? And felt, since she too has become infected?
• Awesome Music: In true Halo tradition, the score to this series is phenomenal. Sean Callery manages to capture the essence of the original score by Marty O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori, especially with the opening title's rendition of the famous Gregorian chant. Season 2's take on it is no slouch either, as it makes the chant more pronounced for an even more epic effect, this time provided by none other than Bear McCreary.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: The sex scene between Chief and Makee has eclipsed every other scene in the series.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Ackerson gaslights Silver Team throughout the first third of Season 2 and is depicted as responsible for the plan to abandon Reach and Silver Team to the Covenant. Even after he's become much more sympathetic in Thermopylae, it's still very satisfying when the Master Chief finally gets his hands on him.
  • In "Halo", Admiral Paragonsky is left to die at the hands of the Flood. Cue Halo fans rejoicing everywhere as the franchise's resident Hate Sink in both canons finally gets some well-earned dose of Laser-Guided Karma—this one especially for having callously abandoned Reach to the Covenant, and throwing both the SPARTAN-II]] ''and'' [=SPARTAN-III corps to pointless deaths. Bonus points for the fact that one of the most iconic aspects of the franchise singlehandedly eliminated the biggest source of complaints from the first season.
• Character Rerailment:
  • The first season focuses on Master Chief rediscovering his humanity while also confronting the truth about the Spartan Project. This made him very irritable and emotional, culminating with having sex with Makee which was criticized by most fans. Notably, Pablo Schrieber said he was also against some aspects while praising season two for being more on point. Indeed, when season two came out Master Chief is a lot more stoic while highlighting his commitment to defend humanity, in addition to more emphasis given to his relationships with other Spartans.
  • Dr. Halsey in the original lore was always a complicated figure, but was generally portrayed as A Lighter Shade of Grey to contrast truly immoral black ops characters like Parangosky and Ackerson. A few novels do heighten her role as the instigator of kidnapping children and killing many of them with the attempts at augmentation while downplaying that her actions came from ONI leadership (which was a controversial shift to the fans already). The first season of the show leans into her as a secretly villainous character, one who had prepared numerous contingencies to undermine UNSC authority. The second season, with her no longer in command of anything, places her back into someone who knew all the names and stories of each Spartan recruit and completely innocent of the truly despicable things ONI is doing right now.
  • Similarly, Parangosky was if anything the most moral of ONI in the first season, a stark contrast to her immoral counterpart in the original canon. As the architect of the plans to abandon Reach and to sacrifice the SPARTAN-IIIs to destroy the Covenant fleet and prevent them from reaching Halo, she comes significantly closer to the crimes of the Parangosky fans have loathed for years.
• Cliché Storm: One of the biggest criticisms of Season 1 is that it does very little to distinguish itself from other sci-fi series from recent memory. Such plot beats include the helmeted lead protagonist learning to rediscover his humanity (The Mandalorian), and a Grey-and-Grey Morality Earth Government dealing with the uprising of a traditionally-suppressed minority of humans living on the fringes of space (The Expanse). Fortunately, Season 2 would pull out of that rut.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Captain of UNSC Gladius gets a lot of credit from viewers for his compassion towards Makee whilst thinking she is a prisoner of the Covenant, and for basically telling her to screw off when she tries to get information from him. The general impression seems to be that he was pretty awesome for a Red Shirt.
  • Kai is a Canon Foreigner Spartan (though based on Linda and taken from unused notes created by 343 Industries) but she was generally praised as one of the best parts of the first season even by critics. Between having Undying Loyalty to Master Chief and a character arc that parallels his, her growth into a Genki Girl could be quite fun to watch and a contrast to the more stoic members of Silver Team. The standout scene often given is her taking bets from marines on lifting a Warthog on a pulley system.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Vinsher Grath is probably supposed to be a Hate Sink, but Burn Gorman turns in such a charismatic, over the top performance it is hard not to like him even though he's a scumbag.
