The Ringer-Verse - 'Halo' Season 1 Reactions | Mint Edition

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

In the first installment of ‘Mint Edition,’ Steve Ahlman and Jomi Adeniran dive into the first season of Paramount+'s ‘Halo.’ The guys discuss some of the lore of the video game franchise, what worked for the show, what didn’t, and what to expect from Season 2. Hosts: Steve Ahlman and Jomi Adeniran Associate Producer: Jonathan Kermah Additional Productional Support: Arjuna Ramgopal and Mallory Rubin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys, Rachel Lindsay here, and I am teaming up with your favorite Ringer podcasters to deliver the Bravo drama and news that you've been craving on morally corrupt. It's the show about all things Bravo. From the housewise to summer house and everything in between, we'll be mentioning it all every week. Check it out on Spotify and the ringer.com. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Trimphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks,

followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tramphia, proper training is required. Tramphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk, risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection,

flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimfaya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Trimfair radio.com. This episode is brought to you by Boris Head. What if we told you the taste of deep-fried turkey is now available at your local deli? Boershead just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means pointing your whole day around it, presenting the Friars turkey breast only from Boershead. The backyard tradition now available behind the counter. Visit your local deli today.

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Oh, whoa, whoa, what, spigified. Stretched, twisted, torn apart. Right. And you didn't think I should know this before we left. Our odds for success were already so low. I didn't want to worry you. Welcome into the ringerverse.

This is the ringer's nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. Welcome to Mint Edition. It's a once-in-a-while podcast about the latest fandom that you just can't live without. I'm Steve Allman, senior producer at the Ringer. Joining me today. He's my co-host. Ringer social coordinator, Lord of the Memes,

explainer of the Midnight Boys. He's giving the Covenant back their bomb. It's Joe Meadiron. What's going on, Steve? Oh, buddy. Steve, we are here in the Ringerverse Feed. They done messed around and gave us a podcast. They don't mess around and gave us a podcast.

Hey, man. Listen, shout out to all the people at the top for believing in us. we're here Steve we made it so exciting Jomi what are we doing here tell us what we're going to be doing for you know untold amounts of time until the end of recorded time listen we are here to give a look at all the stuff that may not get coverage anywhere else we're here to give a spotlight to all the shows all the all the other stuff in this nerd space that we might have missed on the other shows we're here to give coverage to all that stuff and I for one and excited.

I don't know if you know this, but we're about to be very busy the next few weeks. Oh, man. Yes, we are. Yes, we are. Lots of things to talk about, lots of things to get off of our chest.

And I think we're going to be starting with kind of a doozy. Yeah. That's been cooking for quite a few episodes. And I can't wait to talk about it with you. But first, let's get into some programming reminders coming up on the feed. The House of Ar is going to be coming back next Monday, this coming Monday,

to give you everything that you need to know before the premiere of Obi-Wan Kenomi on Disney Plus next Friday, the Midnight Boys are going to be talking about Obi-Wan and giving you their instant reactions to the two-episode premiere on Disney Plus.

Two episodes? Dose. We going back to bag on Obi-Wat? Oh, yes. Did you not get the direct message from Ewan McGregor himself saying that, like, oh, we're so sorry, but we need to do two episodes. See, I got Hayden, Chris is his number, you know, and it's been a minute. So, you know, he hasn't, like, got back to me yet.

So this is just new information. That's awesome. The problem with Hayden is he's such a dry texture. You never know how he's feeling. You know, you know, it's like sand, you know. Yeah, I hate sand. It's course. Yeah, the conversation is course.

It's all that. Of course. And then continuing to talk about Star Wars, we've got a special announcement. Ooh. The Ringerverse Crew is going to be at Star Wars Celebration. in Anaheim this coming weekend. We're going to be sitting. We're going to be looking at all the panels. We're going to be giving you our reactions to some of the biggest news.

And we've even got a live show coming up that Saturday at the pod stage. Our first live show ever on Friday, two to three. Check us out at the podcast stage. Feel free to say hi from a safe and respectable distance for all health concerns involved. But for now, let's get into it. It's time to talk about. the season finale and the season as a whole of the Paramount Plus original series

Halo Oh! We didn't plan that. I didn't expect that you would actually do that with me. Of course, we're! Of course. Also, don't forget, our friendly neighborhood spoiler warning. We're going to be talking about the entire first season of Halo

and a little bit of the lore for the games itself. All right, let's get it to it. So before we begin and talk about the future, let's look a little bit to the past. Halo, ever hear of it? A cultural phenomenon in the video gaming world, a staple in popular culture around. Master Chief might be the Shrek of video games. He's been meme to death. And now he's come here to the silver screen, the small silver screen, to entertain us with a epic TV show.

Jomey, it's been a long road to game. get here, what do the Halo video games mean to you? So, my first ever exposure with the Halo video game was in high school, right? We had a computer's class, and they had Halo

CE loaded up on all the computers. And, you know... HaloC. Combat C.E. Combat evolved. First, Halo. From 2001, right? And we're supposed, you know, do PowerPoints and learn Word and Excel and stuff. Right. And we were like,

now we fin to get in his blood goats we've been to run missus way it was great we'd be not even we'd be in the front of class and I've got my hand on the WASD

and on a mouse and I just be like have my hand in my head how'd I get snipe from across the mat man of course you know like we was having so much fun playing that game in high school

it's insane to think back to that far now I'm fairly familiar with combat evolved but like I had a PlayStation growing up so I had a PlayStation growing up So I didn't get to play the first Halo really at all.

