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Daily articles from fans, not pundits, weekly podcasts that contain a multiverse of opinions on all things pop culture, exclusive videos and weekly live streams where we laugh, scream and sometimes have technical difficulties, all created by folks like you, the gamers, the film nerds, the TV, bingers, comic book lovers, bookworms and pop culture enthusiasts all in one giant bowl of beautiful disgusting soupy goodness at couchsoup.com What's up, everybody and welcome back to the watching now podcast over here on couch soup where we are diving into every new episode of Halo season two. And after a banger of an episode last week, we've got a little bit of a slower episode this week, but still keeping things up, still pretty interesting, we've got lots to get into. So let's introduce the cast for today reporting for duty. We have Tom, howdy friends, howdy, howdy indeed, and we have Dan. What's up, Master Chief? What's up, Master Chief? Welcome, welcome, Spartans, and welcome to you guys at home. Guys, we're at episode five already. We are officially past the halfway point of season two, and things are getting pretty interesting. Episode five, a little bit of a slower episode, but I mean, that kind of goes without saying after crazy action packed, emotionally fueled the episode that we got last week. So I think we kind of needed a bit of a, a bit of a breather. We needed a little bit of time to like just chill out. So we are going to dive straight into this week's episode breakdown. No waiting, no beating around the bush. Let's just get straight into our sit-rip for episode five. All righties, starting the episode. We pick up literally right where we left off last week, where we got to see Vanik dive. Again, everything that happened with the arbiter that came in chief and arbiter, their first big encounter last week, and we pick up right away. And the first thing is that chief is hurt, and he's hurt bad. Well, I'd like the first thing I thought that he really get hurt that badly. I mean, he did get blasted like super close range, but it didn't look like he was hurt that bad, but like right at the beginning of the episode, he seems like shell shocked, and he's like, he can barely move. And then like he kind of like, I think Sauron helps him up and he's like, get off me. I can still fight. I mean, it was just. It's just how other people have been destroyed by plasma weapons throughout the show, like regular people get ripped the pieces by plasma weapons and chief took a blast right to the back. He tanked it. Like I said, he was like with no armor, so he just, he just took a right and it was like that. Yeah. So I would imagine he's pretty hurt from that. Yeah. But he did survive. He showed us how tough his nails master chief is, but it was pretty interesting how it opened up and it seemed like, like, how are they going to get out of it? I remember thinking like, how do they get out of there? Like, what's, what's going to happen? I was like, I was trying to think like is this guy going to show up is like something going to happen like with like, how do they survive this? And then there was a really interesting scene, which I don't know what you guys thought of this, but Halsey's kind of like in a corner, like trying to protect herself and whatever. And then she looks up and she says, look at them. They're coming back. And then we see a whole bunch of ships that, to me, it looked like they were leaving, like they were escaping, like other ships that were escaping, like who would she be referring to about people? We know who eventually comes to save them, but who would Halsey be referring to as people that were coming back, but that's felt weird. Like who would do it? She'd be talking about it. Yeah. It seems a little counterintuitive now. In retrospect. Yeah. I think maybe she saw it differently because like maybe they work like landing to get more people to get out. Maybe could be. They went back to get more survivors. Yeah. I had to rewatch it to see which direction they're going. There was someone who eventually came back. Well, yeah, we kind of see no one's coming back for them. And then Soren, just the freaking amazing, amazing story. Amazing story. It's called a relief character that he is. He's so good. I love Soren, dude. He's like, that all you got. And then we get the... The freaking hammer broke drops out of the sky. Right. That's literally every buttpucker moment in playing Halo when you get that hammer boot come in charge. And you're like, ah, yeah, Soren eats those words. And again, I'm thinking like, how do they survive this? And then bam, bam, bam, shots fired and we see a ship and Lyra is in the ship. So Quan and Lyra have arrived on reach. So obviously that's the way they knew where they were going to try and find Soren. But they arrive and they save everyone. Where they take out the big brutes and everything. Killer Quan. Killer Quan. Killer Quan is back. She was on that railgun. Like a freaking badass wall. The mini-gun machine gun thing with Jiggy. And that was something we kind of like foreshadowed a couple of episodes ago where we were like our Quan and Lyra are going to show up on reach, you know, and join everybody. And they are on the east kind of save the day because I'm pretty sure everybody would have died from that brute otherwise. Massively. Massively save the day. Yeah. I had some thoughts and things on Lyra and Quan showing up. But I'll save that for a little bit later. But anyway, they get the ship right there and they open up the little drop pad thingy and everyone starts getting on. And then Riz looks back and she's like, we can't leave without Vanik. Obviously Vanik is east host. He's dead. But she wants to get his body. Which is a really interesting thing which they touch on later as well about like, I mean, Vanik's dead. What's the point of going back to save him? And Riz goes for Vanik showing she's got like more empathy and everything. And at this point I was like, dude, you're not going to kill Riz now as well, are you? I definitely had some feelings going into that scene because I was I was initially taking this as we're just going to throw Riz back in there to kill her off too and just kill both of them at once. And as that scene was playing out, I was like, okay, yep, she's going to die. She's going to die. But then when they did the cut back to her actually carrying Vanik out, I was like, oh, it's not just her going off to her death. She's actually bringing his body back. So that to me actually struck a different chord of like, okay, I see what they're doing here. And now they're kind of like, they're going a different direction. Instead of just Vanik's dead, they're leaving him behind moving on. We're actually getting a little bit more respect for their comrades and what it meant for them to be in the team together, which I'm actually really glad that they did that. And at first, I'm again, I'm really glad they didn't just kill off Riz and just be like, bang, bang. I know we're teams basically done at this point. I had a weird suspicion back in my head that Vanik wasn't dead because like, I know like, you know, explosion, you know, you need to learn to the heart. Yeah. But like the fact the way like she went back to carrying like, oh, they're going to do some weird thing. How's this house is going to be like, oh, I need the gel firm, stab, you're better. You're good. You're good. Get going soldier. Or it does like Halo where you just like, you revive as long as you're near a teammate. You just respawn. Pops. She just like, she just crouches near him for like five seconds and then Vanik jumps up. But she cleared out the forward and then he just like, he just respawns next to her. But yeah, she was a total badass in that team just like taking on that. I mean, we didn't see a lot of like, Emily's enemies and stuff. Yeah. But with the dual crystals, she just ran in and then like carries Vanik's body out. Then she gets absolutely nailed. We don't really see what hit her or where she got hit, but we hear her scream, which was like piercing. And then I thought she was dead then as well. I was like, geez, like what's happening? I thought she died twice in the opening like three minutes. And then she collapses on the ship and obviously they were able to get out at least. But I mean, I was intense. I was like, damn, because they just killed off Vanik in the last episode. I thought like, like killing risks like right away. And fortunately, she does survive, but she's not looking so hard. And then chief is on the ship and they start escaping. And he obviously like, you know, he's very injured and he's kind of in and out of consciousness. And he had some flashbacks, which are very interesting and opens up one of our big early talking points. He has flashbacks of the operation where they took Cortana out. And it's kind of hinted at throughout the rest of the episode that maybe chief was conscious throughout that whole thing, we see them, you know, we see the shots have been waves like completely eyes are open and he like sheds a tear and things like that. So maybe he kind of heard everything, but