  • The show's take on the iconic Arbiter is an equally vicious but honorable one, yet nonetheless epic for treating Chief like a Worthy Opponent. Special mention goes to his speech about how he will see to Reach's destruction, reminding the audience exactly why the Covenant is such a genuine threat.
  • Just as their introduction in the games immediately changed the tone from Space Opera to a Cosmic Horror Story, the Flood here waste no time being a Conflict Killer and immediately set the stakes going forward for the future.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • A major one with The Last of Us (2023), which was also a live-action TV series adapted from a video game. Whereas the The Last of Us show was a faithful adaptation that was highly praised by fans and critics, the Halo show made numerous deviations that incensed longtime Halo fans while receiving a mixed critical reception. It didn't help that The Last of Us was adapted from an PlayStation-exclusive title, making this rivalry an extension of the Console Wars.
  • Likewise with The Mandalorian, which is another sci-fi show that stars a helmeted lead protagonist learning to rediscover his humanity. When criticizing the decision to show Master Chief unmasked for most of the show, many point out how the titular Mandalorian spends most of his time masked up yet still gave an engaging performance.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • Most fans ignore Master Chief revealing his face, mainly for how boring and generic he looks, and how it ruins the mystique of what he looks like under his helmet.
  • Alternatively, many chose to ignore the infamous sex scene between Chief and Makee because of the problematic undertones and unflattering memes arising from it. In fact, Pablo Schreiber himself thought the scene was a mistake and fought to have it removed, but the showrunners went ahead and added it in.
• Growing the Beard: While the first season did faithfully adapt many elements from the Halo lore, and was praised for its casting choices, fans took umbrage with its heavy departures from its source material (such as giving more focus to internal UNSC politics and not on the war with the Covenant, as well as Kwan Ha's subplot having little to do with either), questionable characterization (notably Chief's attempts to rediscover his humanity and Halsey's Adaptational Villainy), and some subpar special effects. Season 2 would undergo a soft retooling that didn't drop any of the stories from Season 1, but took them in an entirely different direction to be more in line with the games and novels, including refocusing on the Covenant War, making Chief and Halsey more like their personalities from the original canon, and outright deconstructing much of the internal strife from before to create a more tragic take on the Fall of Reach in Episode 4. These efforts have been highly appreciated by fans, who've felt Season 2 is a strong improvement over the first. The second season's finale especially is a far cry from the vitriol of the prior season's finale in part due to the tone finally coming to be in sync with the games and their tone, in no small part due to Master Chief finally arriving on Halo, the introduction of the Flood and the Monitors (presumably this canon's interpretation of 343 Guilty Spark), as well as a promise of greater mysteries than the political drama of the prior two seasons.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Vannak expresses an admiration for the Covenant's Needler. He winds up dying in Reach at the hands of one thanks to The Arbiter.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Makee's story, from beginning to end, is a huge tragedy. Enslaved and abused as a kid, her best friend murdered in front of her and taken in and indoctrinated by a genocidal alien army that planned to kill her once they have what they want. Early in the series, she destroys an UNSC ship and kills her entire crew by tricking them with a distress signal, irrevocably turning her into a war criminal. Her plan to infiltrate the UNSC hits a roadblock, however, when she meets the Master Chief, who shows her the love and kindness she never received from fellow humans. This causes her to briefly renounce her Convenant beliefs and choose to help John find the Halo. Unfortunately, her Heel–Face Turn is ruined thanks to Miranda discovering her war crime. To cap it off, she has one last interaction with John where she begs him to stay with her that ends with her death.