My best friend had an Xbox. And then I remember, I believe it was junior year or sophomore year of high school. That's when Halo 2 came out. And it was so excited and so hyped for kids. Kids were bringing the box with no disc, just the box, to show off to their friends like, who got it day one? Who can talk about it? Is there like they're an alternate inlining sleeve?

Remember when you could flip it over? and you get like a cool box. They were, everybody was talking about it. Halo 2 was probably the biggest thing that got us into the lore of Halo. Everybody was talking about like, what is the big ring in the sky mean? Like, this is the actual start of the story.

And then so many games came out after that. Halo 2, Halo 3, ODST, just a few, Halo 4, 5, Infinite. It's a worldwide phenomenon in gaming and it's been long story that the IP was going to be going to the big screen to be a movie, a TV show for so long

we wanted to see Master Chief on screen. And for now, there used to be a time when we thought Steven Spielberg was going to direct a movie about this. Boy, howdy. That would have been special. I mean,

it didn't have enough dad problems in it, so he wouldn't want to direct it anyway. That's what he does. But this isn't the first live action adventure. Promo shorts, like basically elongated commercials for other halos have existed amongst the times. What would you have wanted a Halo show movie to look like? I would have loved a Halo show that was set.

It's Master Chief, right? And 343 Guilty Spark, you know, having to get out of a situation. Because, you know, 3, 4, 3, you know, he's a little trickster. You can't, you can't really trust him all that much, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, 343, basically like a giant floating GameCube that's got an agenda that's very toxic. Very toxic. Yes.

Right? So having, like, put Master Chief's faith in him trying to get out of the situation. It's something that I think would have been fun. Honestly, it's really just like, I'm thinking of Portal 2. and you have 3-4-3 Guilty Spark played by Stephen Merchett I would watch, I would never I would watch that show every day

I'd watch that movie every day that's wonderful I would love that I like and that's the thing I remember when Halo was at the height of its popularity when like two and three were coming out like there were novelizations

there were comic books really a lot of big exercises and deep dives into expansion of the lore of Halo that was a lot richer than in my opinion, kind of had any right to be. This was kind of like the first game of its generation

that really wanted to dive in and make something like all encompassing with the media presence that it had. And I remember the books being very good. Comic books were fun as well. I really wanted to

kind of have the sub-spartans, just like the space marines, kind of looking up to the Spartans as like Jedi for the last thing and like kind of like doing their own sort of missions because like Spartans are almost kind of too

overpowered to have like a big grandiose story because they're kind of just instruments of war and all those things. So there are a lot of ways to go here for this show and why don't we just dive right in and talk about what we think about this show this season finale that aired last night and the season as a whole.

Well I was coming in. I didn't didn't know what to expect from the show. You know, I thought there could be, there's a time where you could do like, you know, and do in the future, you know, like, I've Master Chief passed the games or Master Chief, like, you know, are we getting Halo 1 on screen? What was interesting is we got a prequel to all the games. Like, this is, these are things that have not yet happened in video games.

And so I was like, okay, cool. we're getting like a whole new experience with the Master Chief. And let me tell you, it was a whole new experience. I have never seen Master Chief like this. And it was honestly enthralling from start to finish. I think the first thing that we could talk about that is like the show is kind of mired in controversy is the way that it treats Master Chief and kind of the approach that it wants to. wants to give the viewer to kind of introduce us to John 117 and the idea of the Spartans. And I think that that's kind of perfectly encapsulated with what we got in this season finale.

So, Jomi, Adiron, what did you think of the season finale of Halo? I thought it was one of the better episodes of the season. Right. Even though, huge spoiler alert, they kill Master Chief. Or did they? Or did they? Or did they? Or did they? Or did they? Cortana and Halsey talk about how Cortana can take over his body. Right? Cortana tells John that like, yes, I can do that, but you would need to expire. You would need to be dead. And in the last bit of the episode, Cortana's like, hey, John, like, you can't do this. He's like, I know I can't, but you can. Let me die. And we. We can fix this.

We can get out of here. And then with a very ham-fisted metaphor of when the game is over, the pawn and the king go in the same box, which, you know, it's poetry because it rhymes, I guess. Like, my biggest thing with, like, the Halo show and the canon itself, is that, like, Halo's very much about big ideas. You know, like, what does it mean to be an instrument of war? What does it mean to fight something for?

the wrong reasons, do the means justify the ends, all of these, like, you know, big, heavy, weighty things and ideas that this first season, I guess, flirted with talking about, but I think at the heart of it is the show's humanization of Master Chief, and what it did in the finale, I think might be a very subtle stroke of genius. Really? Yes.

