Halo Review: Reckoning (Season 1 Episode 5)
Halo Season 1 Episode 5, “Reckoning,” brings back the bombastic action for the season’s best yet.
This episode is excellent in comparison with the rest of the season and there is a large, inherent problem with that. Halo, as a franchise, is very action-oriented with a lot of fighting and aliens and everything that comes with the merger of those two things.
As a series, Halo needs to function without the big set pieces, explosions, and spaceships. It needs to exist as an actual science-fiction show with moments of calm and characters talking. That is not something that can feel like an intermission until we can get back to the plasma swords and energy rifles.
“Reckoning” is everything a Halo fan could want from a live-action series and that is an issue if the only time it can be enticing is when it’s having these battle sequences. That cannot be all this show is. Even if a budget allowed for that and allowed them to have all of the CGI aliens and spaceships it wanted, it still wouldn’t be a good idea.
It has to be able to find different gears than just that and the series hasn’t been all too successful with that up until now. When it has a big action sequence, like this episode demonstrates, Halo is able to execute that really well. The reason for that is anyone who has played the games knows what that is supposed to look like.
There is a template to draw from there. Not a whole lot of creative stretching is required and it’s just a matter of sheer adaptation. In a way, it’s a bit like Game of Thrones. What became really clear there was that the showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss weren’t imaginative or proficient writers but they were excellent executors.
Given a set of parameters and boundaries within to write a story and they would excel. Take that away and they falter. The same seems true here but with an even narrower focus. The writers of Halo know exactly what it is when it is most recognizably something from the franchise.
Master Chief hijacking an alien vehicle and attacking the enemy with it is a textbook example of the games. Give the show something like that and it’s great. Where it has struggled are the moments where it has had to flesh out the world. It is those quieter moments of the last couple of episodes that you can really feel the show straining.
It has struggled to know how to characterize John in its more serene or contemplative moments but it knows how to with Master Chief kicking butt.
That gives the show only two options. It either needs to double down on the action elements or it needs to learn to have some kind of balance between the two disparate parts of itself.
What did you think of this episode of Halo? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Halo airs Thursdays on Paramount+.
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Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.