he's struggling to remember all of it. Because we did get to see the Admiral, which was a name, Parangaski, or something, Parangaski. She has some demands for Cortana. She says I need to do something in exchange for saving chief's life. What do we think and I want us to start talking about this is a big talking point to open this up. What do we think she means by that? What does she want from Cortana? I would think they're helping with Aksen. Like I will save John for you. However, you have to help us by be just doing this simulation to find out if we can save reach. Do you think it's as simple though? It could have been that or maybe the other thing was giving data for the next Spartan training program to train the next set of Spartans. I feel like Aksen would have kept Cortana then because he gave Cortana up, he left a behind on reach as well. But what if he got everything he needed from already? Well, I feel like no matter what Cortana would have had vital information of like Halsey's that the Admiral would have wanted and that to me speaks either to just intelligence or at least a Spartan training program and how they made the Spartan so they can go how Halsey made the Spartan so that they can start their own Spartan program, essentially, which obviously they kind of comes to fruition later on. I think there's more there. I think that she's got something else in mind. I mean, we get to see what Cortana is not doing with McKee and everyone. I think maybe that's got something to do with. I think maybe the Halo in general has got something to do with it. I don't know. It's interesting. I didn't really explain it. It's kind of one of those threads that they just opened up and I don't know, I feel like this. I really feel like this. Yeah, they could be part of it where now Cortana is playing into this notion of leading the Covenant to Halo to some means to some end where it might help the humans, the UNSC find Halo as well. It's all very interesting. I don't think the only people want anything to do with Halo, especially because it's only Halsey that really wants it. Halsey wants it to involve humans into whatever fucking piece of shit. Do they even believe it exists though? Does everyone know that it exists and that it is out there? Maybe they think it's just some kind of myth or just a tale. If we're going off how Aksen treated Chief in the first episodes, he could just think, "Oh, no, he was just a Lulu." He doesn't know what he saw. Halo is just a fantasy that doesn't exist. But Halsey clearly thinks this is an important name, wants something to do with it. She even says in those earlier minutes of the show where she's talking to John and saying that his destiny is intertwined with the Halo and it's vital that they find the Halo. Even though they don't really know what it is, she thinks it's important that they find it. Talking about McKee, we've got a very interesting scene next where McKee on her ship with the Avada are flying away from Reach. She watches as Reach is destroyed. We get to see that big blue laser, obviously, as they're glassing the planet. She cries. She's a little bitch. She's a lunatic. She's obviously playing some different aspects here because she talks about it with the arbiter a bit more. I think she's ultimately trying to just, she's not working with the covenant. I don't think she's working with the covenant at this point. I think she's trying to meet her own goals of getting to the Halo for different reasons. She was truly upset to watch the planet of Reach get destroyed. She was upset to see her fellow human beings being massacred. Do you think that she wants to find the Halo and use it to just completely have universal peace so she'll destroy the Spartans and all the military forces of the humans but then do the same for the Covenant as well and kind of just say, "If you all don't stop fighting then I'm just going to Halo everyone." The thing is that the Halo is you can't talk specific things. You just like murders everything. But they also don't know that here in the show at this point. I think they're more just, they think they need to get to the Halo. I think if anything, McKee wants to stop anyone from getting to it to use it. I think that's kind of her ultimate goal is because she knows the Covenant want to use it to be gods. She knows the humans want to get it to be gods and she doesn't want anyone having that power essentially. I think she still looks at herself as the chosen one and she needs to safeguard the Halo and the technology. I mean, it's explained further in the scene where she talks to the Arbiter a little bit. You were saying earlier, this is the first time he's actually referred to the Arbiter. They actually refer to him as the Arbiter in the scene. Not only does she, or either he or her refers to him as the Arbiter, but for me watching it here, there was actually the subtitles when he spoke. It actually referenced him as the Arbiter speaking. It was like Arbiter and then his text essentially. Okay. So there we go. It is an Arbiter. We know her now, but it was an interesting dialogue exchange between them because it seems like the Arbiter doubts McKee a little bit. He seems to be not as trusting of her and her abilities. And then she says that they can actually use Cortana for information and things. And we were talking about this earlier and I think it's maybe time to give up on Cortana going back to her season one self, or season one look. I'm so bleak. Yeah. It was never going to happen. Yeah. I'm so sad. Well, like to show the quality change again each season. And I was saying before, too, that I think this version of Cortana actually kind of looks more like OG Cortana, like the old, old, old Cortana. So it's like, okay, I mean, if they change your look every season, just to play around with it because they literally did that in the video games. Like, okay, that's fine. They're kind of like going meta with that. Interesting. But we do see in the scene that McKee wants to use Cortana for information because she could know lots of stuff. I mean, it's kind of alluded to that Cortana might know about the Halo or that Halo, which is pretty interesting. This whole scene, though, the way that kind of McKee's actress portrays this is it kind of seems like she has something else in mind in terms of what info she wants from Cortana. It's pretty interesting. Like McKee's character is like really developing in a different way than she was in the first season. It seemed like she was aligned with the Covenant and she was like, I'm going to help them because she hates humans and blah, blah, blah, but she's showing a completely different side. I wonder if her death at the end of season one has maybe changed her in some way. And maybe the Covenant would just kind of like, oh, we're done with you, whatever. And now she's like, oh, you want to do me like that? I think it has a lot to do with the scene that will not be mentioned of her having feelings for chief and like how she seemed to have a bit of a change of mindset after that because there was a whole thing with her having like a little plasma sword in her fingernail and then she pulled it out and decided I'm not going to kill chief. And there's also the exchange that she has with Arbiter who like is ripping on her like, you stop me from doing my thing. He's like, that was my redemption as the Arbiter. So that was actually what he was set out to do is kill chief and she stopped it. So he's that's why he's mostly pissed at her. But also it's during that rant, he, when he was yelling at her, I think in the subtitles when I went back to Smocha, what did he say you are your life to me or something along those lines? Like maybe Arbiter's the one who brought McCabe back to try and help him find chief. Maybe I guess there was that moment that he didn't say it in those words, but he said that she lives by his grace. That one that was the words that he said. It could be like Arbiter went back, found McKee, healed McKee, didn't tell the high rocks the rest of the cupboard. So like maybe it's like a weird thing, like you do what I say, I don't throw you back to like the high rocks. He'll just kill you out right now. Yeah. I mean, we're going to jump ahead a little bit, but that kind of makes sense in the later scene when they're back at high charity and she's like, what are we doing here? It means when it seems like she hadn't been back since. So maybe you're onto something with that. Interesting. Well, we'll get to that because that scene's got a whole bunch of other stuff to get through as well. So before we jump ahead to that, we get back to chief and chief is healing from his wounds. He obviously got just annihilated in the battle on reach and he gets off the table and he's heard real bad. Like he actually needs to support himself to get up and he's like really, really fucked up and he kind of seems to, he looks over at Riz and he kind of seems to show a little bit of remorse for pushing her as much as he did earlier in the season. Remember after Riz was injured at the end of season one, she was then pushed straight back into training and then, you know, ate shit when she felt