Because there have been so many little tiny allusions to John being so special and so like the crux of everything he is basically the Mcuffin to both of these entities the UNSC and the covenant finding the sacred halo and he's at the center of all of this

and he is trying to figure himself out while doing all of this and in the finale he basically surrenders control to Cortana and effectively dies. And when he is now risen and unspeaking and just this kind of automaton at the whims of this AI,

I feel like we actually got Master Chief. So when you say, you know, they killed Master Chief, I think they killed John 117. And Master Chief is here now. Because, like, again, there's a very interesting, fun line at the end where like he's he's now saved his his crew after a wretched cotterization scene from oh forgive me who's the other sparse.

Riz. Yes. After he does that and he sits back in the cockpit like looks at and says John is that you and nothing. Nothing comes back. I kind of love this because again we'll get into the great helmet debate. I don't know.

You don't know who? Here's the thing. They spend so much time in the show trying to, you know, give us John's humanity. Right. Right. It's very deliberate on the show's part. I think at times it's quite effective.

Yeah. And I think, yeah. So at some point you're like, wow, like I do empathize with this huge two-ton mont, like, brick man. Like, you know, like, I understand. and then for them to take it away, to just yank it. You know, at the end there, it's like,

I don't think that's great though. I don't know, I wanted to, I wanted to, I feel like make, you know, I wanted to see more. I wanted to see, you know, Nancy Tief, like, deal with like everything that just happened, you know, as, as John and not just the guy who, you know, we know from the games. Sure.

And I think that this is, this is a good example. I put this in the notes and I kept thinking about this, from the moment that I finish the finale. This ultimately kind of feels like a season zero to what Halo the show could actually be. I feel like the show actually started right now at the end of the first season. Because the lore that surrounds Master Chief

or kind of the story in the games at the very least is that he is no one. He can be anybody. You see him in first person because, you know, by design, it is supposed to be the player inhabits the character of Master Chief. He is this instrument of war. He is nothing but this minimally speaking propaganda piece for the

UNC to be the ultimate warrior. But in this, he is so obviously conflict and so wildly, emotionally off base with being who Master Chief, who we know Master Chief to be, that it gives it kind of a, like, like actual level playing field.

So when you take all of that away, that's what Master Chief actually is. He is a person that is stripped of all of that at the very beginning of this now season two we can hope to see from Halo. I like that idea of that possibility. As much as the show stumbled along the way, and boy did it,

I think there's a lot of promise for what we can get afterwards. I agree with that. I do agree with that. I think there's so much room we'll talk about that later, but there's so much to tackle that, you know, wherever they go, I think it would be interesting. So, yes. I think with that, we can probably look at to what our thoughts on the season as a whole could be.

And Jomi, we got a lot. There was a lot. It was nine episodes of television, man. It's honestly kind of tough to isolate the finale from the rest of the season because I think the finale was actually really good at planning its flag. as to where the show could go afterwards because we can go find the halo will Master Chief find himself where things will go

we'll get into all of that later but the show begins and progresses through at a very interesting clip you might say I think I'll start off by saying that the first season of the show I want to give the Stanley talk

to this show do you remember in the office when Stanley mouths off to Michael and he clears out the whole office and they just have a heart to heart. And Stanley kind of just like unloads on who he is. I want to sit Halo down. It'd be like, listen, you are a show that I do not understand.

Everything that you think that I would do, you have done the opposite way. And I don't think I will ever understand it. But I'm going to sit here and I'm going to attempt to reason with you so that we could all get along with ourselves. Does that kind of encapsulate how you feel about this first season? Yeah, no, 100%. I'm with you on that front.

So, like, I came in, you know, again, no expectations. But at the minimum, I thought, like, I was going to get, you know, master chief. And I got John 117. So, you know, you had to like, all right, this is what we're doing. This is how we're going. All right, let's see what it's about. And, you know, it got to an ending where I think we can sit back and be like, okay, I understand what the vibes where I understand what we're doing.

but yeah, that's not really what anybody thought going in. No, of course not. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Trimfaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Trimfaya, proper training and is required. Tremfaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely

active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tremfaya today. Call 1-800-526-7. 776 to learn more or visit trimfire radio.com. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty

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brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. So let's talk about Master Chief. And I think that the way that we could start talking about him is what I'm calling the great helmet debate. I think from the beginning when this show

first aired, all people were talking about is how quickly he takes the helmet off. And like this is this is a long-standing thing that we have never, ever, ever, in the games canon, seen Master Chief's face. Ever. We've seen the back of his head. We've seen, like, the armor coming on, like very, like, very small, subtle ways, but, like, we've never actually seen or really had to sit down with him. Episode one, minute 45, or something like that.

He takes it off. And he almost never puts it back on. He rarely puts it back on after that. Not only does he not put the helmet on. His armor is off all the time. He takes it off so much that I'm like, at least put like a little like strap on the side of your hip if you're going to like, don't carry it around all the time. Like you can like rest it.

Have a fanny pack for it or something. Like you take it off so much. Like hook it on to something. It's definitely a thing they did on purpose to not only differentiate themselves or other shows, people that wear helmets on all the time. Well, but to show us that,

master chief John 117 is a person. You know, there's not just a two-ton, you know, bringer of destruction, but someone that we can empathize with somebody that we can, you know, relate to. And so that was very, very pointed choice to be like, ditch the helmet, you, you exist, we can see your face, we know who's behind that mask. How long did it take you to kind of like surrender yourself to that idea?

