The Halo TV show blew through all its best lore in the season 2 finale, and it was kind of worth it

polygon.com:

Halo’s second season ends with the strangest episode the show has ever had. Unlike the rest of the series, which has slow-played every single one of its reveals, carefully rationing them out a crumb or two at a time, the season 2 finale threw just about every major reveal from the first Halo game at viewers in the span of less than an hour. Consequently, it was also probably the most interesting episode the show’s ever had, particularly for longtime fans of the game series.

[Ed. note: This story contains spoilers for Halo season 2.]

The episode opens with the audience following a character we don’t really know. She’s a scientist and clearly acting funny, but things don’t get really strange until the bizarre music — unlike anything heard in the series so far — kicks in and we see the scientist slowly start to lose her mind, spontaneously staring off into space or twitching wildly before stabbing a coworker. It’s strange and unsettling, but it’s also the most clever bit of fanservice the show has pulled so far, as the tumbling realization that the Flood are about to make their first appearance on this show slowly dawns.

For most of this show’s first two seasons, the Flood seemed like a bridge too far for the tone it was taking. The most destructive aliens in Halo’s canon, the Flood are a parasitic race that seeks to consume and assimilate every living thing in the galaxy, infecting them then taking them over as newly zombified hosts. Their appearance in the original Halo marks one of the best and most unexpected twists in video game history, and frankly the show did an admirable job of mimicking it, even under far different circumstances.

The Flood of the Halo TV show are a little bit more like traditional zombies than the games’ version. But to showrunner David Wiener’s credit, the series doesn’t skimp away on their gross creepiness. The larger zombified human forms sprout extra limbs, sprinting toward potential new hosts while wildly flailing their alien