#and then the kilo-five trilogy because they’re the better ones lol

[catgirlforeskin]

I hope one day we learn what happened with the Halo show. It got a lot of unfair criticism from people who didn’t watch it or wanted it to be a retread of the games (which would’ve been terrible).

The show clearly had people on board who had deep knowledge and respect for Halo and its themes, much more than many of the detractors who decried that the show “wasn’t Halo” because it had civilians and mister chief took off his helmet. One of the main characters of the show, Soren, was only ever mentioned in a single short story in an anthology book that’s not even popular among people who like the books. And I love that dude! I lost it when he showed up!

It focuses on Madrigal and the Rubble and the insurrectionist conflict there, something only brought up in a single book primarily about unimportant side characters, and yeah, it changed some details around (like making it a mostly Korean colony instead of Mexican, which I didn’t love) but like, if years ago you asked me what my ideal Halo show would be, I’d talk about the insurrectionist conflict, and the best I would realistically hope for is a “both sides bad” story, but we didn’t get that! We’re meant to root for the anarchist terrorist group!

But I say all this upfront because the show had so many baffling design choices, leaning in hard on chosen one prophecy junk with Forerunners, putting in Master Chief at all, having Master Chief have a straight sex scene. There’s a lot that wasn’t great, and I have to wonder, why?

People like to say it was just made by people who don’t care about halo but that clearly isn’t true. Was it just a case of having lots of writers on the team who all wanted different things, and thus the show came out as a patchwork of different aspects of halo poorly stitched together? Was it executives fighting with the writers and shoehorning in more easily marketable material like Master Chief and the sex scene and whatnot?

Was it a mix of a lot of factors? Probably! Will we ever really know? Probably not! But I can’t help but wonder at why this happened, and what else could’ve been