  • Dr. James Ackerson is a Manipulative Bastard of the highest order, and an all-too effective gaslighter who runs the Office of Naval Intelligence as a means to achieve his own ambitions. But as "Visegrad" reveals, his sister died as a result of the Spartan augmentations thanks to Halsey and "Onyx" and "Thermopylae" show that he is not entirely callous and does care for those under his command. Even if he is horrible, you can't help but feel sorry for him.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Master Cheeks^ExplanationA play on the Master Chief's rank, referring to the surprising number of ass shots in the show. After the sex scene between Master Chief and Makee, the meme's usage increased with even Forbes' Paul Tassi using it.
  • Cucktana^ExplanationOne of the more (in)famous aspects of the sex scene is that Cortana ends up watching it, with a look on her face like her dog just got ran over. This has sparked many jokes about her being cuckqueaned.
  • "Vannak is the better Master Chief"^ExplanationOwing to Vannak's popularity as a Scary Black Man that's cool, intimidating and has a baritone, he has lead fans to refer to him as the true Master Chief of the show.
  • "Put the helmet back on!" ^ExplanationA recurring criticism of the show is that Master Chief spends a large amount of time with his helmet off, a stark contrast to the games where he was virtually never seen without it. Thus, many viewers prefer the brief times when he does put it back on and complain when he inevitably takes it off again.
• Moral Event Horizon: Parangonsky demonstrates she's just as bad, if not worse, than her canon counterpart, when she has Ackerson abandoned all of Reach to the Covenant and pull all critical assets out, but commissions the SPARTAN-III program to create an entire unit of suicide troopers, all of whom she intends to sacrifice to wipe out the entire Covenant fleet and the Halo (even at the expense of the UNSC fleet), just to win the war.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • In the games, people getting hit by plasma blasts of the Covenant weapons is just splurts of blood before falling over once they hit Critical Existence Failure. In the series, the very first episode demonstrates that getting blasted by plasma weapons would tear the human body apart like paper mache if not outright vaporize them; when the Covenant genocide the people of Madrigal, you even get an Elite opening a door to a bunker full of people who proceed to get blasted and fried alive, with the Spartans seeing the grisly aftermath later. The result is gore that far exceeds anything the games had short of the Flood Body Horror.
  • The Hunter attack. Unlike their normal depiction, here the Hunters leave their armor in favor of a stealthy attack and quickly overwhelm the crew of the Gladius. It almost feels like a Flood attack, though fortunately despite the terror of the moment they largely kill their victims through strangulation.
  • An enraged Master Chief launches himself at Halsey. For a cornered human, the prospect of being struck by a fully armored Spartan out for blood would be terrifying.
  • The current Arbiter's "prayer" for the people of Reach before the invasion begins. Translated by an utterly terrified and ready to shut down Talia Perez, the Sangheili message acts as both a call to action for the Covenant's armies, and a death sentence to every last human on the planet. The message plays out across an eerie montage of various characters either completely oblivious of the chaos that's coming, or those who are completely aware and are completely helpless to stop it. As the prayer ends, Perez turns to the Master Chief and confirms their worst fears in a trembling whisper. And as John stares at her, knowing what's about to happen... KABOOM.
  Perez: They're already here... Aren't they?
  • The stars turning red in the Forerunner starmap is in-universe Nightmare Fuel for Kwan Ha, who bolts out of the room as soon as she sees them. For fans of the games, either possibility of what they represent is just as terrifying. Even worse, attentive fans have noticed that you can hear a very familiar skittering noise as the room locks down...
  • The second season finale confirms the worst as The Flood have reawakened, effortlessly infecting it's way through the facility on Onyx, leading to numerous causalities (including Halsey) and the infection begins making it's moves to spread into the stars, starting with attacking the one thing that can stop them by moving on the Halo.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Many fans were surprised to see the Master Chief taking his helmet off and revealing his face even though showing and describing the Chief's face isn't exactly new. The novels often have him interacting with others without his armor and he has well-defined facial features. His face has even been visually depicted many times by several comics, advertising and the animated adaptation of Halo: The Fall of Reach. While it is unusual to see his face as an adult, keeping his helmet on was a tradition in the games alone and not an iron clad rule for the franchise.
