Halo's Trailer for Season 2 Teases More Covenant

Halo — the TV series — launches its second season on February 8th. But today a trailer premiered during halftime of the pre-Super Bowl football playoff.

Gizmodo reports: Even though the Covenant are the other side of Halo's ongoing conflict, the first season of Paramount+'s TV series largely represented them through a human proxy named Makee. With the upcoming second season, the coalition of alien races is set to become a more prominent threat, and that means they'll be getting more proper screentime.
IGN had written that Season 1 "isn't a perfect adaptation of the games, but it ultimately succeeds in expanding the series' mythology and taking a more character-driven approach to Master Chief's adventures." This week Paramount+ also released a 28-minute compilation of "Epic Battle Scenes from Season 1, a season which reportedly cost $200 million to film.

And now the entertainment site Collider reports on what comes next: While on the set for Halo Season 2, Collider's Steve Weintraub and some other reporters got the chance to sit down with stars Schreiber and Kate Kennedy to discuss how the show will further flesh out the Covenant in the upcoming episodes. Part of that involves expanding their arsenal with new vehicles like the corvette, a class of ships used in the Halo canon by the Covenant for reconnaissance, stealth, and much more. Kennedy placed it among her favorite Season 2 set designs, saying... "It's huge, and what the set guys did for it, and the art department, is really, really impressive. They turned it around so quickly, and it's, like, awe-inspiring, it's huge."

Aside from making the Covenant more formidable, Season 2 will also focus on making them more understandable. Part of that involves diving into the thought process of key players within the alien faction, including two that Schreiber could tease. "Yeah, we definitely go into the Covenant mind-state, mentality," he said... In future seasons, Schreiber believes Halo will only continue to develop the Covenant, their motives, and the relationships and allegiances within the coalition as the story of intergalactic war unfolds.

No thanks

[christoban]

Season 1 was incredibly awful, impossible to watch unless you previously had a full frontal lobotomy. Or you were a 13 year old boy, and then only if you were a future high school dropout.

Re: No thanks

[grogger]

Yes, that is right - this will being in Echo, Secret Invasion or even The Marvels money.

Re:

[bloodhawk]

It was a little subpar, but no worse than the various DC or Marvel garbage that has been churned out for the last few years.

Re:

[christoban]

You're really not making a great case. LOL

Re:

[bloodhawk]

Not trying to make a case for it, just pointing out calling it impossible to watch is ridiculous, do you have to turn off your brain and not expect a great story sure, But that is the same as 95% of movies and probably 99% of shows out there.

Re:

[christoban]

Not sure I "expect" a good movie. But I also can't accept a terrible one.

Yeah I saw it. And it wasn't as bad as they say

[stevenm86]

I saw the first season. No, it wasn't as terrible as they say. Apart from "omg it isn't like the game!!", it's actually a fairly solid. A bit brooding but the visuals are very crisp and the action sequences are well fleshed-out. No, not every adaptation needs to rigidly follow the plot of a video game. I'm here for an expanded experience, not to rehash a plot with which I'm already familiar.

That said, forget the helmet - dude needs to spend more time wearing pants.

Re:

[Powercntrl]

Once you adjust for the bias of most critics hating sci-fi, Halo was actually pretty decent. Especially if you compare it against the bar set by Star Trek Discovery. Now that show was a slog to get through.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

I found the dialogue in Halo to be early 2000s video game quality. Same with the protagonist, basically an avatar for the player with little personality of his own. It really was objectively badly written.

Perhaps not as terrible as some people made out, but certainly on a par with your average Star Trek Voyager episode, maybe even a little worse.

As for Discovery, I think it has improved with time. I liked it when it first aired, but it's got layers the more you look into it. Take Lorca from the first season

Re:

[christoban]

Woketard likes ST Discovery, didn't like ST Voyager. Shocked. :D

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

If you haven't seen Voyager recently, go back and check it. Even the standout episodes are full of really, really bad dialogue. Even the interesting ideas, like Tuvix, are not fully explored and get a big reset at the end of the episode.

I did enjoy it back in the day, but now... I guess my standards are higher.

Re:

[christoban]

Jesus. The "really interesting ideas like Tuvix."

