REVIEW: ‘HALO’ Season 2 Improves On The Last

Paramount+’s Halo Season 2 comes two years after the first.  In the time in between, the series has found its footing. From new showrunner and executive producer David Wiener, this newest season of Halo seems to have taken notes from the last. It goes harder when it comes to action, sci-fi takes on humanity, and a little more that is better left seen than read.

Set in the universe that first debuted in 2001 with the launch of Xbox’s first HALO game, the series reimagines the 26th-century conflict between humanity and an alien threat known as the Covenant. With Spartan John-117 (Pablo Schreiber), the Master Chief John-117, at its center. John leads his Spartan team against the alien threat known as the Covenant. Last season, everything got worse when he discovered his deep connection to the Halo. And this season, it’s a little more of the same, only more focused.

The majority of the cast returns for Season 2, and that’s a good thing. We meet the Spartans some indeterminate amount of time after the events of the last season. The only difference is that they’re all functioning without their emotional dampeners. They also have fallen back in line with the UNSC. John is back to his normal self, or at least pre-Cortana. Dr. Halsey is supposedly in the wind. The new intelligence officer at the facility, James Ackerson, has a connection to the Spartans. This may be for the worse. As the covenant closes in on Reach, humanity’s greatest stronghold, the UNSC faces more casualties than ever before, as the Covenant takes the fight to them. The Fall of Reach is immanent.

At this point, if you’re coming to the Halo live-action television series expecting a shot-for-shot recreation of the existing Halo lore and story, you’re not coming in with good faith. Last season, that expectation was fine, but when a series shows you what it is, take it at its word. It works when you do that with Halo Season 2 and allow it to exist outside the shadow of the existing stories. Halo isn’t here to rehash. It’s here to expand the universe of one of gaming’s most iconic franchises. It takes big swings, and sometimes it does strikeout. But the second season of the series has expanded on the action and the production value, which pays off.

While the series has its issues, Halo Season 2 moves faster than the last. Truthfully, it never stops being exciting. Every episode has at least one action sequence, and the investment in showing more of the Covenant succeeds. This is a sci-fi action series. The latter is handled immediately with a large battle and continues with each choice. This season leaves behind the first-person perspective and builds out larger actionscapes. The action’s true scope and scale is in the focus instead of pushed through the video game lens.

Additionally, this season uses more weaponry and fight tactics that call out to the video game universe. Chief among them is camouflage. While it’s easily assumed that invisibility is done because it is easier on the budget, the execution is rather stellar. This is true from the start of the season and well into Episode 4. Halo Season 2 wastes no time. It doesn’t hold a large battle sequence post-Season 1 finale or add iconic weapons and vehicles to the mix. When it comes to action and emotion, Episode 4 packs a larger punch than last season’s finale.

For the sci-fi of the series, Halo Season 2 dives deeper into the UNSC’s crimes and the children who were lost in the quest to create the Spartans. Holding Dr. Halsey’s (Natascha McElhone) science to the fire, the season uses Ackerson to make the audience question everything. He is against the actions committed with the Spartan program, but he is also a self-centered egotist, unconcerned with guarding Reach from a potential Covenant threat and more focused on surviving at the cost of others. Played by Joesph Morgan, Ackerson is intimidating and does a lot with very little in the opening four episodes of Halo Season 2. 

Additionally, the series scratches the surface again on questioning the impact of emotions on soldiers. It also uses John to question just how far away you can move past the horrors of the battlefield. This leads to more concrete personalities for the Spartans Riz-028 (Natasha Culzac), Vannak-134 (Bentley Kalu), and Kai-125 (Kate Kennedy).

While John was the focus last season, you can see the ripples of his choices and how they impacted his team. The most touching of which is Riz. Riz looks for comfort to kill the loneliness and the physical pain she feels. The only real grappling with the past we see comes from Riz and her body. Stitched together after near death, she is not the same person. Those two elements keep the series grounded in science fiction more than just the alien Covenant that shows up.

Further pushing the narrative elements of coming to terms with the UNSC’s science and impact on what are effectively colonies, Halo Season 2 adds Talia Perez. Her connections to people drive Talia after John saves her in Episode 1, “Sanctuary.” Particularly her love of family. But that empathy and connection make it hard to keep moving forward when battles break out where she least expects. As a normal Marine and not a Spartan, she has a different take on the battle and a different relationship with it. It allows the audience to have a self-inserted moment but also makes John read each of his situations differently instead of hurtling through them like a battering ram.

Unlike last season, where the constant cuts to Kwan Ha’s story created glaring pacing issues, this season is more cohesive. So far, there are no episodes that feel out of place, and the secondary stories, like that involving Soren (Bokeem Woodbine), have come together quickly. While the first introduction of Soren this season is bumpy, where he ends up fitting into the larger narrative path.

That said, while the large ensemble cast is superb (Danny Sapani, Charlie Murphy, and Shabana Azmi return to great effect), with new additions truly pulling their acting weight, there are simply too many of them. We could have spent more time with the excellent Joseph Morgan as James Ackerson (someone Halo fans will know), exploring his connection to the Spartan program.

We could have unpacked the complexities of all of the Spartans acting without their emotional regulator chips more. But instead of embracing the large UNSC cast, the series pulls back. With so many people to cover, much of what’s presented feels too surface-level to dig into the meat of who they are, which is necessary for a series.

The largest issue that Halo Season 2 has so far is that it doesn’t show how our characters tackled the Season 1 finale well. We don’t see what John was like when he turned control over to the UNSC and Cortana. That turn seemed to promise audiences time with a version of the character that is closer to what they know. And it particularly promised Cortana (Jen Taylor) more time. However, at the start of this season, John is John again. Cortana has been removed, and we don’t know what has happened entirely. Other than that people keep questioning his mental fitness.

That gap in time slowly pieces together. However, it never shows how the characters handled the dramatic finale fight. While we’re halfway through the season,  it’s hard to see why the writers would backtrack to the time skipped with the episodes they have left. Leaving some plot holes that will remain glaringly open.

Halo Season 2 changes many of the first season’s aesthetics for the better. There are new designs for Cortana, larger attention to action, and the dedication to making everyone next to John-117 look four-foot-nothing. The costuming is tighter, and Reach has been expanded to feel more lived in than what we saw previously. The weapons have more power, and the fight sequences are more choreographed. Halo Season 2 has become something bigger. With three episodes left in the season at the time of this writing, the future beyond Reach looks like something people should tune in for.

Halo Season 2 may be filled with video game references, but it embraces itself as something unique. Instead of constantly looking at the Master Chief’s shadow hanging over it, this season is forging something new.  This is a much clearer vision than the first season. Even with its stumbles, the series is stronger for it.

Halo Season 2 isn’t going to bring back any fans of the video game that tapped out last season. But I will say that you should be all in if you want a sci-fi action series. Plus it has just enough gaming moments to stay connected to its source material. Bigger than the first season and much more fine-tuned, Halo Season 2 is better than the last and has a promising future.

Halo Season 2 is streaming exclusively on Paramount+.