 So did they learn anything from the first season? Yes? And no. Ooh, that's a hot mug, guys! Hey guys, this is my review for Halo Season 2, the show by Paramount. I didn't end up reviewing the first season because it just felt unwarranted. There was already so many other people talking about it, and I didn't watch it as quickly as everyone else did. I liked some of the fight scenes in it. I kind of had some aspiration for where they were going because it was being done admittedly differently than the games, but it didn't really turn out well. I really didn't like the first season. The second season, they have learned some lessons. They are sticking more to the lore, if that is the way to say it. And the action scenes are still pretty good, if, you know, a little bit limited because they are on a TV show budget, but they are still making the same mistakes as the first season. Sometimes to an even more detrimental level, but I can say it is better than the first season. But that's like kind of comparing a crap turd to a slightly less crappy turd, but there's a little bit more to it than that. This review is going to be two parts. The first is going to be me giving a non-spoiler review to it. After I give the rating, I will dip into some spoilers because there is some shit I want to talk about. This season is a lot more focused on chiefs and his disagreements with the military. They are going to do a lot more of this personal storyline about him and also just this humanity fighting within humanity aspect, which I will first off say I don't like. The whole point of the Halo series is that this is a do or die. Humanity is on its last fucking legs against an enemy that is absolutely decimating them and they have to put away squabbles. Yes, there can be some backdoor shit, which is the reason why Ackerson is in this. There is so much more than there should be. There is straight up betrayal. Sacrifices made that make no fucking sense. Backstabbing antics between characters that doesn't warrant it. They are more focused on this inner drama between humans than they are on making the covenant threat what it should be, which is it's supposed to be decimating humanity. We are supposed to be getting our absolute fucking asses kicked, but how they portray the covenant in this show doesn't make it seem as bad as it should be. Yes, there is a fairly significant loss that happens about halfway through the season, but it felt so undeserved, poorly developed and poorly executed that it didn't feel like it was that big of a thing. And that kind of leads me into one of the biggest issues I have with this show is that they are following lore. They are actually being accurate to a point with some of the elements in this show, but they are also following the same antics that the witcher's writer room is doing. Be it a little bit less pretentious, but they are taking these aspects and these storylines from the games and the books, and then they are doing them in a way that they think is better. At least that's how it feels, because they introduce things like the Spartan threes, they introduce reach, they introduce the ring finally, that we actually go to the ring, they introduce the covenant civil war sort of, and they introduce the arbiter, but they do them all in ways that are different and they think it's better, but it's not. Ackerson and Perengosky are very good examples too, because Perengosky is this overseeing calculated old woman in the books. And in the show she kind of was until a point, and then Ackerson is also supposed to be the same, like he's calculating, he's conniving, he's kind of dirty, but he is still for the advancement and the survival of humanity. But both of these two make fucking dumb fucking decisions in this show that completely contradict that. It really takes away from what the main narrative is. On the whole with the chief, some people may not like it, he does have the helmet off quite a bit, but admittedly actually quite a bit less than before. And I will say that Pablo did a better job this time around. I think he's got kind of the niche of what his version of chief is going to be, and I think it worked better. His connection with soldiers, his kind of view on how he's been treated, how he's been viewed by both humanity and his fellow Spartans, is weighing on him. And while it is a bit overdramatic in a lot of spots, it's still being done decently well to a point. And as I mentioned earlier, the fight seems like there's a really good one in the first episode, there's a few other good ones throughout. I would say maybe the last one, there's a kind of I guess you would call like a boss fight at the end of the season. That kinda showed the limits of the CG. It also played back into a scene where they were doing training with Spartan training. They are trying their best to represent what these guys can do, but they're limited obviously by budget. Definitely tried at least a little bit to be more accurate to the lore. They finally went to the ring, trying to be a bit more of a character show than before. Like they're really taking a lot of that humanity aspect that was introduced in Halo 4, trying their best. It's not the greatest, but at least they are trying. Overall, I would say that season 2 definitely is an improvement above the first season. The first season is near on un-fucking-watchable to me. But this one had some moments. They focused on things that, while not done well, they mattered more. The whole Kwan and Soren thing is very much a back burner. They still are there, but they did give them far less fucking time. And in the end, the very fucking end of it, they do make Kwan actually matter to the story, despite everyone objecting to this character. I don't know if that was the plan from the beginning. At least she fucking matters now. And in the end, despite all of my complaints, I want to watch season 3 because of how it ends. It gets ridiculous in the last episode, to a point where I'm both liking what I'm seeing and at the same time I'm thinking, well how the fuck is that gonna work? Despite its failures and its errors and a lot of aspects, it is a better show this time around. Still has a lot of fucking work to do. If I were to give the first season anything out of giving it maybe like a one, maybe a two. So yeah, it was pretty shit. In this one though, it did improve. Not by a lot, but by enough to at least warrant some improvement and some notices of that. So in the end, I'm gonna give Halo season 2 a 3 out of 7 overall. Has some better moments. It's still kind of shitty, but it's at least less shitty than before. Now the spoiler bits. I'm gonna kind of go in chronological order. Naki, Kani, whatever the fuck. The human that was basically the Judas for humanity on the Covenant side. She's alive. They don't explain why. Far as I can tell. She's just alive. There's still some connection, but again, not as much. She's a whole kind of part of the Civil War thing, which again, that felt like it didn't really explain itself. It just kind of happened for the sake of happening. Also, Cortana is not in chief anymore, not until the very end. And also they changed her model for some reason. Jen Taylor wasn't available, but