Because it honestly took me like a couple of episodes where I'm like, he's really not, really not doing that, huh? Okay. There's a conversation he has with Soren in episode two, where they're in, you know, Soren's, you know, I guess, living room. And, you know, they're talking about,

their, soren's talking about how the pet, pellet in their back, you know, suppresses their emotions. And Massachusetts, he was like, huh, what? But I think for me that was like, oh, okay, like,

if we don't, if he just has a mask on, we don't see him, like, understand, like, oh, this is something that's like, could be hindering me. It could be a problem. The mask would just hide that, you know, would hide that emotion from his face. We wouldn't be able to see that. But by taking it off by letting us, you know,

be with John 117 in that moment, it allows us to better understand him. So in the next episode, when he removes the pellet, we understand how he got from point A to point B. A rough scene doing that. That was great. I was like, are you like, is he like one snip? Like you're you're sitting down for quite a while.

Your spine. Spice. I was like, are you severing your spinal cord right now? I think that that was probably, that was a big part of it because I think the prologue cold open scene in episode two when he's faced with like letting Soren go when they're like, you know, in their late teens, early 20s. and they're training to be Spartans.

I think that's probably when they're like, oh, okay, this is an origin story of Master Chief, and we're not even done telling that in the present day. Because a lot of the problems with the UNSC and their ethics with training and indoctrinating, not only the Spartans, but all people that surround and align themselves with it, that's the actual crux of the problem

and the drama that is centered around Master Chief. He's the instrument for all of this. And the show is attempting to make us understand that. And I think, you know, at times, we can go along with it. But I think where the show really hit its stride with not only bringing, you know, a bit of humanization to Master Chief, as much as it might stumble, action scenes. Dude.

I, it's, I think that, I, I think that. I think for me the action in episode five is probably it's very clear that they only had like three times that they could do this. They had the money for like three great action scenes. I was like, all right, you put it in the beginning, you put one in the middle, you put one at the end.

There you go. Like that's all that we could do. And I was really like, oh, wow, this is what like people thought they really wanted to see. Yeah. Because it's just Master Chief whooping ass and the rest of Spartans whoop an ass.

I think my biggest note, we don't need first person cameras. I get that it's fan service for the games and it's cool to see the UI like do all the stuff and I'm like, you know, the shield charging up is cool, all those sound effects, but like I think every time that we don't see

like that first person camera, like that's just jarring to me and it just looks weird because I'm like, you're clearly doing this for the, for the fans of the games. I'm like, I've already seen Master Chief with his helmet off

for, you know, six hours. So you don't need to do everything for me. I think the first time it was definitely cool. First time I was like, okay, I see we're doing, But, yeah, more and more is like, you know, it's like, we don't really need this. I will say, though, it did give me a thrill,

seeing Master Chief do Master Chief things. It was awesome. It was awesome. I was like, oh, okay, we're still really justifying our existence for the show, not only in the action front, but like in a couple of moments of pretty good drama and intrigue. And with that, I feel like we kind of got to talk about Halsey.

Oh, boy. I'll start by saying Halsey is so evil so clearly evil from like the moment we meet her you're like oh you're doing

fucked up experiments on humans and very questionable cloning techniques you're bad and nobody else is questioning that I was there ever a point where you're like maybe we trust Halsey or did you never

trust Halsey like me for the entire show so here's thing, right? If you've played the games, you know that Halsey is the number one up, right? Like legitimate, like, of all, you know, we spent all this time, you know, worry about the covenant, worried about the flood, da-da-da. But the relationship between Halsey and Master Chief in the games is one that you can only describe as just incredibly toxic because she is like, Master Chief is like basically like her son, you know what I mean? Like, just cares about him that much, but at the same time, like,

you kidnapped him from his family and then turn him into a war machine. And now, like, for whatever reason, now you want to care, you know? And so you know she's bad, but in these episodes, she, not only is she just like a terrible, you know, evil scientist, a bad partner and a bad bad mother. Just like the worst. Bad all around really failing the hippopotamus oath on all fronts here.

I don't think it has ever been a war. Steve, did you say it? I know it's a Hippocratic oath. You said hippopotamus oath. Yeah. That was on purpose. Of course it stays in. Of course it stays in.

I wanted that. It's all we allow here. She's failing her hippopotamus oath. Moon night. You got Moonette on the brain. Of course, of course. We've got tarrette still in here. She bears her taurretto. But I think that like there could have been a bit more of like a cat and mouse and deception to be played with Halsey's role in all of this because she feels that like not only did the ends justify the means, but she's got some galaxy brain theory about how humanity should be evolving faster than what we're. we're already doing. So she wants to accelerate that by any means necessary. And the UNC

allowing that, or at least, you know, being complicit in that, that's kind of the bigger, like, political implication that's intriguing to a lot of this. And, you know, to see those Spartans get, you know, indoctrinated and then seemingly broken of that indoctrination across this season. The ideas that we're touching on, I think, are good. I just think that sometimes we're when it stumbles, we get lost in the woods. And before we talk about the covenant, I think we should probably talk about the thing that we get most lost in the woods for

for half the season that I really, I really wish that we didn't have to, but like we have to talk about Kwan Haa and her journey. Do we those? I mean, the show felt it needed to for a portion of it and then seemingly whisked that away.

