The long-awaited Halo television series is now officially here and the first episode is available to watch on Paramount Plus. With the brand-new Halo series which has already been renewed for Season 2, it appears that there are going to be some twists and turns that deviate strongly from the game on which the series is based. Whether or not that's going to work in the long run isn't known yet. It's going to take at least another episode considering that most of the divergence from the video game franchise came near the end of the premiere.

The first episode does what any first episode of any series needs to do, which is to set the world and set the story. In that regard, the premiere episode does a fairly good job of laying everything out. There is the United Nations Space Command or UNSC which is the major earth military force that is fighting a war with insurgents on colonies that want to be free. Into that war comes an alien army known as The Covenant. At this point in Halo, it's not known just what Covenant forces want but it's pretty clear they have very little regard for human life. That's despite the fact that at least one of the higher-ups appears to be at least partly human. Unfortunately, it's the introduction of The Covenant that gives the series its first real bumps in the road where audiences are going to need to suspend their disbelief in order to enjoy the plot so far.

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Super Soldiers

Halo Season 1 Episode 1 Review Silver Team

To Halo's credit, the show didn't take too long to introduce either The Covenant, or the Spartans' Silver Team and its Master Chief. The Silver Team is a group of four Spartans which are UNSC's unbeatable super-human assault force that are the point of the spear in the war against the colonies. They also happen to be the only people that can apparently do any damage at all to the alien forces that ravage the outpost known as Madrigal. That's where things get a little wonky.

It's clear that Paramount Plus wants to make sure that the Halo TV series and the Halo video games can be tied together and stand alone. Those who know the video games well know that the Spartans have special weapons that are built to go up against The Covenant. However, that's neither well known nor even really alluded to in the television series. So it's a bit jarring when an entire outpost of people open fire on the alien attackers with heavy weapons and do no damage at all because of some sort of personal force fields. Then, when four Spartans arrive on the scene, they seem to be able to kill the same impervious aliens with just one or two shots. One of the Spartans is apparently able to take aliens down with pistols that shouldn't be any more useful than the machine guns the Madrigalians tried to use.

It's clear that the show needs to show just how good a fighting force Team Silver is compared to everyone else. They certainly show off just how easily they kill the unkillable, but it's not as though they're doing it with their bare hands. It seems to be that this particular plot point in Halo is one of those things where the audience is just supposed to take at face value. The show does get points for at least showing how Master Chief and the rest of Silver Team are able to take more damage than the people who were wiped out rather quickly. It's also a fun nod to the video game, especially when the POV changes to first person in the middle of combat. There are some familiar sounds during the firefight as well for those who have long loved the video game.

The show also does a very good job of establishing that the USNC and the Spartans as its point of the spear are so feared by the insurgents. However, the series loses some points by explaining things in a trailer that it didn't explain in the first episode. The Spartans don't really think for themselves. They are built to follow orders and not really think for themselves. Just how and why is still a mystery to people who didn't watch those trailers. Those who did have at least some explanation. That's a definite failing and one that it feels like it could have been solved by putting a few lines of dialogue into this particular episode.

Dirty Deeds

Halo Season 1 Episode 1 Review Dr Halsey

Another important part of Halo's plot is any sort of explanation as to why USNC leadership is as cutthroat and apparently evil as it is. One scene shows that Admiral Parangosky is willing to kill Master Chief because he didn't kill an unarmed woman exactly when he was told to do it. Despite others begging the admiral to back off a bit and just see exactly why the Spartan that was exposed to an alien artifact might have found a way to think for himself, she just wants him dead.

Ignoring the fact that it's incredibly dumb for an admiral to decide it's better to kill her best weapon while she's fighting what amounts ot a two-front war, the whole situation just seemed to be there to show how bad USNC really is. Considering Halo is going to be around for at least two seasons, it didn't seem necessary to make that hilariously obvious in episode one.

There's going to be plenty of time to lay out why the UNSC aren't the good guys. It's not a particularly good sign for either this episode of Halo or the ones that are about to come after it, that the writers felt it was necessary to so completely set that plot point so early. It seems like a better approach might have been to allow there to be some sort of charade of goodness for at least an episode or two. It's possible future episodes will explain why the show went that route right from the beginning, but it's certainly not obvious just yet.

Halo is now available on Paramount Plus with new episodes launching every Thursday.

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