After a lackluster inaugural season, the Halo television series has significantly improved with its second season, boasting a tighter narrative focus and more explosive action. However, the second season of Halo still deviates wildly from the video game source material, including the Fall of Reach.
Chronicled in the very first Halo tie-in novel, Halo: The Fall of Reach, and the 2010 prequel video game, Halo: Reach, the Covenant defeating UNSC forces at Reach, a major human colony on a faraway planet, marks a turning point in the overarching Halo narrative. The game follows a Spartan squad, the UNSC’s most elite soldiers, led by Noble Six, that heroically sacrifice their lives to buy time for the artificial intelligence Cortana to escape from the planet on the fleeing space the Pillar of Autumn, commanded by officer Jacob Keyes and his Spartan escort John-117, better known as Master Chief, setting the events of the franchise’s first game Halo: Combat Evolved into motion.
Of course, none of that happens in Halo Season 2.
Sure, Halo Season 2 does indeed center around the Fall of Reach, but Noble Six and his Spartan team are non-existent in this version of the story. This leaves Cortana vulnerable to the Covenant, with the alien army’s human infiltrator Makee and the Arbiter able to successfully steal the artificial intelligence program away while the UNSC desperately battles the invaders. Keyes does appear on Reach but sacrifices his life to buy time for a freighter full of refugees to escape. A heroic end – more heroic than the one Keyes receives in the game – but this effectively excises Keyes’ role as the narrative moves toward the events of Combat Evolved, where the character appeared prominently.
However, while these are certainly major divergences, especially for fans hoping to see a more direct adaptation of the acclaimed Halo: Reach, this was never really in the cards for the television series, at least as it was constructed. To more faithfully adapt the events of the game, Noble would essentially become the new protagonist, taking the focus away from Master Chief for much of the season. An alternative would be to introduce Noble as a short-lived co-lead, but the season already has enough subplots with Soren, Catherine Halsey, and Kwan Ha’s arcs.
Instead, the television series streamlines the Fall of Reach while maintaining its focus primarily on Master Chief, the hero audiences have come to know for over a season now. Other Spartan soldiers introduced at the start of the series fill in several of the roles Noble Team would’ve inhabited, with major deaths carrying more emotional weight than they would have otherwise. A Halo season shaking things up with an entirely new perspective would’ve been too much of a creative risk and featured little of the emotional payoff returning viewers would’ve appreciated.
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The idea of killing off Keyes this early both serves as a bit of a shock for game-savvy audiences expecting the venerable officer to survive longer into the main narrative and something that brings his family and friends, specifically Master Chief and Halsey, to their personal low. Regarding its actual execution, the death itself feels a bit forced but does become a catalyst to drive John and Halsey to work together again, if begrudgingly, despite their incredibly complicated dynamic. Realistically, a different UNSC character could fit into what would’ve been Keyes’ role in an adaptation of Combat Evolved with a similar effect.
Ahead of the series’ premiere, executive producer Kiki Wolfkill clarified that the TV show would take place in its own continuity, dubbed the Silver Timeline in reference to the Silver Team of Spartans that John serves in. This established that the show would take its own creative liberties with the familiar narrative and characters while still keeping the broader strokes relatively intact. In the show’s defense, those canonical divergences had existed before, with the game Halo: Reach ignoring and contradicting Halo: The Fall of Reach to tell its own version of the Battle for Reach – if anything, Halo Season 2 hews closer to the novel than the game.
From its renegade, more emotionally charged depiction of John-117 to the different circumstances behind the Fall of Reach, Halo is definitely keeping fans on their toes if they think they know exactly how the story is going to unfold. Rather than sticking to the novel or game’s depiction of events, the show keeps its perspective on its established characters as it continues to forge its own narrative path. While these changes might not be hardcore fans, it does work best for the story being told and, as cool as it would’ve been to see Noble Six get some love, the current direction needed to continue its focus on John and his friends on Silver Team as the series streamlines and remixes the familiar narrative beats.
Halo Season 2 is currently streaming on Paramount+, with new episodes dropping Thursdays.
