Warning! Spoilers ahead for Halo episode 6
Paramount’s live-action Halo series has had its share of controversies, but it seems to be doing a better job of justifying the dark methods of Doctor Catherine Halsey better than the games have. The creator of the UNSC’s Spartan program, Doctor Halsey (played by Natascha McElhone) is responsible for designing, augmenting, and training the super soldiers needed to protect humanity’s expansion into the stars. However, the means by which she created the Spartan program were far from ethical. That being said, there looks to be added focus on her reasoning and logic behind the darkness, her intuition bordering the line of genuine foresight.
In Halo episode 6, Master Chief John-117 (Pablo Schreiber) uncovers the truth about his childhood on Eridanus II. While his memories were erased as part of his training, contact with the Forerunner artifacts restored his mind, including Halsey’s role. As she confesses, Halsey kidnapped John and many other young children, replacing them with genetically compromised flash clones who’d eventually die with their parents having no idea what truly happened. From there, the children had no choice but to go through the genetic and psychological augmentation process to become the perfect super-soldiers for the UNSC.
While Master Chief is naturally enraged by Halsey’s horrific actions, she’s given a chance to explain why she created the Spartans, going far beyond a simple defensive force. In Halsey’s mind, everything she has done has been in the name of preparing humanity for its future survival. She confirms that the Spartan program and her work with advanced AI (such as Cortana) have all been to help mankind ascend: “natural evolution is failing us.” A greater connection is being made in the Halo series that Halsey could see that humanity would need help to ascend to the next stage of evolution. Furthermore, this was years before they ever found the Forerunner artifacts and learned they’d been chosen to take the Mantle of Responsibility, a confirmation of humanity’s destiny to evolve beyond its current state.
While having extremely dark origins, building the Spartans was based on Halsey’s intuition that humanity would need the means to go “beyond its limitations,” starting the path that will eventually lead to the Forerunners’ powerful Halo Rings — teased at the end of Halo episode 6. While Halsey’s work in the series mirrors her work first seen in the games and novels, the extra focus beyond simply creating soldiers to fight the Covenant is significant. Likewise, Halsey confirms in this episode that she always knew her actions would be seen as reprehensible until the results bore fruit, something that already seems to be happening.
With John-117 being uniquely positioned to activate the artifacts left by the Forerunners, it’s not hard to see the truth and value behind Halsey’s intentions, however dark they may be. While the series follows the games’ canon as far as Halsey’s methods are considered, the greater layer of justification provides a unique spotlight on her Spartan program. In the face of the alien Covenant as well as humanity on the precipice of new evolution thanks to the Forerunners, Paramount’s Halo series is making a stronger argument — and proving — that Halsey’s work was necessary.
New episodes of Halo release every Thursday on Paramount+