  • Also, fans who've only played the games were surprised that Catherine Halsey and Miranda Keyes being mother and daughter was not invented for the show. Apart from a blink-and-you'll-miss-it photo of Miranda on Halsey's desk in Halo 5: Guardians, the knowledge that the two are related was only really established in the supplemental materials.
  • As seen in the first episode, Covenant shields being able to resist entire magazines worth of gunfire from ordinary humans, then a few scenes later draining quickly when shot at by Spartans using the exact same weapons, is indeed silly, but not unprecedented in the series. In Halo 3: ODST, the only game in the series in which you play as non-augmented human soldiers, the Covenant enemies' shields were much more resistant to human projectile weapons than in any of the mainline games where you play as Spartans.
  • While there is criticism towards the show's portrayal of the Insurrectionists using modern-day rifles instead of weapons such as those used by the UNSC, issue 5 of Halo: Escalation depicts Petra using an older-style revolver to kill an Elite. In a general sense, UNSC weapons were also deliberately designed to look like evolutions of modern weapons in order to contrast the alien weapons (Halo 4 and Halo 5: Guardians redesigned many UNSC weapons to look more sci-fi, which received some backlash at the time).
  • Many were surprised the show devoted so much time to the politics of the UNSC that portrayed them in a somewhat negative light. The Office of Naval Intelligence essentially being a fascist military conspiracy that handicaps its own side's war effort, seeks to implicitly establish themselves as a shadow government, and does things like kidnap children to turn them into super-soldiers before they even knew the Covenant existed, have been established from the very first tie-in novel onwards.
• Realism-Induced Horror: Dr. Ackerson is a classic case of textbook gaslighting, playing Silver Team, ONI, and Halsey for his own ambitions while trying to twist their points of view. Halsey may have been bad, but the fact that Ackerson is toying with everyone like this makes him all the more unnerving, since anyone can attest to having met a person like him.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Kwan Ha was widely disliked in Season 1, due to her irrational choices (most notably trying to press for Madrigal's independence despite the ongoing Covenant threat, and daring to blame the UNSC for the slaughter of her people) and having an entire episode dedicated to her that had little to do with the main story. Season two opens with Madrigal being one of many planets already glassed by the Covenant in the Time Skip, and Kwan is instead folded into being a supporting character of the subplots of other characters. An unexpected turn, and appreciated by fans, was that she ended up being the one to build up the lore of The Flood and inadvertently discover them.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: A major complaint is about the amount of time spent on the romance between Chief and Makee at the expense of the action that some fans who put up with the series were wanting to see, making the series seem more like a soap opera rather than a Sci-Fi action series. This romance is especially weird for fans who know that one of the side effects of the super soldier treatment for SPARTAN-II super soldiers in the original continuity is a suppressed sex drive; in the series, this suppression is established beforehand to be another side effect of the pellets the Spartans are implanted with.
• Salvaged Story: Much of the show's second season has been put towards addressing much of the criticisms towards season 1.
  • After heavy complaints about Silver Team being underutilized in comparison towards the Chief, the first two episodes have been working towards giving Kai, Vannak, and Riz more development, in addition to furthering their camaraderie with Chief.
  • Cortana's original design was criticized for dipping too much into the Unintentional Uncanny Valley. She's given a new motion capture actor to help the character appear less off-putting.
  • Season 1 placed an odd amount of focus on some Canon Foreigner characters and minor settings given their own dedicated subplot. Season 2 tightens its focus by using a Time Skip and retooling many of Season 1's arcs. Kwan Ha remains in the show but used a lot less and only when she intersects with other story arcs. Soren's family is used to provide perspective of outskirt characters and refugees from the war. Neither are in every episode and may only take up a few minutes, allowing for a better balance with the main plot.
