The following contains spoilers from the first episode of Paramount+’s Halo, which the streamer said set a record Friday as the most-watched series premiere of all time in the US and internationally.
Fans of the Halo video games literally saw a new side of Master Chief when they watched the premiere of the Paramount+ TV series of the same name – as the aka John-117 took off his armored helmet at a crucial moment.
The dramatic revelation came near the end of the first episode, after Master Chief (played by Pablo Schreiber) decided to ignore an order from the UNSC to kill Kwan Ha, the young survivor of the Madrigal Massacre (played by Yerin Ha). Already a bit insane from the UNSC’s attempt to stop their rogue Spartan by depleting his Condor transport ship’s oxygen, Kwan snuck up on their “captor” while dragging his rifle. The young woman demanded to know what he was up to and refused to believe that a Spartan of all people was only concerned with her well-being.
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Master Chief first scoffed at the thought of Kwan denting his Mjolnir Powered Assault Armor, but then drove home his declaration of protecting her by removing his helmet and inviting her to fire a fatal shot at his exposed head . Moved by the gesture, Kwan surrendered the gun, only to have John-117 push it back while they prepared for the fight to come. (Although it turned out that the Master Chief’s activation of the artifact found on Madrigal released a pulse of energy that neutered the UNSC and allowed their Condor to escape to Slipspace.)
The importance of Master Chief, the face of the Halo franchise, taking off his helmet for the first time ever, is nothing short of “huge,” says Paramount+ series frontman Pablo Schreiber.
“Obviously in the games you’ve never seen Chief without a helmet, and the reason for this dynamic is that it’s a first-person shooter and you don’t want to spoil the impression of making the player feel like Chief,” explains the actor. “It’s sort of the line. That’s how you play the game through your eyes and in your shoes.”
But in adapting the character for an ongoing TV series, “it was necessary to basically ask the viewer to get rid of that dynamic,” says Schreiber. “You are no longer a co-creator of this experience. You are now asked to put down the controller, sit on the couch, and accompany Chief on a journey that will see him discover more about his humanity in a way he’s never done before. And through that process, we as an audience will learn things about him that we never knew before.”
Master Chief wasn’t the only villain actor in the series premiere. Because when the UNSC aimed to have Kwan assassinated, and then prepared an all-out offensive against one of their own after he disobeyed the kill order, Dr. Catherine Halsey (played by Natascha McElhone) – creator of the Super Soldier program – privately set aside Spartans Vannak-134, Riz-028 and Kai-125 and tasked them with protecting her colleague from all threats, even “friendly matches”.
Halsey then watched with great interest (and a slight smile) as the Master Chief proved steadfast in his own defiance, then as the other Spartans prepared to counter the UNSC’s attack on his Condor, and especially when the mysterious artifact (with which John-117 has an unusual connection) turned out to be an aid to his escape from Reach.
Evaluating Halsey’s bold move, McElhone told TVLine: “I think she’s always manipulated the UNSC people who work around her, including [Admiral] Parangosky. And I think Parangosky knows that most of the time she is manipulated but she just finds Halsey impossible to deal with because at the same time she is a genius and she provides great resources that they need.
“Halsey has a Frankenstein element, doesn’t there?” her performer mused. “She has this hubris, and she creates her ‘monsters’, if you will, or her creations. And while she has honorable intentions, there is this constant interplay of her ego versus something that serves the universal social good.”
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