All right. So you mentioned, this as being kind of like we're watching the spin off to a show within a season of a show. Yes. It's like it's really like two different shows, right? So they start off

the season starts off with Master Chief deciding to rescue Kwan and it's like, hey I'm going to you know, I'm going to risk everything keep this girl safe. It's cool. Okay, we get it. He takes her to in episode two, he takes her to

what I can only, like, the the rock, but really it's just nowhere from Guardians and Galaxy. Right, it is. And he passes her off to Shorn and he's like, hey, I have other responsibilities I need to take care of. Can you please make sure she's safe? Cool. All right.

So now we're on two diverging storylines that hopefully we'll see come together when, you know, the time comes. And they do not. They do not. Do not come back together. Kwan Ha spends

half of the episodes trying to find her dad's generals and try to you know, win back Magigal and at every turn

it's like, nah, man, you can't do this and she's like, yes, I can. And people who are just a little bit

smarter and have a little bit more experience with the stuff are like, I would stop. And she's like, I wouldn't do that. And at every turn,

she's like, no, I'm going to do that. And then she gets like, you know, smack down almost every time. Almost every time. until

until she almost gets got and Sorin is like hey I'm gonna come rescue you because I made a promise to John 117 right and you know

honestly in a pretty cool scene gets rid of her enemies in one fell swoop which is great love that for her I think I think you know if anything could justify

seeing Vancher in that awesome coat being deliciously evil I feel like Burn Gorman and the character of Venture were like he might have been having the most fun on set this entire show

gotta be gotta be the thing you know he was I don't I feel like he should have been like he should have played a villain far more prominently in this well like he he was he was selling it you know when he was murdering the people

you know what I mean and then he murdered the last of Kwanha's dad's general's Right. Just like he was a sick dude. He's a psycho. Here's how you know. It's because they wear those really, really tiny sunglasses that are almost smaller than your eyes. They look like a Wolfenstein villain.

Have you ever seen the anime? No, Steve. I have not seen the anime. Well, there's a character called Vash the Stampede, and he's got those tiny little glasses, and he looks a lot like that, like he's got that big coat. He looks a lot like this guy. I love a villain that's just like, he looks like he could be like an evil. German man. It's just like he's literally chewing a cigar, like executing people in the street.

I don't know. I just love a villain for a villain's sake. And that's the type of shit that I like. But yeah, Kwanha's a bit of a mess. And then we got to talk about the Covenant. I am delightfully surprised at how much of the Confident we got to learn about in this first season. It's great, man. The Covenant are the, you know, main antagonists of the Haley. series. And if you don't know, the Covenant are alien zealots that are led by the high charity that want to ascend to a higher plan of existence. How do you do that? By activating the halo rings. And that's what their entire plan was in the games. And you see in the show, like, they want to get the artifacts to find the halo ring to activate. The problem with

activating the halo ring is that it's basically just a huge bomb that annihilates every single, you know, living thing in the, in the galaxy. So you can't really. The Death Star that's supposed to blow up and do its job. That's basically what a Halo Ring is. Exactly, exactly. There's a lot of history in, you know, the Halo Rings. We don't have to get into that.

But it is, it is super interesting how, like, we got the high charity and they have a little human spy. First of all, I never would have thought that we would have seen high charity because it took, like, what, three games, two games to, to, like, get there. like we never knew that much about the covenant and to know that this is sort of a two-pronged story of like a war on both fronts that we only know a little bit about the covenant a lot more about the UNC

I love the like kind of like at least like religious or prophecy driven elements about their motivation as to why they want to activate the halo ring I feel like it kind of got muddled a little bit with the you know finding the artifact and the second artifact and just like it's just going to be a waypoint to find the real big thing

coming soon season two where we could have just been like okay we are the covenant this is why we hate humanity this is what our uh religion and prophecy will be dictating our motivation through it but instead we get uh our covenant spy uh honestly it played quite well uh by charley murphy Mackie Mackie. I genuinely liked this character. I did.

I think it was like slightly underused because we get like muddled down in a little bit of like teasing of the flood which we'll get to that in a minute later

but I think to have a sort of character that Master Chief can empathize with and see himself in as these sort of like this elevated version of humanity

that Halsey wants to tap into and clearly the covenant has as well, calling her the blessed one, Master Chief is the demon. What did you think about the parallel between those two characters and did it work for you in this first season? Yeah, I think the show says some of us foils, right?

Both taken, you know, as young children from their families and indoctrinated, basically, into this way of life. McKee on the covenant side and John on the UNSC side. And so when they meet, they both realize like, hey, maybe this thing isn't all what we thought it was. You know, and they realize it together. And we'll get to that later. But it's something that they're supposed to marry each other.