  • Master Chief is given a major character arc of learning the immorality of the Spartan Program, being irritable and emotional throughout in contrast to the original character always in Danger Deadpan and a Consummate Professional, resulting in an infamous sex scene with Makee. Dr. Halsey is treated as the most villainous figure in the UNSC, who is abusing her position for her own secret goals. Season 2 cleans up both with stronger characterization, Chief being A Father to His Men is given more focus while Dr. Halsey is caught in the crossfire of other ONI factions competing for things FAR worse than what she did. This sets up a dramatic take on the eventual downfall of Reach.
  • After Season 1 faced heavy criticism for focusing too much on the UNSC's internal politics and increased focus on their morally dubious actions, Season 2 provides a Deconstruction that shows said actions giving a more tragic fate to the Fall of Reach. ONI knew the Covenant would inevitably invade Reach, but hid the truth and pulled everyone out they considered needed for the war (with the hint it was more or less covering their own butts), while gaslighting Chief and screwing over everyone on Reach in the process. In doing so, their actions leave Chief rogue and out of armor, Silver Team demoralized and with no faith in their leader, and Keyes outraged and at odds with ONI, leaving humanity on a disunited front with the enemy at their doorsteps. For an added bonus, the Season 2 finale gives those responsible some Adaptational Karma by having nearly all of ONI consumed by the Flood, giving the audience a heavy dose of Catharsis Factor for getting rid of the political drama and punishing those responsible.
  • Another major criticism of the first season was the lack of focus on the threat of the Covenant and their intended genocide of the human race. Season 2's take on the Fall of Reach shows exactly how powerful and threatening a force they are, and the devastation they unleash to the planet and its population.
  • Kwan Ha's arc in the second season becomes much more focused, with the off-screen glassing of Madrigal removing any lingering ambitions for its independence, and ties her more heavily into her link to the Forerunners.
• The Scrappy:
  • Kwan Ha was universally considered the weakest link in season one. She makes irrational decisions like roping Soren into her mission, rejecting a truce offer from the UNSC and prioritizing Madrigal's independence over humanity's survival against the genocidal Covenant. It also doesn't help that she has an entire episode to herself that's unconnected to the greater story. This is heavily mitigated in season two through a retool.
  • Soren's family drama in season two was considered the weakest element of season two, with Laera and Kessler having similar disproportionate attention to the plot as Kwan given their lack of importance to the main story.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general response to the first season. While it has good production values, some cool action scenes and a competent cast, the series suffers from inconsistent storytelling, questionable characterization, having little to do with the games, and a generic feeling.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • For a series set 500 years in the future, human rebels using 20th- and 21st-century assault rifles and SUVs on a different planet raises some eyebrows. Sure, they're a ragtag and poorly-equipped organization, but still, this is comparable to modern insurgents using muskets and chariots. It gets even funnier when Vishner's protection detail is driving a more "futuristic" version of the armored cars not unlike the ones used by the Secret Service.
  • The rifle that Master Chief throws to the ground in the first episode is very clearly a 3D model added in through digital effects. What makes the blatant CGI stand out is how the previous and subsequent scenes clearly showed physical props of the gun that could have been used instead.
  • Also in the first episode, Kai shoots an Elite at point-blank range with a plasma pistol. In the following shot, she tosses down what is clearly an unpainted foam or plastic prop, complete with visible mold lines.
  • The Elites are obvious CGI in many scenes, most notably when shot at in the first-person sequence.
  • When the first trailer that Cortana appeared in dropped, many people expressed misgivings about her appearance giving off Unintentional Uncanny Valley vibes. Since Cortana has actually shown up in the series, these complaints seem to have mostly died down.
  • In Season 2's "Reach" a man in a blue jacket walks across the screen and the background quite noticeably clips through his clothing.
• Squick: The series doesn't shy away from violence and some pretty gnarly imagery at all.
  • Makee removing her nail blade is utterly agonizing.
