Watching Now: Halo Season 2 is a Watching Now podcast special from Couch Soup. Join us for reactions, reviews, and excitement about all things Halo. Whether you’re a casual or an expert, join us for some laughs and ultra-nerdy discussion! The new season of Halo is now streaming exclusively on Paramount+.
Thank you for watching and listening.
If you want more, consider joining as a member for some amazing perks: https://couchsoup.com/become-a-member/
Listen to our podcasts - https://couchsoup.com/podcasts/
NEW MERCH and more on Couch Soup https://couchsoup.com/merch/
Starring:
Nick McKay
Dan Morris
Thomas Richards
Editor: Nick McKay
Executive Producers: PJ Haarmsa & Drew Lewis
Follow Couch Soup
Twitter/X: @couchsoup
Instagram: @thecouchsoup
Facebook: @thecouchsoup
Follow Nick
Couch Soup Page: https://couchsoup.com/author/cubby82/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cubby82.tv/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cubby82_tv
Follow Dan
Couch Soup Page: Dan Morris
Twitter / X: @StarkyVash
Twitch: @StarkEvilVash
Follow Tom
Twitter/X: @echo5119
Follow Drew
Twitter / X: @DrewLewis
Are you ready to go down the rabbit hole? The All Things Alice podcast will explore the cultural phenomena of Alice in Wonderland. Frank Bedor, 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. From the team that brought you the award-winning show Retro Replay and the Emmy-nominated comedy series' con man comes a new idea just crazy enough to be good. Introducing Couch Soup! I know, I know, you're probably wondering, "What is Couch Soup?" Well, Couch Soup is content for your hungry nerd soul. 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 Spartans and welcome back to the watching now podcast over here on Couch Soup where we are diving into every new episode of Halo Season 2 and we are already on episode 6, so I'm just at the end of the season. Things are getting intense, things are getting cool, let's jump right into it and introduce the cast, you have myself, your host Nick and Kay, we also have reporting for duty, Dan, word word word, word word, Tom. Okay, and the soup man is back, what's up Drew? Hello, I am back, hello, I love you so much, let's talk about it. Hey, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, sorry. So what's up guys, welcome back to the podcast. I'm German, hello, okay, we're moving on, moving on, what's up, welcome back everybody and welcome back to you guys at home. So diving into episode 6 today which is titled Onyx, we are finally on Planet Onyx and it's very exciting, but before we dive into that I thought we could open the episode talking a little bit about the Spartans because we haven't talked much about Spartans so far the series have we? I mentioned them every now and then, but the Spartans are actually there's quite a lot of lore, quite a lot of deep history behind them and we're getting into different versions of the Spartans now so I thought it would be a cool opportunity to talk about the different versions of the Spartans because you get Spartan twos which Master Chief is one of those, then you get Spartan 3s, there was a Spartan 1, there's like a whole bunch of them so from our Halo experts Dan and Tom who have played through a lot of these games, give us a brief little synopsis of what makes the Spartan numbers different, so from my knowledge which I could be wrong, Spartan 1s is like side in Johnson which is just slightly just like basically super steroids I think, Spartan 1s, Spartan 1 is for regular people who put a mule near and then were murdered by the mule near. It's a mule near the armor, the armor, not the hammer, that Thor wheeled, but the same name. Yes. Okay. Do you think a certain Johnson would be a Spartan 4 wouldn't he? Who do you think is the Spartan 1? Johnson. Johnson. Johnson. Yeah. I think. You said it before we started recording, you headed the other way around. Yeah. No, because no, it's Johnson 1, the Spartan 1, the Spartan 1, everyone was Spartan 1s, they were the Spartans made along the way. Everyone, everyone's a Spartan. I'm more confused how everyone was part 4. Halo expert everybody. Spartan 2s stolen children genetically modified to be super soldiers have really strong shields and like giant walking tanks. Spartan 3s are orphans of war and they have slightly less augmentations, so like they more survived and a hallywicker armor, but again, mass produced, they could do a lot more stuff. Then Spartan 4s are just the enlistees that want to take the fight to the covenant and they have the mule armor, which they are good, but again, there is more of them than 3s and 2s. So the Spartan 1s, the mule near armor murdered them. Right. That's actually in the fall of a reach. When they introduced the mule near armor, it's basically like, you remember in Iron Man 2 when he, there was like the other industries was trying to copy the Iron Man suit and they have a guy get in the suit and it just kills him? That's what the original mule near armor did. Wow. Like in the books in fall of a reach, there's the, they were being told what happened with the first volunteers of the mule near armor and there was regular people that would get in the suit. And because of the suit's enhancements, a guy tried to move his arm and it broke his arm. And then because he broke his arm, his pain and panic made everything else break. And he died. I love this idea of them saying, hey, we've got this cool mule near armor. We're going to name it off the Thor's hammer and everything and they get a dude to get in it and it murders him and then like, shit, that didn't work. Let's try and make