And I think the show does that really well, even though, like, I was surprised that the covenant had, you know, humans on their side. But it makes sense story-wise. Like that's that that storyline really fits and I think they handled that really well. I would have I would have I would have been shocked if Mackie actually like I would have I could have sworn that she was actually going to turn on everybody and attempt to kill Master Chief like I thought it was all a long con for the sake of the covenant but she kind of had a foot half in half out with them that I actually I genuinely didn't see coming and you know she was just enamored with fulfilling her purpose which was finding the ring

and I think that was that was pretty well done. It is, it is, because their arcs literally like mirror each other. Right. I think they both die in that ceremony. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's really like how their lives like diverse, like their opposite ends of the war, but going through parallel journeys and how, you know,

they finally intersect and it's like, it changes everything for both of them. And they both realize like, hey, maybe this isn't what I thought it was. Maybe this isn't what I believed in, truly. And it ultimately ends in both of them, you know, dying, you know, for their cause. Which, you know, I think Master Chief is still trying to find his cause, which sucks because he, you know, lost his life, clearly.

We're going to be figuring out what we're going to be doing with that. but to know that where the season leaves us, Cortana seemingly in charge of Master Chief, Halsey on the run, a fugitive now, off to go and do her kooky science in a lab. Shout out to her lackey, by the way. Real slimy piece of shit there, just like running to get coffees and shit. An absolute weirdo. Love a good Igor to a mad scientist. Let's wrap up a little bit and talk about the strengths before we get into some of the crazier parts of this season.

What was probably the biggest strength for you and what would you like to see, let's just say, improved upon come season two? Well, here's what I'll say, man. One of the coolest things was how good the elites, grunts, jackals, hunters, and even the high charity looked.

In spots. There's some times where I'm like, okay. I would push back. I would push back. Episode one, I understand. Episode one, I understand. Right. It was a little like, okay,

what are we doing here, fellas? like, what is it like? But in episodes five and nine with the two big fights and then the spots with the high charity and the elites

finding McKee when she's a young girl, I thought those all looked really good. Right. Sometimes I thought they were like were genuinely puppets.

Other times I thought they were paying tribute to the first Halo game by making all of those graphics on the first Xbox. No. Like there were sometimes, I don't know, man.

I thought it looked pretty good. I thought it looked pretty good. Maybe, you know what I'm saying? Because again, I'm an A's a show fan. So, you know, my CGI, you know, looking like that. Your budgets don't work like that. I thought it looked pretty good. All things are considered like, you have, you have to have these characters in the game. Like, you know, you have to have them in the show. Like, if they're not in the show, then we're like, what are we doing here? I thought they look pretty swell. Right. I won't, I won't say what a, what a show has to do because this show did almost the opposite of that and

turned up to be okay. Um, I think the strength. of it obviously were the action sequences. I would love to see more of them, or at least be enabled to do more of that. But I think that it might be the antithesis of what the show is trying to be. I feel like this is trying to like kind of give

a lot more political intrigue, more emotional heft. But we'll see what season two brings with the idea of Master Chief not saying anything, maybe not even being the primary character of his own show. That could be interesting. But I think we want to

kind of just indulge a little bit in some of the wildest things that we saw in this show because it's just too much to not talk about. We mentioned Manchur in his amazing coat being deliciously evil. One that I've listed here is Soren's nasty ass arm.

That was tough. That's, that was so gross, but also so hilariously fake that I also kind of loved it. where it looks like he's just like got like he looks like he's got like a sockum bopper on his hand yeah yeah and i'm like oh how do you even put that in a jacket my guy like that's so like ludicrously it looks like strong rick the custom strong morty i don't know yeah the custom cloth budget for the guy soren it's got to be crazy well i liked it because he had he had his

guy like put the jacket on him for the first time i'm like he's not going to get that off by himself he's got to have a guy put do it on and off the whole time yeah he should invest in some long sleeves for season two. Let's just, you know, Cortana backseat gaming in that one action sequence where she's just telling him what to do. He's like, I know how the game is played. Well, I thought that was pretty cool

because that's the point of having an AI, right? Like, you know, it's like move to the left, go back, two steps, you know, do, do, do. You know, I thought like that, that makes sense. I just, it's, there are occasional times when Halo becomes self-aware that it's a show based on a video game and it wants to like put little nudges about being a video game. I'm like, nah, look, we don't need to do that. Like,

we're already, like, you came across the finish line. You got it on Paramount Plus with like X millions of dollars worth of budget. Like, you made it. You don't need to, you don't need to do this for me. I didn't, I didn't. This episode is brought to by Paramount Plus. Beth and Ripp are back in a new series, Dutton Ranch. Kelly Riley and Cole has a return. And this time they're taking on Texas. As Beth and Rip build a future together, peace will have to wait as they face corruption, in danger and a ruthless rival ranch willing to protect its secrets at all costs. Legacy is a beautiful thing, but only if it survives.

Dutton Ranch starring Colehouser, Kelly Riley, Annette Benning, and Ed Harris now streaming on Paramount Plus. Master Chief having a night on the town. Hey, I don't, I, listen. You know, like you said, Master Chief is a human being. Who doesn't want to go out for a little walk? Let's run down the list of the things that he does

on his night out. while he's thinking about stuff and worrying about what it's like to be human. It takes the subway, right? That blew my mind. I could not comprehend. That's the most insane thing

I've ever, ever thought about. And take the L train, you know, take it uptown, you know, swing up, you know, go through midtown, go to Harlem, you know what I was saying? You might go, you know, stop, get a chop. cheese. Right. Now, let my man live.

