A Halo show retrospective - What to do at the end of everything?

 "Find your faith Spartan - I have seen your death, it comes soon."

Sanctuary 

Much like all living things, the Halo TV series was cursed to die. Though how it chose to die --- and how it chose to live --- was its choice. And in my opinion - it lived gloriously. 

As a preface: while this retrospective will primarily cover the events of Halo season 2, the events and plot points of season 1 and the games will be acknowledged and referenced throughout the article. As a warning, anyone who does not want to be spoiled on the events of the TV show and games should turn back now.  

The themes of death, dying, and on rare occasion: rebirth are hardcoded into Halo season 2's story since the opening scene of the newest season. We're reintroduced to a noxious and desolate planet, Sanctuary, populated by settlers who were scattered and displaced there from a once vibrant planet 42 years prior. In spite of the desolate landscape, sickly green sky and overall barren terrain -- these settlers have carved a home for themselves, no matter the odds against them. In the face of oblivion, for 42 years, these settlers did not give up on living ---- and did so in spite of the UNSC, rather than because of them.

Despite the settlers' resilience, death has come for them---and it has no intention of stopping with these mere villagers. As the series progresses, the specter of death lurks the rest of the cast, and its presence is always felt --- either by those it claims, the fear of those it might claim, or simply by the scars it leaves behind.

“And yet death was not something you could ignore. It had its weight. [...] It seemed to her she had better not form the practice of ignoring death. If she tried it, death would find a way to answer back—it would take another of her loved ones, to remind her to respect it.” - Larry McMurtry, The Lonesome Dove Series

How these characters react to this destruction and despair --- that's where the beauty of this season shines. 

As the titular protagonist, John, remarks on throughout the series: he and the rest of Spartan Silver Team are dead and have been for some time. Almost three decades before the events of season 1, he, Riz, Vannak, Kai, and Soren were all *killed* by Halsey and the UNSC, both literally and metaphorically. Stolen, kidnapped, recruited and indoctrinated into the UNSC Spartan program, these children (at the age of 6, at least in John's case), were robbed of anything resembling a normal life --- and replaced with clones who themselves perished shortly thereafter. From the ashes of their lives, they were manipulated and indoctrinated into becoming killers for the authoritarian UNSC's political ambitions. They were turned into weapons against the insurrectionists, secessionists, or anyone else the UNSC deemed worthy of being a target --- while also being science experiments for their resident mad scientist, Dr. Halsey. 

While the timeline of the Halo TV show can be a bit fast and loose at times, we can infer that this song and dance of Silver Team (and the rest of the Spartans) continued for at least a decade before the Covenant made its presence known --- and it was only then that these legal killers were repurposed as weapons to be used against the Covenant, rather than wayward humans. John and the rest of Silver Team would spent at least an additional decade fighting aliens before the events of the show pick up. 

While Silver Team would survive in the through trial after trial prior, they never really lived. When they weren't killing for the UNSC, they were kept sedated and controlled via hormonal pellets designed by Halsey and the UNSC. These drugs in addition to the jingoistic cultural environment of the UNSC ensured that they were stable, predictable, and controllable. Any irregularities or risk of free thinking was stamped out. 

This was the way of life for almost 30 years of the UNSC's Spartans, and it became so familiar and so ubiquitous that none of Silver Team could imagine a life not defined by these manipulations. It was only with the events of Halo Season 1 that these cracks began to show, beginning with a targeted distrust of Halsey and Captain Keyes --- though by the events of season two escalated into an overwhelming distrust of both ONI and the UNSC more generally. 

It was only by the events of Season 2 that Silver Team had even begun to grapple with their scale of their lives up until that point and how thoroughly the UNSC had fucked them. One of the breakout characters from season 2, Riz--- a Spartan --- begins the season derisively mocking civilian life, or any life outside of her Spartan lifestyle --- equating such a peaceful life of simply being and normal mundanity with death, or something close to it. As the season progresses, however, she's repeatedly forced to confront her own mortality and inability to keep up with the Spartan lifestyle, ultimately choosing to *die* and be reborn into a lifestyle she dismissively mocked earlier in the season. 

For two seasons now, John has repeatedly struggled with identity, more specifically with where The Master Chief  ends and John begins, with the implicit suggestions throughout both season 1 and 2 that for one to live, the other must die. They cannot coexist --- and repeatedly, time and again, the heads of the UNSC are salivating and eager to kill John if it means bringing back The Master Chief. 

This internal identity conflict is exacerbated by the fact that John is uniquely aware, almost bordering on 4th wall breaking, that while he will always survive, the fates of those around him are far less lucky. I wouldn't go as far as to say that John knows he has plot armor --- but it is close. As season 2 progresses, John is traumatized time and again --- failing to save a majority of a small squad of UNSC soldiers on Sanctuary, failing to evacuate a great many refugees from Sanctuary, failing to preserve the lives other Spartan teams similar to his own, failing to save Reach, --- and eventually failing to keep those closest two him safe. Every hallmark of familiarity and stability that defines John's social circle either dies, leaves him, or betrays him by the end of season 2. 