some new ones. Let's do it again. Well, that's how they did with the Spartan 2s. Let's do it again with this. Some with kids. The Spartan 2s were augmented so that they could survive the armor, essentially. So but to be clear, the Spartan 3s are supposed to be moderately augmented. So they're not technically wearing mule near, right? Right. They're wearing SPI armor, not mule near the Spartan 3s were genetically enhanced, but the Spartan 2s were fully augmented with mechanical and genetic therapies and augmentations. And then the Spartan 4s are just regular people wearing like a new version of armor that doesn't kill them. Oh, right. So in the in the show, are we expected to believe that these are Spartan 3s that have been augmented or no? The new Spartans we got introduced to in today's episode are sort of 3s. Right. But they don't. They combine 3 impulse. We'll get to that. Okay. Okay. All right. There's like a lot happening with the Spartans. And it seems. Oh, yeah, we'll get into it. Let's go. Let's go. Let's get into it. So with that bombshell, let's get into our separate for episode 6 on X of Halo season 2. All righty, jumping into the episode. And I say jump because we had a space jump to sort of help frickin dope as hell was that opening scene. That was straight out of the box too. That was cool. I actually thought it was. I didn't think it was this. It was so good. I didn't think it was a simulation. Like they got me. So did I. They got me. Yeah. I'm a super pumped to see. I'm a super pumped to see Perez. Like Perez is going to be a Spartan. Let's go. Yeah. Okay. So walk me through that though. Like so she escapes and then like somehow meets up with like is the fleet left hours if not like almost like a full day before like the my assumption is her whole family got murdered and she heard, Hey, we need people to be new Spartans and she went me. Okay. So she dropped off those refugees somewhere and was like, I'm going to go join the fight pretty much because the time is the time that because even when John woke up from his injuries in the past episode, they're like, you've been out for days and then he went back to sleep and then like how long am I is like another day or whatever. So it's been like almost like a week or so or more probably since the fall at reach. Like it's been for probably a hot minute. I was going to say that because like I have a note saying like Perez is a Spartan now kind of like she's a Spartan because of that like I think I would have, I think it would have helped to show to have maybe a scene of like a flashback of Perez, Perez being augmented. Maybe they haven't been augmented yet. That's what I'm thinking is like they're still just training augmented. Yeah. So like, like time is saying, maybe it's a mix of like Spartan threes and fours or threes from augmented a little bit, fours are just in less in less T's and in less T's. That's a difficult word volunteers. So I'm thinking maybe she hasn't been augmented yet because it's like like Drew saying it's very quick. I mean, she was out for two days and then went back to sleep for another day. So that's three days and the gap between last episode and this one could be another couple days, but that's very quick word. It'd just be like cool. I'm a Spartan now. Yeah. But we don't know how long we spent on that planet doing the burial like I mean that a couple days there and then like we don't know how long it took them to figure out where to go. Right. I don't know. I feel like we could we could extrapolate that it's probably been a couple months or a month or something. Right. You probably assumed there was a time jump between end of last episode. This one. And they just like, it cut it out just to make sure like we got to the cool stuff. He's moving. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It seems convenient that like there's a whole Spartan three army already and like they have suits and like it's, I don't know. It just seems like, Oh, wow. Okay. Cool. Like we've all of a sudden. Yeah. It did feel sudden, but it was cool. It was cool that scene. That was cool. It was infiltrating the ship and the FPS of her like with their eyes and like the chaotic miss of that battle felt interesting and it was it was interesting to see people just getting waxed, but you're not really seeing the enemy. It was kind of weird. Right. Yeah. I was like, where are the enemies that are shooting at them? Yeah. Yeah. And I think I think that's when I was like, okay, the simulation made sense because I was I was glad because I thought it felt a little cheap. I was like, Oh, wow, they're showing a lot of action without showing action. It was kind of a weird, it was like a lot of explosions and death, but not a lot of like other seeing other pew pews from the other side, right? Yeah. It was kind of a strangely shot, I thought at first, but then the fact that it was a simulation kind of made me okay with it. Makes sense. Yeah. It was really cool to see that action scene because we got some cool FPS stuff as well where we got to see through their visors and see their whole like HUD and everything. And it was like, it told you how many grenades they had and things. So that was pretty cool to see because we got a little bit of that in season one where we saw through cheap size. So that was cool. I was like a little like another little love letters to the games and those little kind of things, little touches. Oh, it's very cool. So we find out, we do find out eventually that it was a training simulation all along. So it was kind of, I think it's quite like an important part of the