Halo season 2, Paramount+ will need to make one big – and expensive – change. There have been attempts to create a live-action Halo movie or TV series since 2005, but the dream has finally become a reality. The adventures of the Master Chief have been brought to life on the Paramount+ streaming platform, and Paramount has already renewed Halo for a second season.
Paramount+’s Halo TV series doesn’t just draw inspiration from the games, though; it’s surprised viewers by lifting concepts from a wider universe of tie-in novels and comics too. It’s likely this is partly a way of saving on CGI, because a focus on Insurrectionist stories means there haven’t been too many expensive battles with CGI Covenant aliens. This probably also helps explain another dramatic change, with the TV series introducing a Covenant spy named Makee, a so-called “Blessed One” who serves as the Master Chief’s opposite number among the Covenant as one of the few people who can activate Forerunner artifacts with a touch. Halo season 2 will need to abandon their approach of avoiding the Covenant. By now it’s clear that Halo season 1 serves as something of a prologue, establishing the context for the conflict between the Master Chief and the alien Covenant and leading them to the Halo Rings themselves. This means Halo season 2 will be the main event, with the Master Chief and the Covenant battling for control of the Sacred Ring – and the fate of the entire galaxy at stake. Halo’s sparse Spartan-Covenant combat scenes have been a delight in season 1, but the conflict between these two forces must lie at the heart of season 2. No doubt Makee will remain a force to be reckoned with as a human antagonist, if only because the Covenant need their own Blessed One to activate the Ring in the first place, but the alien races in the Covenant – Elites, Brutes, Jackals, Grunts, and Drones – need to be much more prominent.
Halo season 1 hasn’t exactly been cheap; according to Variety, each episode cost roughly $10 million to produce, presumably because of the show’s lavish set designs and creative worlds. Presumably those particular costs will reduce a little once the series reaches the Sacred Ring, simply because some elements will be reused even in the different locations; Forerunner architecture, for example, or the sweeping vista of the Ring overhead. That should free up some of the budget for more action scenes featuring the Covenant. The showrunners and producers clearly know this is what viewers want; there’s a reason Halo season 1 began with a stunning action sequence that felt as though it had been lifted straight from the games, while episode 5 was well-received because of a skirmish between the UNSC and the Covenant as well. These episodes have shown Halo can indeed bring the races of the Covenant to life, but so far it really does feel like too little. Hopefully Halo season 2 will live up to its potential in this regard.