  • As fans of the games feared, once they make their debut, the Flood. While they aren't shown fully mutating the humans they infect in the second season's finale, they do produce disgusting growths and mutations, especially the two that sprout tentacles, and even without this they mutilate uninfected humans in some pretty nasty ways.
• Tainted by the Preview: To say that longtime fans of Halo have been put off by how the series will occur in another continuity would be an understatement. Trepidations increased when an in-depth Variety article was Quote Mined out of showrunner Steven Kane's words about "not looking at the game" and instead focusing on its lore and characters, which led to some accusing the crew of being ignorant.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Dr. Halsey has a conversation with Kwan Ha in "Onyx" where she blames the Insurrectionist for breaking Master Chief's personality during Season 1. It seems the writers of Season 2 didn't have much care for Kwan either.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Some fans aren't too pleased with the Master Chief taking off his helmet and revealing what his face looks like, mostly because it was never seen in the games up to this point. Even many who were accepting of the Chief showing his face were critical of the fact he spends a very large portion of his screentime with his helmet off.
  • The replacement of Blue Team with Silver Team, given how beloved the other members of Blue Team are, has been received poorly by many fans who were excited to see a live-action take on Kelly, Linda, and Fred. It also doesn't help that, though they have been there from the beginning in the lore, Blue Team have only appeared "on-screen" in one game, Halo 5: Guardians, when they were piloted by the abysmal AI and in no way came across as the hardened, almost-as-good-as-Chief Super Soldiers they are supposed to be.
  • Instead of Chief and company discovering the Halo rings while running from the Covenant and finding out their true purpose much later, the UNSC have a vague idea that the rings are weapons of some sort and the goal is to find them before the Covenant do. Makee also reveals their importance to the Covenant religion to them early on as well. Many fans see this as an unnecessary departure from the games that diminishes the mystery of the Halo rings.
  • The fact that the Master Chief has sex with Makee. Ignoring who the second character is and all the problems there, it also changes a major part of the SPARTAN-II lore; in the game canon, it's established that the SPARTAN-II augmentations suppress the sex drive, with very few S-IIs even clinically noting attractiveness in others and only one S-II ever expressing interest in a family (unsurprisingly, it wasn't John); in the series, the suppression is due to the pellets implanted in the Spartans. Many also felt that this went against the Chief's characterization, as he's never really had any romantic relationships — even his relationship with Cortana is platonic on his side. Pablo Schreiber himself recently came out against the scene, finding it to be "a huge mistake".
  • The much greater focus on playing up Halsey and the UNSC as villains was seen as unnecessary by fans, especially since it is largely involved with Kwan's subplot, both of which many fans see as taking time away from focusing on the main Human-Covenant conflict. For returning fans, it also brings to mind the very maligned Kilo-Five trilogy.
  • The change where only certain humans could activate alien artifacts instead of the entire species being collectively able to do so only serves to really stretch the Covenant's motivations for exterminating humanity, and sets up the Master Chief as The Chosen One right from the start when both the games and the books initially set him up as just a very capable (and lucky) Super-Soldier.
  • While the emotional impact of the scene is still significant, the death of Jacob Keyes in Season Two has gotten considerable discussion and vitriol from the fanbase who are upset that he Dies Differently in Adaptation, choosing to Face Death with Dignity rescuing survivors on Reach instead of being consumed by the Flood on the first Halo ring, leading to discussion on how the actual plotline of the first game will be adapted now without one of its lead characters.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions:
  • Episode 8 focuses on Kwan going on a spiritual journey and trying to liberate her homeworld of Madrigal from a power-hungry politician. Aside from a glimpse of a Forerunner Monitor, this episode has nothing to do with the greater UNSC vs Covenant conflict and protagonist Master Chief only appears as an illusion.
