‘Halo’ Premiere: What Do You Think of Paramount+’s Adaptation of the Video Game? (POLL)

Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief in Halo
Spoiler Alert
Adrienn Szabo/Paramount+

Halo

Contact

Season 1 • Episode 1

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Halo series premiere “Contact.”]

The world of Halo comes to streaming with Paramount+‘s adaptation of the hit Xbox video game franchise.

Picking up in the year 2552, those living on the planet Madrigal find themselves under attack and end up receiving help from the very ones they hate, the super-soldier “Spartans,” led by Master Chief John 117 (Pablo Schreiber). But in the end, while the Spartans take out almost all of the Alien Covenant, there’s only one Madrigal survivor, Kwan (Yerin Ha), the daughter of the general. She follows Master Chief and the Silver Team as they search for the Covenant’s landing site. Master Chief comes across signs of a Covenant excavation in a cave, and when he grabs the object inside, he has visions, including of a young boy. A lone alien escapes in a ship.

Master Chief flies back to Reach and the UNSC headquarters with the object and Kwan, and while Dr. Halsey (Natascha McElhone) — who’s hiding her own project — wants to be the one to talk to the survivor, the security committee puts Miranda (Olive Gray) in charge of doing so. She tells Kwan they want her to share the brutality she saw and how the Spartans help with other colonies to convince them to join together. But Kwan’s father spent his life trying to free Madrigal from them, so she refuses, instead saying she’ll claim the Spartans were the ones behind the attack.

John tells Halsey about the relic and what he saw — woods, boy, dog, a family — when he checks in, and it’s that last one that she questions. “That’s what it felt like,” he says. Keep your distance from it, she orders.

Yerin Ha as Kwan Ha in Halo

Adrienn Szabo/Paramount+

Meanwhile, after John gets her something to eat, Kwan reveals they’ve met before, when he killed her mother. Colonists had come together to talk about how the UNSC was stripping them of their natural resources, and he and three other Spartans responded to an insurrectionist bomb threat. His orders changed, and as he figured, others may see things he doesn’t on the ground. He could see things they don’t, she argues. But then he’d question everything. It’s then that he receives new orders: to terminate Kwan.

Instead, John turns off the computer. In the command center, Halsey blames it on a neurochemical glitch and admits he’s having memories of his parents, though he thinks they’re just visions. It’s a risk, which is why Halsey brings up Cortana. Admiral Paragonsky (Shabana Azmi) shoots that down immediately. Instead, get the Spartan under control.

When the ship’s — and Master Chief’s suit’s — oxygen levels drop, both Kwan and John collapse. But he’s able to come to and gain access to the panel with the atmosphere controls. HQ assembles the troops and claims that Master Chief was compromised by the relic. Halsey, however, takes Silver Team aside, and tells them to secure and protect Master Chief from anyone who threatens his life.

John, with his helmet off, and Kwan put their trust in one another (“I don’t know” he says when she asks why he’s helping her) enough to take control of the ship, but they’re shot and land heavily on Reach. However, the relic falls out of the case, and when John touches it, it lights up. He has more memory flashes before an EMP-type blast goes through the base and the ship comes back online. That gives John and Kwan the chance to fly away.

So what did you think of the TV show adaptation? Let us know in the poll below.

Halo, Thursdays, Paramount+