You know, what's what with that? He also enjoys classical music. Ah, come on. You know, the, I don't think there were violence.

They were like some future. No, they were future cellos. They had future cellos. Which I love because, like, the design of those, those are real cellos.

Like, they can just make them like that. But like, to know that they're just like the size of like a Hershey's bar, but like, just go all the way down. That's so funny to me.

It's so great. It's so great. And let's go. No, I'm going to... We have to talk about it. We have to talk about it. Since I'm a producer myself, and I'm always thinking about breakouts, I'm putting five minutes on the clock. Only allowing five minutes on the clock to talk about Master Chief having sex.

Listen. Master Chief has sex in this show. I'm going to count it down, Jomey. This is an ISO for you. Three, two, one, go. Master Chief has sex. Here's the thing, right? When you first hear those words, you just can't believe it.

Your brain like short circuits. Like my Master Chief, my petty officer, John 117 in the sheets, no way. No way. But I posit to you this. And I want you to follow me on this journey. I follow, I followed worse. The show is trying to humanize Master Chief. Of course.

Right. That is like one of the show's biggest agendas. It's trying to make you empathize. to make you understand, trying to make you put yourself in his shoes and be like, yeah, I understand why you would do things like this or why you would make these decisions, right? And I ask you, listeners at home in your car, at the beach, wherever you may be, is there anything more human than falling in love and having sex with the first person that understands you? First of all, he doesn't have love. He had a vision and he touched the lady on the halo ring.

Listen, is there anything more human, Steve? Come on now. Come on now, you got to understand. He's been alone this whole life. He finally found somebody that he can relate to somebody that understands what he's going through. And you telling me that you wouldn't fold in that moment, Steve? Stop the cap. Come on, now.

That's a different show. You don't have copywritten permission to use that on this show. You don't. Come on, Dan. I don't. I think to some as my points of this, I'm going to reveal a slight text exchange that I had with a friend of mine.

I said, watching the Halo show right now, Master Chief just had sex. My friend responds, does he keep the helmet on? And I said he can't stop taking it off. It's the first thing he gets rid of. First of all, if he kept the helmet on,

that would have been the greatest scene in recorded cinematic history. Now, you're not wrong about that. You're not wrong about that. If that was the only thing he kept on, that would have been the best thing I had ever witnessed in my life. I think it's more insane

to just say the sentence Master Chief has sex than to give context around this. Because it's like, I get the purpose of the scene. I understand what we're trying to do that he's like,

kind of like alone in this world and he's like really connecting with her. Yeah. And that they, when they both touch the artifact, they are clearly two out of two billion for their purpose in this life. And it just, it's, it's really fell flat because this is like,

this is, this is what actually broke me out of the show for a moment. Because like, it wasn't taking the helmet off. It wasn't, take him taking the subway, which is still wild. But it's the idea of like, okay, like him kind of bumbling his way through what it means to connect and be a human when we already know that he's not supposed to be one. Yeah. I didn't find anything like particularly offensive about it, but I was just like, this is, this is a lot.

You're doing a lot, guys. There's a lot. And I don't know how we feel about it. Listen, he had his helmet off, but we, he probably had another helmet on. You know, you got to be safe out there, Massachusetts. Of course. You can't be wilding. But here's, clapping master cheeks.

Hey, you know, he was out there. He was outside like that. Here's the weird part, right? And this is what I, I don't think I can abide by, right? I do understand the sexy But um What Why was Cortana watcher

Why don't she Why would she just staring man? We we didn't need to I don't worry We didn't need to see that I don't I don't want to think about this too much Because Cortana was like injected into him And like given

Like she doesn't have a lot of agency in that part So I don't even know if she signed up for that But she Like immediately like she was supposed to reported it back to Halsey. So kissing and telling big no-no there. Yeah. Not a big fan of that, Cortana.

Like, you could have at least kept that private. Okay, but here's a thing, right? The show clearly confirms that Master Chief and Cortana could communicate without the helmet. Was she given Master Chief tips? Was she like, hey, Chief, two inches to the left? Surrender control. Maybe we can find out what we're really doing here.

Right? Master Chief, you got to use your hips. hips, you know what I'm saying? Use that torque. At that point, she could only, you know, she could only put him in a more version of stasis. So great excuse to, you know,

you know, finish early. Can't really. Go straight to sleep. Oh my God. Can't really. Sorry, I just, stasis, baby. I can't help it. She takes control. All right. That's enough.

That's enough time. We've dedicated to that. That is quite enough of that. But let's look a little bit of head. We've already got a two-season commitment for this show. Season two will be happening at some point. Where would we like to see this show go in the future? Characters we'd like to see. Plotlines to explore. Big notes going forward. Jomi, go. Well, you know me. I'm trying to see Sergeant dude. Sergeant Johnson, where you at?