  • The subplot of Soren's son going missing and being kidnapped by the UNSC has been getting a similar reaction to Kwan's story (which, by contrast, is more closely integrated into the plot to introduce the threat of the Flood. While Soren and Laera are directly involved in the plot this time, their efforts to find Kessler take up a good chunk of screen time that has nothing to do with Master Chief's struggles, Ackerson's gaslighting and establishment of the SPARTAN-III program, or Kwan slowly learning about the Flood. Even the revelation that Kessler had been taken to Onyx to be trained as a future Spartan is still widely disjointed, and only serves to leave Laera to die when she's infected by the Flood.
• Uncertain Audience: A major problem with Season 1 is that it's not clear whom it's trying to appeal to. It's heavy changes from the games (such as Master Chief staying unmasked) has alienated much of the game's fanbase, but those who aren't hardcore Halo fans found themselves put off by the fact the series wasn't doing anything new to distinguish itself from other sci-fi series. Season 2 would take steps to start rectifying this by retooling the series to be more in line with the games.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Cortana's new appearance, with human-like hair and skin tone with a more clearly defined bodysuit, can come across as unsettling especially for fans expecting an entirely projected light appearance. Though as she is not human, it complements the unnerved response other characters have to her presence. Season 2 would again fix this by changing her motion-capture actor to make her appear less unnerving.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Few expected the main cast to include Soren-066, a one-off Spartan character who appeared in a single Halo: Evolutions short story that seemingly kills him at the end.
  • When Season 2 dropped, the presence of Corporal Perez (albeit undergoing a Gender Flip) and Colonel Ackerson was a surprise to many, especially the latter given his relatively minor role in The Fall of Reach.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Kwan Ha in Season 1, despite suffering a lot of tragedy in a short time that should make her sympathetic, behaves in such an irrational and impulsive manner that any sympathy the audience might have had for her is quickly exhausted. When the UNSC rescue her and ask her to help convince other insurrectionists to stand down in light of the threat the Covenant poses, she instead threatens to blame them for the whole thing. To no one's surprise, they put out a hit on her, and she's lucky that the Master Chief grew a conscience and refused to carry out the order. Though perhaps understandable under the circumstances, she continues to press for Madrigal's independence in spite of everyone making it clear there's no appetite for it now that the Covenant are an acknowledged threat, only serving to make her look horribly naive and single-minded. Luckily, Season 2 would take the steps to make her mature and accept her responsibility in the coming conflict, become a more competent fighter, and pave way for the Flood to enter into the fold.
• Video Game Movies Suck: Despite the amount of money put into the show and its visual effects, it still ended up receiving middling to negative reviews from both critics and fans for its cliche plot, terrible writing and the amount of unnecessary changes it made from the games. The sheer vitriol caused by these controversies behind the decisions of first season ultimately would inspire a Retool in the second season that more closely follows the original canon over the "departure" the first season explored. It's safe to say this worked, as Season 2 has been getting much higher praise from critics and fans for making things more in line with the games.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Foibles with some aspects aside, the show really does capture the look and feel of the Halo universe beautifully, with expansive landscapes, futuristic technology, and a faithful rendition of many of the elements from the games. Special mention should go towards the Halo itself when it's finally seen, as it blends the gorgeous, Pacific Northwest-esque mountains with the Forerunner's technology perfectly.
• Win Back the Crowd: Reception towards Season 1 of the series was frosty to say the least, as audiences and fans were highly displeased about the numerous changes to the games, Master Chief and Dr. Halsey's characterizations being far removed from their canon counterparts, Kwan Ha's presence being seen as disruptive, and the lack of focus on the Covenant war in favor of cliched Earth politics. Season 2 underwent a heavy retool to make things more in line with the games, making Chief and Halsey act more like their canon selves, Kwan Ha's role being better integrated into the story, the politics being used to better further the story, and the Covenant getting a greater amount of focus (such as introducing a new version of the Arbiter) before finally doing away with the past baggage by bringing the Flood into the mix. In doing so, fans and critics have been giving much higher praise to the show, and are outright ecstatic at the possibilities of a third season.

---