Halo Episode 3, titled “Emergence” sets a different tone for the series than the audience has seen so far and it’s a very welcome change. If the second episode of Halo was putting the chess pieces on the board, this might be the first moves of opposing pawns. Although it also seems as if the queens are starting to move as well. While there still wasn’t a ton of action. The show was a step up from the previous installment. It also does a very good job of filling in some gaps of several of the characters who appear to be key to the series as a whole.
This episode of Halo opens on a young boy and girl who are living on some sort of nightmare planet where everyone seems to be working to sort plastic and metal. The not-so-obvious hint at a world that’s been destroyed by a populace that didn’t exactly look after keeping the planet clean aside, it’s a nice way of laying the groundwork for one of the big villains of the show. The young girl and boy are reading through a book and almost sharing a kiss, when they are suddenly spotted by the guards that run the work crews. A chase ensues and the boy is apparently beaten to death while the girl is whisked away by alien invaders who realize she is what they’ve been looking for.
It turns out that the little girl was in fact, Markee, the blonde woman who is referred to as Blessed One by members of the Covenant who have taken her in and won her to their side unequivocally. The audience soon learns that she’s about to embark on a mission to collect the shard that has been at the center of Halo since the premiere episode. Whether it’s her striking appearance or the fact that she truly seems like an alien in a human body, Markee does a very good job of playing someone who is truly menacing. She plays someone who hates humanity and, depending on how she was treated as she grew up, it’s certainly not hard to think that she’s turned on her former people.
That certainly turns out to be the case, at least for now as Markee eventually finds herself being rescued by a UNSC freighter who believes she is the sole survivor of an alien attack. It turns out she’s just the beginning of that alien attack as a scene that featured prominently in the Halo trailers unfolded. Markee brought some sort of worm creature or creatures that quickly and easily dispatched an entire ship of troopers in a matter of moments. The scene does two things. It shows that the UNSC is woefully unprepared for a full on war with The Covenant. The second is that it shows that Markee has absolutely no problem killing what was once her own kind. Granted, the “they’re uglier than I remember” was a bit of overkill, but the show’s writers seem to be finding their stride a bit with these kinds of scenes.
While the human who is considers herself an alien is headed to the Master Chief, he continues to learn what it’s like to have free will. Or at least what he perceives to be free will. He also learns exactly what Cortana is, in what was an interesting wait to show off one of the most popular characters in the Halo franchise. The show handles this AI a bit different than it’s presented in the video games, not the least of which is that she is the size of a human rather than a program that shows up in the palm of Master Chief’s hand. There are other differences, including how she’s able to interact with Master Chief and all of those changes seem like they’re going to make things very interesting as the series goes on.
Natascha McElhone as Dr. Halsey features prominently in this episode and the audience gets to see just how much she doesn’t seem to actually care about human life. She’s someone who is dedicated to the science but not exactly dedicated to her charges. The character is an interesting one because she has absolutely fooled Master Chief into thinking she’s someone he can trust. That she’s not isn’t exactly a surprise as it’s been clear from the start of Halo that she’s playing him and pretending to be a friend.
What really sets Halsey apart is that she actually does hide her motivations a bit better. While the rest of the UNSC command seems to be a bunch of Bond villains run amok, she has a bit more depth to her character. That shouldn’t come as a huge surprise considering that McElhone is one of the more veteran actors in the cast. On the other hand, she’s playing a character that is a bit out of her comfort zone and it seems like she’s doing rather well. There are some scenes where she comes off a bit wooden, but that could be the character more than her.
Speaking of the Master Chief, Pablo Schreiber is the other member of the cast that has had a ton of experience front and center and just like McElhone, sometimes it’s hard to tell whether he’s doing a bad job, or a good one. He’s supposed to be a robotic like personality. What he does do is project someone who is finally starting to feel things in this episode, without speaking a word.
On the other hand, there are parts of the show where he’s supposed to be emoting where he seems to be having problems. There are other times when it’s clear that the Master Chief is supposed to be feeling things and it feels an awful lot like he’s overacting. It remains to be seen whether this is something the actor is going to have as the season progresses but for now, it can be passed off as the character spending most of his life as a soldier who didn’t think or feel for himself all that much. On the whole, it seems as if “Emergence” was the best episode of the season so far.
Halo the TV series is currently available on Paramount Plus.
