Halo Season 2, Episode 4, Reach,” sees the exit of two key supporting characters – including Danny Sapani’s Admiral Jacob Keyes. So, how does the way Admiral Jacob Keyes dies in the Halo show compare to his death in the Halo video games?
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How Captain Jacob Keyes Dies in the Halo Video Games
Captain (not Admiral) Jacob Keyes dies in the first-ever Halo game, 2001’s Halo: Combat Evolved. His demise comes after an ill-fated encounter with the Flood on Installation 04, otherwise known as Halo. Like many of the parasitic horde’s victims, Keyes becomes part of the Flood itself – but with a uniquely grisly twist. Instead of transforming into a zombie-like combat unit, Keyes turns into a Proto-Gravemind.
What does this mean? Essentially, Keyes’ mangled, Flood-infected body fuses with several other Flood lifeforms into a stomach-turning, blobby mass of flesh and tentacles. As a Proto-Gravemind, Keyes’ consciousness is part of the wider Flood hivemind, which begins painfully sifting through his memories, looking for a way off Halo. Keyes fights back, feeding the Flood trivial information to keep them stranded on the space ring and away from Earth.
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Meanwhile, Halo franchise protagonist John-117/The Master Chief races to Keyes’ rescue. The Master Chief arrives too late, however, and Keyes’ mind is fully consumed by the Flood. Rather than allow the Flood access to Keyes’ Command Neural Interface – a chip implanted in his brain containing highly sensitive information – the Chief rams his fist through his former commanding officer’s skull and yanks his CNI out.
This causes the death of Keyes’ physical body – a gruesome end for one of the UNSC’s finest commanding officers. But as AI program Cortana observes at the time, Keyes would’ve approved of the Master Chief’s actions. This is borne out later in Halo: Combat Evolved, when the Master Chief uses Keyes’ CNI to destroy Halo and (temporarily) hit pause on the Flood’s spread.
How Admiral Jacob Keyes Dies in the Halo Paramount+ Show
Compared to his video game counterpart, the Halo Paramount+ show’s Jacob Keyes gets off light. Sure, his death in Season 2, Episode 4, “Reach,” is pretty hardcore, but it still beats the physical and psychological horrors Keyes endures in Halo: Combat Evolved! That said, the live-action version of Keyes has a slightly shorter lifespan than his pixel-powered incarnation. “Reach” takes place at roughly the same time as Halo: Combat Evolved‘s prequel, Halo: Reach, which means Keyes dies several weeks earlier on the show.
This discrepancy between the canon of the games and the show’s Silver Timeline also means that Keyes dies fighting a different alien force, the Covenant, and not the Flood (which hasn’t shown up on the show yet). Regardless, our guy goes out in a (literal) blaze of glory. Surrounded by Covenant troops during the Fall of Reach, Keyes manually disconnects the fueling cables preventing a ship full of wounded UNSC soldiers from evacuating. He then orders the ship’s pilot, Corporal Perez, to fire the engines knowing they will incinerate everyone in their path – including him.
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Perez initially refuses, not wanting to barbeque Keyes along with the Covenant. She ultimately relents, however, after Keyes urges her to do her duty. Perez guns the engines and Keyes is engulfed in flames alongside the Covenant, but not before popping a smoking pipe in his mouth as a final middle finger to his lifelong enemies.
Obviously, Keyes’ downfall in Halo Season 2 plays out drastically differently to video games – but then that tracks with the show and games existing in separate universes. And despite their wildly different specifics, both versions of Keyes’ death ultimately have one important thing in common: he dies a hero.
Halo Season 2 is currently streaming on Paramount+, with new episodes dropping Thursdays.
