Halo Finally Delivers The Games' Master Chief - But It's Too Late

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Warning! Spoilers ahead for Halo episode 9

While the Halo television series provided a glimpse of a Master Chief who was more faithful to the games in its finale, he's come too late. Paramount's Halo TV series has been met with criticism for the its portrayal and characterization of Master Chief John-117 played by Pablo Schreiber. Although some fans of the original games and novels have not appreciated this new iteration of SPARTAN super-soldier, some semblance of a more accurate John-117 was seen in the finale.

Even though the Halo series streaming on Paramount+ is set in its own continuity known as the Silver Timeline, John-117's personality and character choices were extremely bold bordering on bizarre. One of the most glaring issues was the constant removal of Master Chief's helmet and armor. While that makes a certain amount of sense in the context of episodes where Master Chief wasn't in active combat along with the new medium of a television series over a first-person shooter, it's been a sizeable visual departure from what fans were expecting. Likewise, the Master Chief of the games is much more stoic compared to the show's Chief who was engaged in an incredibly emotional battle to reclaim his past memories and humanity. While not inherently bad, an armorless and far more emotional John-117 is far from a faithful adaptation of the Halo video games' protagonist.

Related: Halo's Spartans vs Captain America: Which Super Soldier Is Stronger?

Ironically, it took the potential death of John-117 to provide a Master Chief that's closer in line with the version seen in the games. Unable to save his team and also retrieve the Forerunner artifacts on the Covenant world of Aspero, Master Chief allowed his advanced AI