she was able to do the voice. I don't know. It was kind of really fucking weird. Okay, the big one, Reach. I understood what they were trying to do by having the Spartans fight without Arma, that just show that this is a desperate situation, but Reach falls in one fucking episode. They don't have their suits because Ackerson took the suits away, but he left the soldier's chief and the other Spartans to die. They're saying like, we can't tell anyone because it'll be mass panic. Motherfucker! What the fuck? It made no sense whatsoever. And what sucks too is the guy who plays Ackerson. He's a decent actor. He's trying his hardest. He's played the games. He's made mention of that. So it must have pissed him off when we're like, yeah, we're kind of just leaving Reach because I got that they were trying to make him feel bad because he was leaving his dad there. It just didn't make any sense. There's no real reason to it. And that kind of brings me back to what I was saying earlier, that there's conflict with humanity where there shouldn't be any. And then it turns out that Perengosky also was kind of behind the plan of leaving everyone in fucking Reach to die. He's like, why do you have a Spartan suit that you can't put fucking anyone in because he's just like, why? You know, it was very poorly executed. It's one of the worst parts of this season is this entire narrative aspect. Also Captain Keys dies for the dumbest fucking reason. Hey, everyone's on the ship. Hey guys, we left the parking brake on outside. I'll go. The most important person on this ship. No other soldier could go and do this. Oh, I'm surrounded. Might as well just die. Here guys go up like blow up and burn to death. It was it was so stupid. And I feel though, when we finally see his daughter who like Miranda was just like absent for a large part of the season. I don't feel like there was any kind of notice or note to her that her dad was dead. Forgive me if I missed it because you would have thought that would have been significant, right? Right. And then the Spartan threes were introduced and they almost got it right. They almost got it right. Halo onyx is one of my favorite, if not my favorite novel in the series because it really talked about a lot of the only shit, the moral ambiguity of them and their aspects and what the Spartan threes were made for. And the first introduction of them, like the first sort of simulation with them, I was like, oh shit, this is exactly like how it was in the book. Immediately it was a planet, but this is exactly what they were made for. It turns out it's a simulation. And then when they actually are put into the field by Perengoski, it's idiocy. She's throwing them at a fucking meat grinder. Like the point of the threes was that they could do missions that were vital, but they would still succeed. The loss rate would be massive. It was a waste for a grinder considering the situation. And what made this part so much worse is that if everyone's fighting outside the halo, which they just so happen to find by the way, like it's not just one ship going to the halo, like they both bleeds are now having the fight that should have fucking happened on reach. And that's the part that just so stupid to me is that Perengoski is like, yeah, we got to get on that halo chief. You got to go just you, just you, you can, you know, do whatever to occupy slash take over that whole fucking thing by yourself. The writers went out of their way to make humans fucking stupid in this show to an annoying groan inducing degree. So I don't know. I thought that part was really dumb. I did like how they handled the Spartan threes for the most part, though. To be honest, it's actually probably one of the most respectful bits to the halo lore in this entire show. Now moving on to the next spoiler. And this is the big one. This is the one that I did not think they were going to do. At least I was very, very curious in how they were going to do it. They give us the flood. Now, if you don't want to know how, watch it. Otherwise, I'm going to spoil the biggest part about this. At the second last episode, Halsey and Miranda and Kwan, I think Kwan, they just so happen to land, I don't know, they go to a planet that's next to the halo or something like that, that has foreign artifacts and foreign artifact they take back is this tiny little tube that happens to have the spores for the flood on it. As Miranda is opening it and just looking at it, apparently the spores get out. They don't touch her for some fucking reason, but they attach to someone nearby and it takes its time. I actually have to say, before I go into the long bit, I like how the flood is introduced. I like that slow build to it. For people who haven't played halo, they're probably out the fucking lunch wondering what the fuck is happening. I actually liked how they built up the horror of it. But then when stuff started going bad, no one on the ship was pulling an alarm or there's no, like there's people being butchered in different rooms and then there's also people who are standing very still looking real fucked up and no one's doing anything about it. Again, humanity is a fucking idiot race in this, aside from some key characters. But here is the problem. They are on ships that are run by humans. The outbreak isn't happening on halo. The whole point, the whole point of the first game is that the flood come out of halo and they have to destroy halo in case it gets back to earth. By being on all of these ships, it could get back to earth. It could go fucking anywhere. So you've kind of ruined the very core concept threat and premise of the first halo. The flood is already won in contrast. So, but it was pretty funny to see them eat perengosky. On another note, I don't know if that was again just in the budget. Thought it was pretty cool how they did the flood, humans. But it looks like they're more so borrowing from a Callisto protocol so far, at least with the kind of the aesthetic of the flood or the humans infected by the flood. But I guess we'll see what happens in the third season. So yeah, that is why I'm going to watch season three is because of the flood. Also, they introduced 343 Guilty Spark at the very, very, very, very, very end. And I actually like the voice they went with. I know they weren't going to get the actual guy. The fact that we have Jen Taylor at all in this show is still an amazement to me. But I like who they got as an alternative to who we're used to. Anyways, that is my big long thingy about halo season two. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I'm very curious what you have to say. I guess maybe let's try and keep the spoilers to a minimum in the comments if we can in case some people want to watch it. I don't know. No one might watch this video. So let me know what your thoughts are about the show. If you've seen it, what do you think about it? Are you interested in season three at all? Do you think you might watch it? Let me know. I'm curious to see what you guys have to say. Otherwise, thank you guys for your time. I hope you enjoyed the review. If you did, leave a like. And if you're interested in more, subscribe. Until then, see you guys next time.