that waterfall. So like, she seems to kind of feel a little bit remorseful. One criticism I'd have in the episode is it seems like chief tonally seems to flip up quite a lot, like he kind of shows remorse, you know, for the way he treated Riz now and then all of a sudden he's cold and angry again. Like he kind of just seemed emotionally all over the place at times. I mean, it kind of works if you're trying to play it as like he's a little bit unstable, but it just kind of, it seemed to change quite a lot. I would say it's probably that he is unstable because one, he just went through full on like halve when long that fight wasn't just like stoic like mission, but then he sees one of his best friend die, then he doesn't know where Kai is, he probably assumes Kai is dead and then he sees Riz on the verge of death. So maybe like, because he hasn't really experienced emotions for long, maybe all of this like death and grief and all that stuff and losing a whole planet, he's just kind of like fucking him up in like a massive way. So that's why he's like just bouncing like between different emotions. Plus there's Halsey again. We know he doesn't like Halsey, maybe it's just like everything about his mind. Yeah. Yeah. In that conversation, in that scene with Halsey, he also says, you know, acknowledges that the Spartans now have free will so they can kind of choose how they make decisions. So instead of like for Riz instead of saying, okay, Vanix lost, let's get out of here. That would have been the smart choice. But the empathetic choice, the emotional choice was leave no man behind or at least let's get his body. Even, you know, a proper send or kind of thing. So it's interesting, like they dive a little bit into the, the emotional sort of psychology of the Spartans in season one, and they are doubling down on it in season two so far. And it's great. I'm loving it. With the machines, what are your machines stuff? Again, it just reminds me of kind of Halo four, because again, that was the big talking point between like him and Katana is just like, who's the machine? It's the Spartan machines, AI's machine. So it's just, I keep seeing those little things throughout like this, this entire season specifically was like, oh, so this is just, you really are just riffing on four or five aren't you? And maybe even if I haven't placed, I don't know, but it's just, it's, they obviously had that story they wanted to tell initially, but they just couldn't. And now they're just like, oh, this is now what we can do. And yeah, I keep seeing it. Well, it's a good thing or bad thing depends if you like those games. Fair enough. Well in that, in that conversation as well, Chief does also acknowledge that, you know, only left and for dead, you know, very much says, okay, well, they already, there's no hiding it. They absolutely just abandoned us. So it's going to be really interesting to see though, obviously be amping it up for, for later on in the, in the season, but it's going to be really interesting to see when they confront, when Chief confronts Aakison and Orni and everyone there. And it's still kind of asking the question, like, like Chief is thinking, where's Kai? You know, obviously Kai was on the planet. She must be dead. You know, that's kind of what they, what they know of Kai. And obviously we kind of, we, we find out what happens to Kai, which we'll get into later. But that's going to be interesting as well. You know, when Chief, Chief and Kai come face to face, that's, ooh, it's going to be good. Damn trader. But we also learned that Chief has been out for two days. He was put into a coma because, yeah, he was really, really badly injured. And there was a really interesting part here as well, where he says he could have stopped them. I'm assuming he means Oni and Aakison, he kind of is like, almost like he's, he's like falling unconscious, but he says he could have stopped them if he had his armor. And then he says, if she was with me, and obviously we've moved to a quarter time. I don't know. If he had his armor and Cortana and everything, he probably thinks to himself, he could have saved the planet because like, yeah, he means mine, and he's, because again, back on, he's like mental state. He's probably like thinking, I'm the master chief. I'm supposed to be the unkillable badass who like to save everyone. And so I think he's going, if Oni didn't leave and I had my suit, I still have Cortana, either I could have used her help or she could have taken over again. So just like, you know, go killing mode and just murder everything. Yeah. That's what I thought was quite interesting where he said he could have stopped them. I was thinking like, Oh, who does he mean? Does he mean Oni? He could have stopped them from abandoning everyone or does he mean he could have stopped the whole freaking covenant. So maybe he's feeling grief of like, you know, reach fell and it's kind of his, like he feels like, you know, it's my fault kind of thing. So they're doing, again, they just continue to do interesting things with cheap. And I'm all for it. Well, they also link back that later on. Just quickly, like when there's like a, he's a poster of like himself, like to join his fight. Yeah. And then you just stares at it and you're just like, ah, this is, yeah. So he does blame himself because he probably thinks, yeah, he failed because he didn't have all of these tools, I guess. Yeah, it's a lot darker season two. It's a lot darker, but it's, it's getting really, really good. Something Halsey says that they need to like hide away and sort of come up with a plan. I don't know. She didn't really say what they wanted to do that she have like a plan in mind. She wants to hide out from the covenant from a bit, hide out from only because if only fine chief is still alive, that's not going to be good for them. So I think she was a lay low and then slowly convince chief like, hey, this halo thing's pretty cool. Am I right guys? Let's just, you know, go over there. Yeah, you should check it out. We should check it out. Anyway, so moving on, we are back with McKee and she has a nice interesting little scene with Cortana. I thought it was quite funny how she tries to call on Cortana and like she starts saying some things. Yeah, yeah. And then Cortana is like, you know, you could just press the button. It's just like behind her. Quick before we get into that, the little device that that's Cortana's in, do you think they're now going to go get the game thing and just have it like go into chief's helmet? Could be. I think so. I would like that. Honestly, just have it. I think he gets it and just pops it in. But yeah, we have a little scene where McKee and Cortana were talking and Cortana says her and she worked together, but she kind of a hesitate when planes like their relationship. So it feels like she's kind of hiding things from McKee and Cortana speaks the language. Yeah. She speaks in a halo. I like the clap back there like like as soon as McKee was like in an angry and speaking saying healy, Cortana's just like, I understand what you're saying. You got no power. Bye. Oh, it was great that was kind of an interesting scene setting up their story for a little bit later. But McKee has a really interesting line at the end of the scene where she says there are all kinds of prisons. And that is really interesting because she could be referring to herself being a prisoner of the Covenant still. She could be a prisoner of the Arbiter like we were kind of referring to earlier. And that kind of that's that's a lot of different characters kind of kind of relates to that line as well. I feel like she's in his own prison and you know, Rizz and the other Spartans are in their own prison of like, how do I get out of the spot mold and things? So it's something I was going to remark on later. But I feel like this episode had so many great lines of dialogue, just so many. I'm going to keep mentioning them as we go through, but it's just really, really cool lines of dialogue in this episode. I thought of like, instead of like, you know, being literal, like, prisoner of like Covenant, you want to say whatever, I thought it was like more like a prisoner of your own mind or like, prisoner of death sort of deal because like, technically she died, but then she's not dead. So she like, trapped in between, like a whatever, I don't know, there's probably like way more layers to it. Right, and then we move back to the group with Chief and everyone and Kwan and Chief see each other. I think Chief wakes up and Kwan is there. They see each other for the first time since episode three of season one, it's been a while for sure. It's been a very long time. And I think that was interesting is that they kind of like were very cold and just with each other. And I was like, rightly so. They barely know each other. I mean, they literally like they spent like 17 minutes of screen time together in season one. Yeah, not even. Did you guys see the interaction of them seeing each other again going differently? I thought it was going to be like, I don't know, Kwan being like, Oh, that's Chief. So good to see you. I was surprised. I thought that made perfect sense. They were just kind of like old and distant. Chief is in that place. It makes sense. Like, you're not dead. Nice. Good job. Not dying. Thanks. Thanks you. The only thing I could make sense out of it was it was a bit of a flip flop from the first time they met where she wakes up on the Pelican injured and he was kind of like watching over her. Now it's the other way around a little bit. It's kind of like a little bit of a symmetry there, but otherwise nothing special. Well, in that previous scene with with Halsey and Chief, we've got to mention Halsey gave him that I guess some kind of anesthesia or something to put him down again, just so he can rest a little bit more. So he's been out for another day. So it's now been about three days after the events of last week's episode and they are heading to Alaria. I wanted to ask, is it Alaria? I assume that's how you pronounce it. I wanted to ask, is Alaria a big location in Halo at all? I don't think it's not familiar to me. It's not if it is a part of the Halo universe. It's a smaller park portion. It's just like Madrigal in the first season, it's in the lore, but it's a very small part of it. It's like a deep cut sort of deal, you have to like read like five different books and even then it's like a sentence like a passing reference in one terminal passage or something. