Ever since the Halo games debuted in 2001, Master Chief has always been a largely faceless hero bent on protecting humanity. He definitely has a personality and we know he has a backstory, but the most important part of the character was that he was a badass guy who could take on an army of aliens on his own and you could control every second of it .
But after a decade of false starts, Halo has finally made its way into live action, and that means turning Master Chief into a real character, not just an avatar for gamers, at least according to the actor behind him.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for the first episode of Halo.]
“In a first-person shooter video game, the character is created very specifically for the purpose of the game, to make you think you’re the Master Chief,” Pablo Schreiber told Polygon. “But the character is never over-revealed so that you can project your own personality onto him.”
After 20 years, that kind of facelessness has become something of a calling card for Master Chief. For fans, Chief is more his armor and his voice than a face because he never had one. The helmet stays on all the time.
That faceless challenge was one the show needed to face head-on and early on, according to Schreiber.
“It was very important early on that you take off your helmet and see your face and let go of your version of who you think is the chief,” explains Schreiber. “Rather than co-creating the experience and believing you are Chief, we now invite you to sit back on the couch and watch as Chief begins to discover elements of himself.”
The show’s version of the Master Chief sticks to many elements of the previous Halo canon. His name is John, he was accepted into the UNSC at a young age. Doctor Halsey then treated John and his companions like military science experiments, turning the children into emotionless human weapons. But while the game largely neglects that lore, the series strives to tell John’s story and show audiences the person behind Chief’s famous armor.
“If you have to bring an audience for multiple episodes and hopefully multiple seasons, you really need to infuse that character with empathy and understanding. And you have to identify with the character in a way that goes beyond thinking you are him.”