It’s a question that weighs heavily upon the collective human soul and which is only answered, if it is answered at all, by how full or empty you see your existential glass – is our humanity an energisingly inspirational blessing or is it a curse doomed to limit in ways arbitrary and cruel?
It’s a mighty big question and so, it’s fitting that the final three episodes of Halo (here’s the review of the first six), the adaptation of the iconic video game that is proving you can turn a game into a TV series in ways that delight and surprise rather than induce groans of disappointment, double down and then some on this enduring philosophical conundrum.
On the negative side of the equation sits the near-sociopathic Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey (Natasha McElhone), a scientist so ethically challenged and near-Messianic in her belief that she has all the answers to one of life’s great existential riddles, that she has sacrificed her family – ex-husband Captain Jacob Keyes (Danny Sapani), a seasoned military officer with the United Nations Space Command and scientist daughter Commander Miranda Keyes (Olive Gray) – and indeed her loyalty to the human race itself all in a bid to supposedly save it.
She believes with the fervour of the newly-converted and the religiously myopic – ironic since she is first and foremost a scientist – that only her approach, which saw the kidnap of countless children to be turned into emotion-less super soldiers such as Halo’s newly-rehumanised protagonist Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 (Pablo Schreiber), can spur humanity’s evolution on sufficiently to enable it to beat the ravaging alien hordes of the Covenant.
Granted, humanity really needs to pull some sort of war-winning rabbit out of the hat when it comes to the Covenant, an alliance of alien species bound by a mystical calling to hoped-for god status, who really do not humanity to stand in the way of their sacred crusade.
It’s not entirely clear whether they hate us because we have got in the way of that crusade, or simply that we are there or that we did something highly objectionable in our blighted past – my money’s on the latter since people ugh – but they are a fearsome, militarily powerful enemy and it’s going to take something special to beat them.
Assuming we can beat them; Dr. Halsey thinks we can but only if we sacrifice our very humanity to do so, which raises the age-old old question of whether we are razing a village in order to save it?
One person who agrees with her that we are a scourge on the sunny face of the galaxy is Makee, a misanthropic human being who was taken as a child by the Covenant from abject torture and poverty and groomed to become their “Blessed One”, a rare human being who can activate ancient artifacts, created by the Forerunners, known as keystones, the control of which grants the users the power to reshape the galaxy to their liking.
In these three episodes, Makee swings from true Covenant believer who infiltrates the human base on the planet Reach in order to steal the piece of Keystone it has in its possession, to someone who, united with Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 in their joint ability to fire the artifacts up (which takes them to a heavenly-like realm which united them in transformatively mystical, and yes, carnal ways; yup, it makes you super emotionally connected and horny), suddenly comes around to thinking that maybe humanity is worth being a part of and saving, after all.
Scarred by unspeakable torture and abuse in her childhood, Makee undergoes shift to and from an embrace of humanity and while her ultimate fate is a spoiler writ large that must be left to the viewing, suffice to say she plays a major role in Halo‘s answering of which side we should fall on the blessing or curse equation.
One character that may surprise you sits firmly on the blessing side of things is Cortana, a learning-enabled AI who is implanted into the Master Chief as a step by Halsey to create the perfect emotion-free, endlessly complaint super soldier.
Supposedly a Trojan Horse that will subvert an unsuspecting Master Chief when it suits Halsey, who never met an ethical stance or moral position she could happily ignore in its entirety, Cortana ends up firmly fighting for humanity’s innate right to be who they are, something which proves crucial in the final three episodes where some major narrative shifts play out that violently seek to either eradicate humanity’s free will or to save and elevate it.
Halo in the end is the story of the Master Chief, a man who discovers his latent humanity in the first six episodes, and thus unexpectedly transforms, seeks to save a freedom fighter Kwan Ha (Yerin Ha) on the beleaguered colony planet of Madrigal which rests wholly uneasily under the authoritarian hold of the United Earth Government because it has lots of a vital resource which matters more than the rights and freedoms of its people.
Running in tandem through the final episodes, the stories of the Master Chief and revenge-heavy Kwan Ha (the whole resistance movement of which she and her father are a part is wiped out at the start of the season), who is aided by an escapee from Halsey’s evil program, Soren-066 (Bokeem Woodbine) lean heavily on the fact that whatever failings humanity might have, it is worth saving.
Well, most of it, at least.
What emerges in three highly-charged episodes with twists and turns aplenty and a continued superb balancing of character and action which makes each richer than it would’ve been alone – once again Halo affirms that big, ballsy blockbuster action, again stylised to look very video game-y, is only worth something if you have bold, strong people at the centre of the story which the series most definitely does – is how intrinsic our humanity is to us.
We may not always get it right; in fact, we often get it tragically wrong, but that doesn’t mean we should be thrown to the metaphorical wolves, and as the final episode plays out, in which some truly epic sacrifices are made, we come once again to the greatest of all questions, one still without a fulsome answer, continuing a debate in ways awe-inspiring and deeply moving which will no doubt be continued in what you can only hope will be explored in the already, happily-confirmed second season.