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we do we do we do learn that we're heading to Alaria. I thought Alaria was really cool as like a setting. It was like a really cool sort of sci-fi show kind of setting like it was an interesting looking planet where it's kind of like, I love it when they do these with planets and stuff and sci-fi movies and TV shows where it looks like it could be Earth, but there's certain things that are like a little bit different and not like geographically different or anything, but it just you get the sense that it's like a different thing. I really like the setting for this episode on Alaria. It's got that firefly kind of vibe to it again where they're at a planet in space. It's the future, but it's extremely rustic and it's like pilgrims like starting new lives on this planet. And it's all very like low tech, you know, people are just barely getting by. It's almost like old Earth in that respect. So we learned we're heading to Alaria before we get there. Chief goes to Bannek's body and I don't know if there's I think there's some dialogue with Kwan there, but I thought it was really interesting and this is where like chief kind of like I said, he's sort of thought like it was flip-flopping where he says this is a body. My friend isn't here. So he's kind of saying like his friend is gone like he doesn't care about the body. Like he's just like whatever dude and he's getting like so cold and like brutal. I think that's just his creepy mechanism like he's very limited, creepy mechanism like because he knows Riz is alive still so he can be a bit more like oh no, my fault, but with Vannek, Vannek's dead. He's like cool. My friend isn't there anymore. It's just his body, but even then like he probably has never actually had to pay respects to a body of fallen Spartan really other than like, you know, canonically when a Spartan dies, they basically just pop their bodies out into space and like, you know, salute. And then that's it. You move on with your day, you know, so it's like they never really had burial ceremonies in like that. That's interesting because there's something I want to mention on that later. So we'll get back to that one because ooh, ooh, okay, this just kind of wins anyways. We get to, we get to Elaria and Riz is immediately rushed into surgery. And they kind of are like, you know what, she's going to be all right. Like it's such a go. So like we do feel like, oh, okay, but she is going to be all right. Something I didn't think about at this point in the episode as well was where Kessler was because we haven't seen him yet. We find out then Kessler was on that, or not find out, but we remember that Kessler was on that transport ship and then Soren and Lyra had to find out what happened to him and they questioned the there's a shopkeeper there who obviously has like a manifest or whatever and they figure out that, you know, Kessler is here somewhere and they need to go, they sort of set off to go and find their son. Really, I thought a really cool storyline, which we'll get to. I think that was actually one of the most interesting stories with Soren and Lyra so far in the entire show. And why is Soren is awesome. I thought we got to that. Slap trade, kid's slap trade, that's what I thought, Russell and Hallicoot was very cagey about it. And you see Soren and Lyra just like, what are you talking about, pulls out the book. I'm like, oh, so you're just like selling the young ones, especially that one, and I was like slap trade, or it's like a sex thing, which is gross and like, yeah, I go bad. Moving on, before we get canceled. And we go back to Kwan, and I have to say, before we even start talking about Kwan today, I'm really starting to like her, guys. Or she's a thousand times better than she used to be. But holy shit, a great episode of this episode. Oh, man. And it starts where she confronts chief pretty much and says like, we need to bury Vannik. It's like what you do when you lose people is you bury them. And chief says really interesting part of this scene was really interesting because there was a very big binary between chief and Kwan's kind of thoughts around this. Chief says there's no need. Spartans give up their lives when they become one. So it's kind of like, I think he says they die when they become a Spartan in the real world. They die. When you think of how I think they were doing it in a show where when they take the kids, they leave the family with a flash clone and then the flash clone dies. So as far as the family knows, their kids dead. They're already dead. So it's really interesting because chief is like, yeah, I mean, Spartans like give up their lives. Like it's just that's a body. Like earlier, he says, that's just a body that's not my friend. My friend is gone, which is really interesting. And then Kwan shows a lot more emotion and a lot more grief about like losing someone that you cared about or something. I loved the lines here that all her dialogue here where she kind of implies that she wished she could have buried her father. She says, I wish I could have put them in the ground or she says you should put them in the ground and leave them there or they will follow you, which is like really powerful and a dollar was really great. And it's Kwan sort of leaves and she's going to go off and bury Vanek. It's kind of you think, oh, it's the end of the scene. And then one of the most beautiful things I love the symbolism in this is chief looks up and he sees a bird flying near him, a bird. And that happens later in the episode as well with a bird is still kind of flying around chief. So it's obviously symbolic about Vanek's love for his birds and things and it's following him like grief, where Kwan says, put him in the ground, leave them there or they will follow you. And I was like, oh, the symbolism, like the absolutely beautiful, I love that. Just touching on Kwan and how like we all agree, very much, she's better this season. I think it's 100% due to the writing, because I think last season she was given a lot of the exposition and like very like very corny sort of dialogue and storylines, but now she's been given actual good writing and actually a good direction because the actress was always, she was good, but was always hampered by that sort of writing, directing stuff. So I think now that she's given time to actually put more into it and like the opportunity to do that, I think she'll be just getting better in a way. Yeah, I think she's got a lot more opportunity to kind of like blip the character breeze a little bit more, especially later on, which she actually has some funny lines because I don't think Kwan has ever had an opportunity to be funny in the show up to this point. It was always just like plot, plot, plot, plot, plot, plot, or just like terror, terror, terror, life is terrible misery, like moving up from there, we see Lyra and Soren, they're on like a track or something, they're getting taken to where, you know, Kessler was last seen or whatever. And Lyra very much confronts Soren about like, like be serious about this, like you just lost people and reach with just glass and you're kind of making friends and admiring the scenery, that was quite, quite funny. I'm actually liking Lyra as well, she's growing on me a lot. I like her as like, she's very much like this strong female character. That's not like, you know, there's a lot of strong female characters that get criticized because they're just strong female characters that don't really have like any flaws or any kind of emotional growth. But it feels like Lyra is like this strong, powerful female character, but she is a little bit of a flaw as well, and she's got some like, ages to her, which are a little bit rough. I'm really liking her. I mean, big question, mic drop moment of her