Halo Review: Allegiance (Season 1 Episode 8)
Halo Season 1 Episode 8, “Allegiance,” sets up the end of the season with betrayals on multiple fronts.
At this point, it’s really difficult to say whether or not Halo is a good television show. There’s been plenty to not like about it but also plenty to like, as well. It has been an infuriatingly mixed bag that now, on its penultimate episode, it’s hard to see the forest through the trees here.
It’s in part the problem with adaptations. Do you not like it because it’s poorly done or because it’s different from the source material? Attempting to navigate the difference between those two points can be a trying task.
That’s largely where we come to with Master Chief consummating his, for lack of a better word, relationship with Makee. This is the first time that he has ever been depicted as capable of having sex. There’s always been a sense that he and the other Spartans are beyond human in some way, almost to the point of being monsters.
It has never really occurred to anyone before that he has the potential for something like that. Granted, that’s largely because his substantial relationship has been with Cortana, which has been quietly romantic and he can’t exactly do anything with a hologram.
Ultimately, it’s an uncomfortable development but not because the series is daring to do something that the games haven’t. This is more a thing of this, as far as we know, being his first time being with anyone in a sexual sense and, intentional or not, is part of a ruse.
That’s the other bug part of the episode: has this all been part of Makee’s big plan? It would be charitable to say no; that her plans changed over time and felt something for John and then just went back to square one. It’s likely that her trajectory with John has been complicated.
It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that some of this has not gone exactly according to plan for her.
A lot of this really comes down to what Makee’s plan overall has been. Did she always intend to start a sexual or romantic relationship with John? Did it come about as happenstance or is this a seduction?
It’s not impossible that she knew the relationship he has with the artifacts and took advantage of that. It’s also possible that she found someone unexpectedly that is like herself and let things get out of hand.
The latter is more generous but the former is more likely, given the potential for manipulation inherent here. Halo plays things pretty fast and loose with its lore so it’s hard to really know one way or the other.
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.