Or that equally "interesting" one where Janeway and Paris evolved into salamanders and made a bunch of babies?

Voyager was amazing, and had better ratings than DS9 (which I also loved), starting with season 3. Before that, it was still light years ahead of Discovery.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Aside from Tuvix I think the only interesting idea that comes to mind is the concept of Seven of Nine trying to return to humanity, but of course most of that was lost between glamour shots and terrible quality dialogue.

Oh, there were some interesting ideas for Q episodes. The one where one of the Q wants to die had some decent moments.

Overall though, Voyager was pretty dire. The fact that they got rid of Kes instead of Harry Kim, because the actor playing Harry did well in some poll of hottest guys on TV,

Re:

[christoban]

Kess was the most annoying actress in all of Star Trek up till that point. Her breathy voice, the flower power hippie thing, her weird relationship with the cat. She had the lowest likeability rating of anyone on the cast and it had nothing to do with Kim's good looks.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Her relationship with Neelix was pretty creepy, but the same goes for Seven really. She never had the chance to grow up and emotionally mature, so was basically a child in an adult body. I guess because she was clearly there for sex appeal it wasn't so obvious, and credit to Kim for refusing her offer of sex, but nobody on the crew called out the Doctor's choice of attire.

That's Berman for you I guess. He basically drove Terry Farrell off DS9 with his demands.

Re:

[christoban]

Seven was more mature than anyone on that ship, with a very liberal attitude toward sex early on! :D

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Especially if you compare it against the bar set by Star Trek Discovery. Now that show was a slog to get through.

The problem with Discovery is that basically it's a new series without much backstory to go on. In this case, in general, things only start getting good around the third season or so. (This applies to all the other Star Trek series as well - TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT were all messes until around the third season when they found their footing and actually got really good onwards). Discovery is no diff

Re:

[Baron_Yam]

>No, it wasn't as terrible as they say

It wasn't even terrible, except for the colonist brat side plot. I could have done without that... possibly setup for a S2 plot, but in S1 it's just BOOOORRRRING.

The rest I kind of liked.

I am shocked it was renewed

[MikeDataLink]

I couldn't finish the first season it was so bad.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

They ordered the second season before the first one aired. Maybe they didn't watch it all either.

I'm hoping it gets better, but not holding my breath. I think there is definitely a chance it gets written off for tax purposes before it is released too. They may judge it to be more profitable to do a write off if it isn't going to bring in the viewers.

These producers and writers just don't get it

[LondoMollari]

I was there somewhere around 1997 when Halo was rumored. We were all fresh off of Marathon Infinity and Halo's preview absolutely floored us - you could FPS AND seamlessly get into a vehicle and drive!

Fast forward to 2001. Seeing the game and listening to the storytelling caused me to get an Xbox for just that one game, and what a story it was. Halo is deep, daunting, and dark BECAUSE the Covenant are dark and unknown - an absolute threat that can end humanity completely. They will never stop, never cease, and the Master Chief is the last hope to protect all our lives. The less the Covenant said the more daunting and imposing they were, especially near the end of the game when the spec ops elites and grunts were introduced.

You had no idea what they were thinking, just that THEY WANT YOU DEAD.

Fast forward to Halo 2 and someone felt that the Covenant needed feelings, that they were decent guys, just misunderstood. They even added English language to the elites so the could now sound like that voice school children make when impersonating talking monsters.

So no. We don't need more covenant back story. We need less. We don't need justification for their actions- they need to be opaque, dark, and threatening. They used to make us really jump out of our chairs. A singularity. Now we just laugh at their silly child monster voices.

Oh, and spoiler alert

[stevenm86]

The main character finds Cortana just as obnoxious as the rest of us do. He's had her rammed down his throat just like "we" have, and can't get her to shut the hell up. So in that regard, the show is extremely relatable. I say "we" when referring to the family's computer (or, the very rare Windows VM for an obscure vendor tool) because Linux since 2003.

Halo TV is bad

[atomicalgebra]

This is a case study on what not to do when adapting a game into a show. The show was bad. Season 2 looks bad. The writers hated the source material, and it shows. There wasn't even a Halo in it. They didn't even use the series iconic music.