taking her wig off and look, big question. I was going to say big question. Did you guys know she was wearing a wig? No, I thought it was just a new haircut. However, I feel like she was just covering up because it looked like stress, sort of like alopecious sort of deal, like maybe like when she cools her hair, that's like crappy. Yeah. It all kind of like, okay, it makes sense that that was a wig, but I never really thought of it that way either. I thought it was more just her trying to be stylish, you know, and just that's how she did her hair and kind of thing. I was like, so like it was so, it kind of came out of nowhere. I was like, she's wearing a wig. Okay. Are we reading into this? Maybe it's some kind of sickness that's the well, well, it's probably cool with her current mental state because as she was talking, you're saying, talking to someone, like, she take it seriously. Like crap, she's gone horrible, lost her son, planet's gone, you lost friends, like maybe like she's just been so stressed out for the past like six or so months, which is like, and which is why like hair, because hair is something that goes when you get stressed and like all that stuff. So maybe that was just like her way to try and save face. Hmm. But I would like to say also, with this dialogue exchange, I don't think so. And I think Soren has a pellet and it's still in there. Oh, like suppressing his emotions kind of thing. Because like, again, like he's the comedic relief and like he's making friends and stuff, but even later on, whilst you do see some emotion, it's nowhere near what the other Spartans have. Maybe it's either he's gotten used to it or the pellet also malfunctions. So it's like only like half working and just because he cracks a lot of jokes in the opening scene as well. Being fricking attacked by a covenant chief was like almost dead. Vanix just died. He's just died. And he's like cracking jokes about the big brute that's just jumped in. That's an interesting theory. It's either pellet or he just copes with grief and stuff with humor, which we don't we all who does that is there's interesting talking points I have about Soren and Spartans and stuff, which we'll get into later. But that's that's a good jumping off point for that. So moving on to the next scene, we see Riz is awake after her life saving surgery. And she has an interesting talk here with Halsey about how she was augmented. She says one out of three does she say that like one out of three people survive augmentation. Yeah. Is that what she was referring to? Yeah, it's absolutely what she was meaning because then she also says like I wasn't the strongest I wouldn't I wasn't the best, but I survived. Yeah, I thought that was quite interesting as well. And I thought that was kind of her referring to Vanik sort of saying like Vanik was stronger than me. How did I survive this? And I'm wondering if maybe she felt that guilt of like Vanik shouldn't have died. It should have been me kind of saying because Vanik is stronger than me. So that's why she went back for him kind of interesting a lot that you can read into that that just that one little load of dialogue. I think this thing also showcased how Halsey manipulated them when they were younger. Like the return of what's how she was talking to Riz and the choice of words. It's like, Oh, so this is how you gas lit a bunch of kids to be like, Hey, you want to become super soldiers? Fair enough. Yeah, the way she said that like you will have to work hard and like she's very direct about it. Like also sounds like she's talking to a child. Yeah. So later on, we get an update for chief from Halsey and I thought it was quite interesting. So Halsey obviously says to chief listeners is like, she's not very good. So you know, don't expect her to kind of be back. And then chief says an interesting line here. He says, none of us are what they were and now we're expendable. So obviously they're not the Spartans, super soldier machines that they once were. Now they're kind of, you know, thinking free willing people and they're kind of changing a little bit. But, you know, could Aksen have seen that and decided to make, you know, get rid of these Spartans so that he could make better ones? I'm sure it was probably part of his motive the whole time to initiate his own Spartan program that he was in control of and running because it felt like, like, you know, when he, when he did the original, like sort of we're bending and reaching, we're going to make sure that like he kills cobalt units. And then he makes sure that silver team is there and he wants to eradicate all of them. It felt kind of soft and a bit like, really dickish to say, I'm just going to kill the Spartans because of what happened to my sister. Obviously, remembering that then the sister went through augmentation but didn't survive it. So he kind of has this hatred for Spartans. So my, my, my kind of thinking days, maybe he sees that the Spartans are getting free will and he doesn't want them to have free will because he wants control over them. So that's maybe why he killed the Spartans or left them for dead on reach. I think also like based enough, like his book counterpart, I think he just like was jealous of Halsey for like taking all the money away from everything and how, like in the first thing as well, like they were saying they funneled so much money into the Spartan program. And he could have used, Hey, you see the Spartans are doing free will, they're not doing what they've been told and use that as the pitch for like, I don't need to be like, I will do it better. So he's just like using them as like, here's where Halsey messed up, trust me guys, I can do it better. Like, that sort of, it's, it's, it's interesting. I mean, either way, he definitely left the Spartans on reach to be destroyed. So it's going to be, like I said, it's going to be really interesting to see when she confronts Akkerson. But anyways, we move on to back to Kwan for some of the cool, I think some of the cooler better scenes in the episode, where she's trying to bury Vanek and as you were saying earlier, she had a little bit of comedy here, she's struggling to like drag him up. Why are you so big? She kind of, yeah, she kind of starts talking to him as well, which I was like, I like that it was kind of like, you know, a little bit of comedy and we saw another, like you guys were saying on another side of Kwan. I feel like she's now, instead of just this one dimensional character, she actually feels like she's got a lot of personality. And I'm coming around in her, I'm actually, I'm actually all full Kwan this season, especially with her connections to bigger things, which we're going to get into right now. And I liked in the scene how she kind of wanted, she kind of wanted Vanek to represent the others that she kind of wished that she could bury, which I kind of, I thought that was like an interesting character moment for her to kind of, she wants closure. And she's kind of telling chief, like, you need to do this as well so that you can have the closure that I desperately want. I'm going to try and have the closure with this, so I thought it was really, really interesting. And then we get to the interesting stuff where she's interrupted by a religious group. And if that religious group looks familiar at all, that is the group from sanctuary in episode one. Now, first thing I thought, or at least it's the same, we know, we know, we know, same religious group. And it might not be the same people, because they all died basically, but they kind of look similar. They were wearing the similar. They're of the same job. Yeah. I mean, there's the same persuasion. Didn't they walk into lava or something, and it was kind of like walked into the death storm that was coming at them? Yeah. But anyways, they were on sanctuary, and they didn't get on any of the rescue ships and stuff to get off. And then obviously, sanctuary was glass. So we thought, oh, cool. I even remember talking, when we were talking with Drew about it, we said, like, is that it? Because the one shaman lady goes up to chief, and she's like, you are the demon, or she says something along those lines. And we were thinking, like, oh, she's like a chosen one again, or whatever. And then she walked off, and we're thinking, ah, some aguffin, we'll never see that again. And here they are, again, really interesting. I think it's the same group of people, and I think it's really interesting to see where this is going to go. So we'll get into them in a second, but they want to burn Vanik. They want to obviously cremate him. And then chief gets in there, obviously, he sees what's going on, and he gets up there. And a really interesting shot show as well is that the blanket gets pulled off of Vanik and chief gets a look at his friend. And this is like the first time he's kind of looking at his friend after he's died. And he kind of has this emotional moment where he's like, he's kind of faced with it. And this is where it's kind of flipping because now he's showing a little bit more vulnerability. I think that's where he finally comes to terms with what's happening. And he just kind