I don't, I would have sworn that we'd have seen him in this first season, but that has to happen. It simply has to happen. Gotta see. And I think my biggest question is, what's going on with Halsey? You know, like she is, she's an op, like full stop and up. For sure. And so does Master Chief go after her? Do the UNSC go after her?

You know, we didn't talk about them a lot, but, you know, Jacob Keyes and Miranda Keys, her former partner and her daughter, like, they obviously have a stake in, you know, how Halsey has done them dirty. do they raise ruckus about where she's at right now like there's so much that hinges on Halsey and

you know the fall of reach and the whole thing like it is like the implications of this are massive right you know so how does it all fit together her getting off reach you know the entire

story it's very important and so I'm excited to see where that goes. I think with the Halsey angle, I think we can kind of remedy what might have been the biggest problem plot-wise for the first season for me, and that's what to do with Kwan. We leave her in an odd state

where she's kind of on her own, given our guy his payout, and off to fight the good fight. I would like to see, you know, I think we could have agreed that we could have done with less of Kwan in this next season, but I would love to see Halsey pulling at Kwan's strings.

I feel like a lot of Halsey's great power is to know that she can manipulate a lot of people in good political standing to get to allow herself to do what she wants. I think that's kind of the biggest asset to her character, not only for her grand vision and scientific mind, but she is a key political player in all of this. flipping the coin to Kwan

and her revolution to kind of like almost overturn the UNSC in time. It feels like that's where it could be going because she's you know, she has a lot of conflicting feelings about Master Chief I think that that's kind of a good crux and place to put those two characters in for season two because

A, it'll truncate a lot of like a three-prong story arc that we got this season and it gets a lot of good character banter between the two. I like that. What's the big thing that we get to see with Master Chief and the Covenant? I just think

I'd be really interested to see how the high charity rebound from this. They don't have the artifact, right? And so their main goal is finding the Halo to blow up the halo. How do they rebound without McKee, without the artifacts? How do they become a problem

for chief. It's easy to just be like, oh, throw him out there. But this show was upset. Like, we're going to, you know, we're not going to do stuff for no reason. We're going to give the high charity, you know, we're going to give them reasons why they want to want to go after him. And so I think revenge is too simple, you know, of a explanation. So there's got to be something that puts them back on the same path. And that's where I mentioned the fall of reach, but I think ultimately, like, that's where the show has to go to rest in peace noble six

our guys our guys which by the way like Master Chief it's like a domino effect Master Chief you know getting laid the fall of reach

and the start of the war It's that little domino to a big bad down Master Chief gets horny the covenant takeover reach Let me tell you if it all falls down to that we can blame Cortana

that's for sure Yeah but I'm excited to see the covenant back like that's one of the best parts of the season. So that'll be awesome. Last thing that I'd like to see, and we can end on this, do we see our buddy the arbiter? Oh, you know what? I would have loved to, but I don't know

how we'd fit. What is the thing, right? He's the arbiter because he messed up at some point in the future, right? And so maybe, you know, instead of Kwan Haas, a plot that we can move to you know, YouTube, you know what I'm saying? We can watch that, you know, whenever we get it, we could get the Arbiter B

plot, you know, and him like, how he messed up and how he found his way to being the Arbiter in Halo 2. That's something I want to be mad about. Yes, the forsaken hero of the covenant now here to kind of warn the covenant about like, hey, maybe what we're doing isn't the right move, guys.

I love that idea. I just, I love the character of the Arbiter. It's probably like, he's probably the better version of Master Chief as far as a character arc is concerned for like a forsaken hero that is trying to like, who believes in his cause that still tries, to like get everything right with the world.

I would love to see that I don't know if Keith David's available, but we need to get him. I don't think you do it without our guy. You cannot. You cannot. There's a lot to see. Can't wait. There's a lot to see.

I can't wait, Steve. Can you wait until the next time that we do this, Jomey? Because I think that's it for us. That's, uh, man, listen, we're getting, we're getting into chat. They're like, guys, you got to go. We got to, we got to, we got to. to watch strange things. We got to watch

we got Obie one. We got so much stuff to cover. I'm pouring sweat already. But that is it going to do it for us for now. We got a lot coming up on the feed, guys.

Oh yeah. So, so, so, so, so much. Please join us on Monday for the House of Ar talking about everything you need to know for Obi-Wan. Join us Friday talking about the Obi-Wan premiere. Two episodes. Midnight Boys.

I'm excited. I'm so excited. I can't even finish this outro. And then join us if you're going to start with celebration this weekend. Come say hi to us for a live show at the podcast stage on Saturday. We can't wait to see you there. We are produced by the great Jonathan Kerma, as always. We'd love to see him.

Shout out to Kerm, aka the Kerminator. this show could not be in better hands. I'm so, so, so excited. For all of us here at the Ring or Verse, Jomey, you got any parting words for everyone? I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from the abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts and the hearts of their descendants generates a chance.

It is a far, far better thing. that I do. He's doing the full verse. That I've ever done. It's a far, far better rest that I go to that I ever know. That was our master chief.

Thank you as always, Junior Mitz. And we will see you next time. On Mint Edition. What's the difference between butter and butter made from real California dairy?

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