I cannot praise enough how this growing sense of dread and the overall tragedy that John's character arc is executed in season 2. There's a particularly haunting scene in the first episode of season 2 where, having survived the botched evacuation of Sanctuary, there's some part of John that uniquely aware about the mortality of those he cares about --- and urges Cobalt Team (another Spartan group, similar to Silver Team) to take extreme caution on a mission they were assigned to. He's one of the only characters this early on to sense the metaphorical noose hovering over his neck, and the necks of  Spartans and all of Reach---and he tries and failures to alert others to the growing danger. He's the Cassandra of this show --- constantly aware of threats, and constantly dismissed or doubted until it's far too late to do anything about it. 

Both John's (absolutely justified) disillusionment with the UNSC and panic contrasted with his teammate Kai. While John is the first to see that the Halsey's villainy in season 1 was merely a symptom of the rot that is ONI/the UNSC, Kai was for a great deal of both season 1 and 2 content to view Halsey as the standalone villain to her story: someone singularly responsible for much of Kai's (and the Spartans' in general) misfortune. After all, Halsey wasn't working alone. Keyes, her daughter Miranda, Parangosky, and the rest of the UNSC were complicit in the abduction and indoctrination of child soldiers---and Halsey's ambitions simply could not have materialized with out the financial, staffing, and logistical support of the rest of the government. As evil and sociopathic as Halsey was in season 1 and again in season 2 --- she was part of a far more insidious ecosystem that enabled and supported her plans at every step of the way. Kai's unwillingness to connect the dots and her hesitance to completely trust in John's warnings ends up making her a pawn of ONI in season 2, and it's only at the eleventh hour when everything is near falling apart does Kai begin to grasp the consequences of her errors in judgement: the mass death of Spartan IIIs, and presumably her own as well. 

While Kai is quick to cast blame on Ackerson as this Halsey 2.0 over the top villain, it was her complicity in the UNSC following the fall of Reach that enabled the Spartan III program to develop as quickly as it did. She oversaw their training, she groomed a new generation of would-be Spartans into becoming killers and following in her footsteps, and she was in lockstep with Ackerson and ONI's plans for the majority of season 2. She was complicit in continuing the Spartan masquerade and repeating the same indoctrination and grooming onto others as Keyes and Halsey did onto her--- and was content go along with the UNSC/ONI using John's presumed death as a recruitment tactic for the desperate, traumatized and naive among the UNSC's populace. This all comes to ahead with her grandstanding and faux outrage at the fact that Ackerson and Parangosky (mainly the latter) -- were always planning to use the Spartan IIIs as sacrificial lambs in a renewed war against the Covenant, where she passionately decries the two as evil and callous, while underplaying her own culpability in this eventual tragedy. In the final battle, it isn't just Kai that presumably dies --- but legions upon legions of Spartan IIIs as well. Her legacy perishes in the cold vacuum of space, along with her (presumably) lifeless body in the show's finale. 

Nobody is untouched by death by the time this series wraps up. Soren loses his wife, Kwan Ha's entire character arc in season 2 is her dealing with the trauma of losing Madrigal(culminating in her symbolically coming to terms with the death of an entire planet by her striving to bury one man), and other side characters like Perez are scarred with survivor's guilt----but the most egregious and arrogant examples of how different individuals and groups grapple with death have to be the UNSC and Covenant.

While season 1 and the season 2 are quick to condemn the Covenant as truly evil faction (and it absolutely is), it never shies away from condemning the UNSC by stripping away whatever facade of nobility and virtue it pretends to have. Both superpowers cavalierly use lies, manipulation, and deceit to further their ambitions, both aren't above sacrificing individuals (if not entire groups) to further their militaristic and political ambitions, and both are more concerned with the expansion of their vice grip on the galaxy rather than peace. Both have used, abused, and alienated their greatest tools: Silver Team for UNSC, and Arbiter and Makee for the Covenant. One of the greatest tragedies of the show and the greatest condemnation of the UNSC is none other than the Fall of Reach, a planet repeatedly shown to be an economic, political, and governing jewel of the UNSC ---- rivalling if not surpassing the powers-that-be on Earth. As the show makes painfully clear, the mass death and destruction that defined the destruction of Reach wasn't some inevitability or tragedy, but rather a soft coup of the UNSC leadership against its more undesirable elements ---- along with hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of civilians and UNSC personal, who died and suffered for nothing. 

To the UNSC and Covenant, death is a tool. It's something they believe they can control or use to their advantage, something that can be metagamed and manipulated. The fall of Reach, Sanctuary, Madrigal, and the death of the Spartan III's were all seen as moves in a grand game political ambitions. To view death as a tool --- something that can be controlled --- well, it's an arrogance all too familiar with both superpowers. I find it amusing, if nothing else, that what might very well be the show's birth of the Gravemind born out of the heart of the UNSC itself: who'd a thunk that an organization born on endless expansionism, deceit, manipulation, and turning living beings into tools could be corrupted into a hivemind that wants the very same things, and uses similar tactics to achieve them? One hivemind begets another --- the only difference is the latter doesn't bother hiding how monstrous it is. The Flood/Gravemind does away with the pretense altogether. 

Final Thoughts: 

While I adore season 2 of Halo, I don't want to give the misimpression that season 1 isn't good. I loved and still love season 1 and think it's an amazing season in its own right --- but season 2 really hits the ground running, and takes what worked from the prior season and builds upon it. Neither is perfect, but they are overall great stories. 

This show is a is a beautiful tragedy, and I hope against hope we get a third season.