of like gives into this notion of like, okay, I need to deal with this rather than just like using the military training of just like, you just push it down. And he finally kind of like has that realization of this was somebody I cared about and I need to grieve. Because I think it's I think it's Kwan that says that she says, you know, this isn't a death. This isn't death. This is loss, which is like that's dad, dad head home because chief is so used to like seeing the soldiers around him, like the normal soldiers die. And he's just like, okay, that dude's dead moving on. He actually lost like someone died. He was close to him. Now it's actually lost like this is really, this is actually affecting him. Great line of dialogue again. Great dialogue. This whole episode through. It's amazing. And then Dan, you said something earlier, which I wanted to touch on here is that they that this religious group, the culty people, they want to burn Vanek and then chief is kind of like, he almost stops them, but then he looks up and he says he wants to put him in the sky. So do you think it's referring to that they want to just like lift him off into space? Still impression was kind of like the, they did like the burials at sea essentially with Spartans where they send their bodies out into space when they're like that does like we would do if you were on a ship in the, in the, in the navy or something, they send the bodies into the sea, like that's the style of funeral that you do in space as you shoot the bodies out into space. Whereas maybe he meant burning him, like, okay, let's burn him and send his ashes into the sky. But essentially, initially I took it as like, he'd rather send him in this space unless he sees it as kind of like an equivalent exchange of either burn the body, let the ashes take to the sky or put his body in space, kind of like the same thing. Yeah. Anyways, there was some nice relationship building with Saren and his wife. We didn't get, we didn't actually get to see them together a lot last season because Saren was off with Pawn and they, weird little crusade that they were on. But I thought it was quite interesting that they find, so they eventually find like this place that supposedly has Kessler and they hit in there and immediately these people are like, no, he's our son now, like they've just taken him as their own kind of thing. And it's, I thought that was kind of interesting because it was like, they even say at one point as well, they say, he may be your son, but he's our family now. And I was like, ooh, that kind of is like, interesting, is Kessler not going to want to go back or something? And it's kind of interesting. And he tells Lyra, okay, listen, give me a sec, I'm going to negotiate. And I think one of Saren's cooler scenes is this negotiation. I bet he's going to walk in and talk to his mother, everybody. That's what I was thinking too. But then he was so like, passive and chill, very chill. He was talking about where these people live and how it's like, you know, they kind of have to scavenge to get by and things like that. And he says, like, but it's not, you know, it's still closed. It's not a bad place to grow up. And he says, I grew up in hell. And he talks about that, which is super interesting. This is why I also thought like Saren's pellet might still be in there because he's like unreasonably calm for like the situation and is able to be like, hey, stop, I'm gonna do this thing. And whilst he has emotion, it sort of feels a bit like put on, like he might have dropped a mask a bit, but then like he still has that air of like, I'm just trying to persuade you. And I saw that. That's a good theory. Yeah. I took it as like he was being like, hard businessman of like, what do I got to do to get these people to understand and can give back to my son, like he got a little emotional towards the end when he ends that whole speech with like, but in the end, he's still my son. Yeah. And then that's like we cut to Lira after that, I was waiting for Saren to show up just like covered in blood. Like, oh, he just destroyed those people. I was when they cut back to Lira, I was waiting for like gunshots or something. Yeah. I was gonna be like, oh, I thought he was gonna murder them at that point. But we do cut back to Lira and she finds a figure in the darkness just ahead of just ahead of her. And she bears off to go and find Kessler. He's got his master tube, helmet on and whoo, it's Kessler. And then she takes the helmet off and it's not Kessler, not Kessler, bait and switch, but not Kessler. No, but it's not, it's not Kessler. Then we find out that Kessler was taken. And we don't know who at that point, but he's been taken by someone. We'll get back to that because we then go back to the funeral and they are in fact cremating Vanak. Vanak. Geez, dude, names. Vanak. Come on, bro. Vanak. We're Vanak, the guard died, I can't even get his name right. We do see that they're doing the whole funeral for him. And Halsey actually shares some nice words, which I thought was pretty interesting. She kind of showed a little bit of empathy towards the situation. And then she gives those two, he gives some nice emotional words just talking about how this was a close personal friend of his, which I thought this was really good for him. It showed a lot of emotional growth that he's starting to kind of care for the people around him and things. That's why I said I was kind of flopping, but this, this I liked, the scene I liked. One thing I want to say in, with Halsey's speech, talk and chief's talk, Halsey very much was saying like, oh, he was a great, like his parents would be proud and it felt more of that manipulative sort of like speech, like how he tries to like convey people on it. I care about them. Like, I did the what's best for them. And then she just jumped in and like, yeah, no, his parents didn't, he's dead for like years ago. And that's why he steps in and tells him like, this is who he was. Which kind of shows like, did Halsey actually care about the other spots or did she actually care, only care about John? Like the way she never really got to know the others as well, maybe. I think she's playing games as well, like her and Accus and I both play in different games. Like one's playing chess, one's playing fucking checkers and I don't know. Jeez. Tom's got all the various episodes. I definitely think no matter what Halsey's got some sort of ulterior motive going on the background that we don't, we will may never know what she's ultimately thinking because that's Halsey in the games too. Like Halsey was always manipulating things. R.I.P. Vanik. We love you. I'm so sad. Vanik is so cool, man. Yeah. Chief then leaves the funeral and Halsey kind of follows him and chief explains he wants to go after Accus and he wants to go after Oni. That's what he's thinking. He's got to go and chase him down and make him pay for this or just confront them. I'm so interested to see how that's going to go when he kind of confronts Accus and everyone. And Halsey says it's stupid. It's pretty much suicide and she's very much trying to convince him like, no, don't go. And this is where she says she didn't choose chief. She found him, which I thought was quite interesting. She also says, and this is interesting, whatever built the halo left something in chief. What are we, what is our take on that? I'm going to link back to Halo 4 again. The forerunners and like making like the, what's the kind of the mantle is the mantle of like responsibility. That's a big thing. Like the forerunners controlled the universe and I'd like to give them to humans. And maybe in this timeline, they've just put it in chief that like, yes, he will be the leader sort of deal or like he's destined to like be able to control the halo's. You meet the like the librarian character and then she's just like, yep. So like we're doing this for humans and then she accelerates chief's evolution. So maybe they're just like taking a different way where like chief is like more evolved, like his DNA. So like maybe that's why he can tie it into like the books and so on. Like he at a young age, John is extremely talented and smart and strong. And like that's why Halsey took him in essentially because of the traits that he had. So Halsey is pretty much as well saying like you can't go after them because like you, you're going to die. Like you, it's a suicide mission kind of thing. And then chief with the callback of like what this whole kind of episode was about, he says, I'm already dead, which is like he's obviously talking about how like, you know, it was the flash loan and they, you know, when they were taking his Spartans, they were killed. That was like, that was brutal. I was like, damn, bro, that was like the perfect thing to say, you know, when you think of the perfect kind of like, um, what is the word, come back, you think of the perfect comeback? And then you can just say it like that was damn chief. Well said, bro. It's like a mic drop. Can't really. I always think the comeback to like two or three business days after this. Yeah, that's the problem. That's when you think about it, like as soon