Halo: The Series Episode 3 “Emergence” Review - A Once Promising Series Starts Its Decline

After last week’s episode of Halo: The Series (which you can read my thoughts on above, along with my other coverage of the show), my hopes were high. At this point, the show has differentiated itself from the games by focusing more on the characters than the galactic warfare the franchise is known for.

While this was originally an endearing aspect of Halo: The Series, it has quickly become the show’s weakest link. What made the games' storytelling special is that it didn’t have a grand story beyond these aliens attempting to kill you or humanity, and you have to stop them because that’s a bad thing. This is changed in Halo Infinite, but this is true for most Halo games, except maybe Halo 3: ODST. Halo: The Series takes this simple idea of storytelling and makes it more inherently complex by having at least ten threads of storytelling. This isn’t uncommon for a show, especially one that’s nearly an hour long, but the writing isn’t up to snuff.

Usually, in a movie, unless there needs to be a big twist, the movie will tell you the background story behind each character before the story's main conflict. However, in a TV show, since the writers have more screen time for the characters, this exposition is not front-loaded, so the viewer can be eased into the story and find out who the characters are & their motivations throughout the first season, setting up a grander story in the space between.

Photo Credit: Paramount+

For Halo: The Series, the way the exposition is delivered about the characters seems to tell the audience nothing about who these characters are and their motivations. Instead, these ideas are hinted at by other characters in casual conversation. Outside of that, everything else is told to the audience through the use of flashbacks that have no context to them. So, instead of actually learning about these characters as the season progresses, the audiences are left hanging.

Beyond the characters, the larger storytelling suffers from the same problem. The larger conflict that the season seems to be rushing towards is largely ignored to focus on Master Chief and Dr. Halsey’s relationship. While that makes sense given the conclusion of the previous episode, I did not expect so much of a shift. I thought that this episode would have a maybe 15-minute segment dedicated to the dynamics of their relationship, but for some reason, it’s become an arc of its own. Yes, Soren, Makee, Kwan, and all the other characters (except Captain Keyes) make appearances, but their stories have been relegated to subplots, which is an odd choice, considering how prominent they are in the first two episodes.

Photo Credit: Paramount+

Which isn’t to say the cast doesn’t do a great job; it’s just unfortunate to see this storytelling not support the performances of Pablo Schreiber’s more human portrayal of Master Chief, Natascha McElhone, Olive Gray, Jen Taylor, and Danny Sapani showing a different side to Dr. Halsey, Miranda Keyes, Cortana, and Captain Keyes, and the new characters like Yerin Ha’s Kwan Ha, Shabana Azmi’s Admiral Margaret Parangosky, Bokeem Woodbine’s Soren, Charlie Murphy’s Makee, and Silver Team showcasing a deeper look at the Insurrectionists, ONI, and the Spartan program.

That’s precisely why the storytelling is so disappointing. On even a surface level, these characters and their storylines should be given equal footing, but as the season progresses, less and less time is devoted to these characters. As the first arc of the season concludes (which I couldn’t even tell you what the arc was) and the second arc of the season gets started, I hope that in future episodes, the storytelling refocuses itself to include some of these characters that the series seems to be largely ignoring.

★★/★★★★★

Episode three of Halo: The Series is now available to stream on Paramount+.

Until next time!

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