One of the things that has plaguedHalosince its premiere episode is that the writers of the Paramount Plus series seem to want to separate it from the video game by offering quite a bit less action. In fact, to some degree, it looks as though Paramount is hoping that it might have the nextGame of Thrones, only set in space.
Quite a few of the episodes have been about introducing the audience to many different characters that are all players in the battle over dominance of … something. Just what they are battling over still hasn’t been made all that clear. There’s certainly something going on with the UNSC and the way it’s controlling its little corner of the universe. There’s also the alien army inHalo, The Covenant, and it’s simply not clear what’s going on with the humans and The Covenant in any real way. They don’t seem to be at war, but they’re also not particularly friendly.
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What appears to be the realsides of a war is the UNSCand planets or communities that have decided they no longer want to be under the thumb of the Spartans. The audience was given at least a taste of what appears to be some kind of a civil war in the very first episode ofHalowhen they got to see Madrigal. This planet is one that appears to have tried to break away from the UNSC’s collection of planets and rule itself. Unfortunately, the leadership of the “rebels” were wiped out when The Covenant came and killed everyone around in about five minutes. Those same aliens were themselves wiped out in about the same speed by the Master Chief and his Spartans when they arrived to “help.” Despite being in the first episode, just why Madrigal is trying to pull away from the USNC leadership isn’t made clear.
WhileEpisode 6 ofHaloignored the storyline of Madrigal altogether, viewers should have known that it wasn’t going to be left in the dust forever. So, instead of continuing down the path of a story that had finally started to introduce a bit more action into the show, and to finally look like it was going to pay off the battle between The Covenant and the USNC, Episode 7, titled “Inheritance” takes viewers in an entirely different direction. In fact, this time around, the story is all about Madrigal and really nothing about Master Chief, though he does appear quickly as a kind of imaginary enemy.
It would be one thing if spending an entire episode on Madrigal had explained why exactly that community exists. If the episode had delved into just why it appears to have been at war with the USNC, that could have been an interesting digression. Instead, it’s still largely a mystery just why there’s such a focus on this community at all. It’s also unfortunate that the focus doesn’t seem all that interesting. Instead, the show offered up some sort of vision quest story that was actually weirdlyreminiscent of the MCU"sBlack Panther.
Kwan Ha, who was the onlysurvivor of The Covenant’s attackon Madrigal has returned to her home in an attempt to take over leadership and rest control away from Vinsher Grath. Grath, who is played by a character actor in Burn Gorman that has perfected being the creepy guy no one likes, has taken control of Madrigal after Kwan’s father was killed in that Episode 1 assault.
However, before Kwan can take over leadership of her clan she has to go through a kind of test, (the aforementionedshoutout toBlack Pantheras far as the theme) The show, unfortunately, spends quite a bit of time on this particular test and the biggest problem with it, is that the viewers just don’t know enough about Kwan to care if she takes back her family’s mantel. Likewise, the whole battle for control of Madrigal doesn’t carry the same emotional punch as the writers seem to want it to have because while Grath has been a kind of Batman villain overall there hasn’t actually been all that much in the way of detail when it comes to just why he’s so bad that viewers are supposed to care about whether or not Kwan rests control away from him.
Likewise, the subplot of this story is Soren and how he is the defacto leader of the offshoot of humans who were “hidden” away from the USNC in thesecond episode ofHalo. Of course, they were so bad at hiding that Master Chief found them without a problem. The show has actually done a pretty good job of making it crystal clear why Soren would hate the military and the people behind the Spartan program. He was kidnapped as a child and made to fight, and perhaps die for a cause he never volunteered for.
But like Madrigal, it’s not clear if the people who arehiding from the UNSCare also those who were once being forced to fight for the armed forces or whether they are regular people who simply don’t want to live under whatever repressive regime the government currently is in this world. It’s a missed opportunity that the episode that doesn’t spend any time at all with that government, didn’t make better use of its time and really explain what was going on in the universe where all these disparate people were showing they had no loyalty for the ruling class.
In the end, thisepisode ofHalobanks heavily on the idea that anyone is really going to care about the struggles of Soren or Kwan Ha, without really getting the viewers to buy into the characters or really even come to like them. Soren does have a decent “renegade” personality to him, but he hasn’t had enough screen time to really endear him to the audience. Meanwhile, making Kwan resistant to anyone trying to help has mostly just made her a kind of annoying side character that could actually have some rooting against her out of spite. The episode ofHaloas a whole is a bit of a bummer, especially because the series seemed to be finding its footing, but this was a step backwards.