as you finish, like, as soon as you walk away with the conversation, I should have sent that. Anyways, we move on to, I think probably the like craziest, just mind if episode, episode scene of the episode, which is when the cult lady, so I like grew old and researched and whatever this lady is referred to as the sanctuary shaman sanctuary, meaning the planet sanctuary. So it's definitely the lady from episode one who tells chief that he's the devil or chosen one. She speaks to Quan and just kind of starts speaking and she says she speaks for all planets. And she kind of just vanishes, but so do all of the other cult people, like all of a sudden Quan is there by herself. And I was like, what the hell? And that was really, that was really creepy. And this is what got all the questions. And I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to swing it over to Tom, see if we can answer all these questions. I wanted to say, I'll get from the opening scene in episode one, which I'm pretty sure they are. Are they magic? Is Quan hallucinating? Is this connected to chief somehow? The monster is coming is one thing she says. And then just, I have a big question that says, is Tom right? Okay, so I still think this is the flood. And specifically when she said she speaks for the planets, I'm like, oh, it's like a hive mind. Yeah, obviously. I think that is one too. Yeah. Like a hive, like a great mind, like maybe this is like, because all this stuff's happening like maybe they've changed the flood, so a bit more intelligence like, okay, we're just waiting now. And what we thought was like, the shaman and stuff is like trying to help stop the flood. Maybe that religious sect is like, is the flood. Like maybe like, because they're also big thing with flood is like my manipulation memories or that whole blue. Maybe this is like the way to manipulate to try and free them from the halo. Maybe like the show was like, hey, you need to get to halo, you need to stop the monster from coming. But when they get there, maybe in season three, it's like, oh, low JK his just a giant grave mind, low get pranks sucker because she says she says the monster's coming. And I thought it was really interesting is that quan then has a flashback where she's in the rubble and she's drawing like on the cave painting, which I remember looking at that and I was like, it doesn't look like anything, but it's just shapes. There was like the round shape, somebody was talking about that being like a monitor on the halo. It's like, okay, is that a monitor? Is it the grave mind? There's all these different ways that could go with it. I think that this was more of a hallucination, but it could have been a vision because then she snaps out of it and she's still surrounded by people, including Riz and Riz is looking at her like, what's happening over here. Yeah, but well, Riz is the only one looking at it. True. Yeah, I was going to say Riz seemed to notice, but like it was only Riz. Everyone else was just chill, but everyone else was the, the, the cult. Do you think none of the cult people were actually there then? Only, only I think things were there. Oh, don't do the same. I think they were there, but this links into the hive mind thing. True. What if they're all just like, they're all just controlled by the grave mind or something? Yeah. What if they're actually trying to recruit quan to be a new grave mind? Is that how great this is? They try to do it with keys in the video game. They try to make keys a grave mind. True. At this point, we get back to McKee. And this is one of the big interesting scenes as well because she seems to be a little bit of trouble. They're now back at a high charity. The arbiters told them after everything had happened and reached all of their, their whole fleet has been recalled back to, to high charity. And McKee seems to be in a bit of trouble. And there was an interesting theories about maybe like the high charity people don't even know that McKee is still alive. Maybe the arbiter saved her or something like there's a lot of interest there because she seems to be playing with the arbiter to go against high charity orders and say, like, we don't need to, we don't need to battle them, we can go straight to the halo. So it's very interesting there. And she, and he's about to end her. He's about to like fricking completely take her out. And then boom, we see halo, this big vision in the classic halo shot of like the ground looking at the scene, the ring wrap around. Oh, just a great shot. And it's Cortana. Cortana knows what halo looks like. I feel like that's a, that's a big knowledge moment. Oh, true. Oh, yeah. She said, yeah, because it's different in the show where she's part of his brain. So like it can easily just buy a cheap saw that. So like cool. She can see what she saw essentially downloads the memories. But yeah, Cortana saved the hell out of McKee. I think McKee was definitely dead then. And then obviously McKee uses that to manipulate the arbiter into helping her find halo and the arbiter's like, okay, cool. And he makes a big Ui and now I'm setting off to check a Ui and then I heading off to trying to find a arbiter, arbiter trying to find halo. I thought it was quite interesting as well as that McKee kind of looked over Cortana and Cortana was like, yeah, a little like, like I got you thought here, you know, how in halo to your theories, Tom, I can't do it anymore because there's the heretic in halo to like when you first place the other you like high charity says you need to go take this guy out. What if this this arbiter will become the heretic filling because he's abandoned the higher rocks. He's going with McKee because he's doing their own thing, staying that the higher rocks are wrong. And the whole thing why they sent a game arbiter over here to was like, Hey, he's speaking plus me blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What if that's what they're doing now in a different way? So we do get ROG arbiter as well because then the one that goes to stop the current arbiter who turns into the heretic. Yes, because the current arbiter also did mention to McKee that saying some of his dialogue that she was being blasphemous. So that's Tom, Tom is an MVP of this episode. She feels like she feels the role role of guilty spark elf just like putting the ideas in this elite's head. And that's when the house like, ah, nah, okay, we just need to kill them because they're threatening the great journey and blah, blah, blah, blah. We then head back to malaria and Soren and Lira are back after their little expedition. And Lira go shopping for some tools and she is so cool, man. I'm loving Lira. She's really cool. She goes full Negan and wraps them up around the basement of intimidation techniques. So great. You love this. And she obviously did it to get the info that they needed. She's intimidating us. That's what I'm talking about. She's like the strong, powerful female, female character. But like she shows that she's a bit like edgy and rougher on the edges and I dare do she's so cool. I think it just showed for loans like a mother could go to say that kid because she even mentions like, oh, yeah, I, I caused him some discomfort when I kind of was here. So I realized I would do anything to getting back and I would kill do anything to hurt the person who took him. And then it's just like think, you know, it's like the change of time is like, yeah, right. Wouldn't that be so bad if someone knew about it? Oh, yeah. So we find out then we get the information from little shopkeeper. We don't know if his skull was given by Lira, but we find out the UNSC has Kessler, whatever they want for them, a 10 year old boy that is technically an orphan because he was found by himself. What kind of I mean, can, can Spartan augmentation DNA be passed on to kids, do Spartans ever have kids? Well, I mean, they can happen to anyone. So maybe like a 10 year old kids just going to look like a 16 year old next time we see him. I guess, Kessler, Kessler, I don't know, I think he's absolutely going to become the Spartan. Yeah, there's, there's, I feel like just the high chance of it now that they've mentioned it. Yeah, I think you'll maybe be sent to the augmentation and maybe we lose Kessler. No, it's too dark, we're moving on. Next scene, we see Riz, she's still recovering and eventually she sort of sits up in her bed and she sees people, the Amish people outside. And she seems happy and sort of waves one of them, waves at her and she waves at one of them. And then she has the big scene at the end where she chats to chief and she decides that she's going to stay admitting that her fight is over and immediately chief is not not accepting it. He's like, this is not happening. Like, stand up now. That's an order. Like, we're getting out of here. And Riz is like, no, dude, you know, she's retiring and she's up a very labored. Really? Yeah, I like how chief is like, stand up and she's like, let me get like, crumply stand up real quick. But then another great line of dialogue in this episode, she says to chief. Talking about the grief and things like that, she says to him, make peace with pain before it crushes you. Oh, dude, this episode has so many great lines of dialogue. And that like, I don't know if it's mentioned, but that that's all the chief has left. I mean, so, so team is pretty much his family. I think it's, it's all of this is building up really nicely for like, for him to get caught on her back, because he'll feel completely empty, having lost his whole team and then he'll put the little chip back in and be like, Cortana, she's back. Right. And that's, yeah, I think that that's pretty much the end of the episode. Nothing else big happened that made us hate the living crap out of the character. No, Kai is alive. Kai is alive. And she's joined Aakison, they're just buddies now. And we are on onyx, which you guys called. And she is training a whole bunch of new soldiers. Now I wrote down your soldiers were those Spartans, Spartan threes, as I said, I pressure they were all Spartans. Well, that's probably what I mean, are the Spartan threes are the Spartan threes as strong as like, what is, what is, what is chief? Is he a Spartan one to one to the Spartan two? So Spartan threes, are they as strong as Spartan twos? No, no, because I think they were augmented later on, like later on, and also like not as like invasive, like, yeah, I forget what the details are, but yeah, they weren't as powerful as twos, but they also had a higher, like, expectancy to live augmentation because of it. So there's more of them because of it, but they're also not as powerful. Anyways, that is the episode breakdown of episode five, just a, it's actually like a slow episode, but it was actually jam packed. There was a lot of stuff that was kind of going on in this episode. A lot of cool stuff happening, a lot of cool stuff developing blood blood blood blood blood. So what we, what do we think of this episode? Let's dive straight into our scoreboard. All right. So scoreboard for episode five, season two, hello. I would first last time. I'll start this time and say that I really enjoyed this episode. There's a lot of good stuff that happened. It was really long. Had some really cool moments with a lot of my, the characters that I'm starting to grow on. Like I'm liking what's going on with Juan. I like hers growth. I like Soren and Lyra's growth. I like this, everything that happened with chief and the fact that they did this whole tribute with Vanek and like, uh, Riz basically saying like, yep, I'm done, my time is up. I'm moving on to just, I'm going to go be an Amish person with these people on this planet. Uh, so I think the, it is a little bit of a slower episode, but I think it did a lot of good things. So I'm kind of, I'm landing more and like a 7.5. I think as far as like, I kind of wanted to go a little higher, but at the same time, it's kind of like, all right, well, yeah, it's, it's, it's good, it's a good episode. It's good. I would, I would agree that it was good, um, because not every episode needs to be like, you know, bombastic explosions, kill, kill, kill, kill. Um, yeah, again, like Dan, I enjoyed a lot of the character building. They did, um, there was lots of things where they set up like possible theories, which is why I had so many. Um, and yeah, I think it was a good sort of like rest episode before I'm assuming the next three are going to be just ball to the wall of just like, um, that stuff. Little bump that we're probably not going to see reach again, especially like all the marketing was like, you thought you thought like it'd be the entirety of like, the entire reach thing. That was kind of my big detriment that I've kind of skipped over was I'm upset that reach is done already. Like, I was, I was expecting the whole season to be like the whole, like the last end of the show, the last four episodes were going to be all reach battle, just battling for reach. So I'm a little like, eh, yeah, yeah, I thought they'd have like separate battles per episode, but I think they're trying to cram in a bunch of enough lore and like set set up for a hopeful season three if they get it, like that they're hoping for that. But in the end, I probably give it seven because yeah, good episode. Lots of fun stuff, interesting character development, but like, yeah, nothing like overtly amazing, but still good. Still too soon on the flood. And I'm sad that reach is already like, it's over. It's gone. Bye. Fun. As I reach. Well, for me, I, I have to say I really enjoyed this episode because it's a great episode to have after like you have like this big action packed emotional episode. It's a nice episode to have to kind of slow it down. I'm a big, big, big fan of pacing in movies and TV shows and whatever, especially TV shows where they can kind of slow it down for an episode and then like, you know, start building it back up again. So I liked that this was a bit of a slow episode. I feel like they, they opened up a whole bunch more story elements and things like that. I really love the symbolism of, you know, Vanik's, Vanik's tribute and like the bird that chases chief and the stuff with Kwan and talking about how she wanted to bury people and now she gets to bury Vanik. I liked all of that. Sorry. And I was going to knock this episode down because I was like, why are they trying to find Kessler? What happened to Kessler? Not realizing that I just didn't pay attention and didn't realize that Kessler was put on a transport ship two episodes ago. So now that that's explained and it is actually part of the show, I'm not going to knock it down for that. And this episode, I feel like did a great job, but it was a great character-centric episode and we got to see some good character moments and good character growth moments and I love these kinds of slow symbolic type of episodes. So for me, I give this episode an eight out of 10. I really, really like it as one of those, you know, slow it down just to pick it up. And as Tom said, I think that next couple of episodes are going to be balls to the walls. I don't think next episode is going to be action-packed. I believe next episode is titled Onyx. So I think that a majority of the episode will be, you know, maybe chief making his way to them or something. But I think we'll get a long episode to explain what Accusan and Kai have been up to. But then the last two episodes, I think, are going to get pretty crazy. But big, big things I liked about this episode, Kwan is interesting. Finally. She's interesting, Mackie Mackie Mackie Mackie Mackie Mackie Mackie I'm going to just practice all these things for a week. Mackie Mackie is great. She's interesting. Her character is getting really cool. I like that she's kind of moving away from the Covenant. She looks like a traitor. Like I was kind of theorizing and I really like it and I'm very excited. But I feel like one thing I want to say, I feel like this show is really hitting its stride as a series, you know, season one was kind of all over the place at times. I feel like they really have a purpose now. They know what they're trying to do with the show and they're doing it and they're really hitting their stride. I'm sure they're going to get a season three because this show is getting really, really good. I'm very, very excited about it. That is episode four of watching our podcast here for Halo season two. That was episode five. It's weird because we've got two episodes in the first drop. So like we're on episode four, but it's actually episode five anyways, we'll be back next weekend on Tuesdays at two PM PST, I believe. Yes. She's host of the show. Look at me. I don't even pay attention to the show. I don't even know what I'm doing here guys, but we are getting by. So please join us next week. We'll be over on YouTube two PM PST on the live from here so you can live chat with us and have some fun. Also head on over to kartship.com where you can check out a whole bunch of other cool stuff. Become a member because hey, why not? You could support independent creators like ourselves and some of the great people we have working behind the scenes at couch soup. Also anything else you want to check out, go and check out our YouTube channel. We've got some really cool stuff and yeah, as for us, we will see you next week. See you then Spartans or one more but Kai. Great mind. We love the space Amish. Yes. That was fun. Are you ready to go down the rabbit hole? The All Things Alice podcast will explore the cultural phenomena of Alice in Wonderland. Frank Bador, the author of the Looking Glass Wars trilogy, is your host through a wonder verse of interviews from all types of creators as they chronicle the dark yet empowering reality of Lewis Carroll's fantasies and answer the question, what is it about Alice that captivates us still today? The All Things Alice podcast, available wherever you listen to podcasts. (bell chimes)
Episode 5 slowed things down a bit after the last action packed episode. We breakdown the some powerful moments where they showed respect to Vanaak while further humanizing the Spartans. There is a lot of symbolism in this slower episode but great character development and some teases that we might get to Halo soon. Hell, we're even starting to like Kwon's story line.