episode is that that was a training sim and the whole job was to get on to a covenant ship and then spike it with this device that would then shut the ship down. And we think, okay, cool. It's just a training simulation because a lot more to that that I want to talk about. We'll get to that later. But Kai is there and we have some strong feelings about Kai, don't we, Tom? Fucking **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** he dumb but whatever I was trying to give you an out you have the British flag on your flag so you kind of exactly I mean it's kind of okay you guys worship the same queen so she's dead we start world war three uh let's lose one so Kai is there and uh Kai is training the new Spartans the Spartan threes or we assume they're Spartan threes at this point but she is very much known on since again uh but we get to walk around the unac base and everything and something that I think was really cool is we got to see some master chief posters and one of them said finish his fight which is uh like a pretty good finish this fight or finish this is a fight like halo three yeah there's all those posters seem to have some sort of play out words from the actual games and that's what I was gonna say the way they kind of framed and shot and and or or drawn the kind of it looks like propaganda to an extent so I think that like it's interesting that almost like they're using master chief as like this beacon of like you should follow us even though they completely are bad in the guy well they they've been using that they were using it before and now they're using it assuming he's a martyr right like you know so they're sort of like planning to use him and that comes up later with Ackerson and and uh the admiral where they're talking about how do we use we're supposed to use even if he's dead we could still use his name right like it's yeah that's the whole planet sort of like on a boardroom table and they're the camera's panning over and they're talking and you're kind of like okay you know like two bad people scheming over how to take advantage of chief's chief's assumed death range um yeah kind of it's just absolutely yeah it's just a payoff mating yeah it was it yeah it was like do we like this poster or this poster i think we could talk more gold in his visor would be really nice thanks um yeah all the gold that's the best thing about his visor yeah yeah it was helmet make it pop can we get a little more light shine you know maybe reflection in there that would be really good thanks like a scratch and a dent here in there yeah make it look high that's true yeah a little more dirt like you've seen some action let's get some bottles how are we seeing some things yeah we move on from there and we see uh that the admiral paren goski i'm getting names right this episode guys i swear i'm getting names right paren goski and i don't believe it either paren goski and actison they seem pretty friendly with each other early on in this episode they seem pretty like hey you know we they've probably been working together for a while honestly absolutely um and it's interesting how they're changes later but they seem pretty friendly and uh they have some idea that halsey and chief have been seen alive uh i think paren goski says that she has someone on aleria that saw someone who looked like halsey and a big like biggest person they've ever seen big dude with some scars and stuff and it's like obviously that's chief and they seem a little bit nervous and then we had such a cool shot where we see binoculars looking at the base and then she pulls them down yeah and then intro sequence i was like oh she was coming can we talk about paren goski that whole character thread of her like leaving the uni and then like uh and then on now not leaving like it doesn't mean like why i just keep her there like why what was the point of that subversion i don't understand like walking tom tell me i mean i i i was like to manipulate chief but to what end like to why because he ended up doing whatever he wanted to do anyway like i don't and she didn't have any control over him because because remember like when nf so he went to her to like try and work stuff out so then she was like you report to me so it was like anything that chief sees like we planet i don't believe you it's hey acryson or hey paren goski hey i think there's covenant on the planet well i don't know well is it really like it was just i was like he's telling everybody the same shit and then no one's like giving him the light of day and so he ends up doing his own shit it just felt i don't know i just didn't i didn't quite that just felt like a weird it just didn't it felt pointless i don't know i feel like paren goski is kind of one of those like sort of nick fury type of characters that's like they've always got another plan they've always got another thing sort of like we're never thinking about letting her go or something like that she was like ooh but i've got dirt on this person or she spoke into kotana to get her to do something in exchange for saving chief's life i think she's always got like a backup plan kind of thing so i think that's her role very much here she's that character that's like always going to get away with it or always going to have that little trump card to play well let's see how that develops but moving back into the episode we come back from the intro sequence and kai is training super hard she's in a simulation of uh reach of the battle at reach and stuff and she's kind of the whole way that they were fighting in at the end of the exact same whole way and it was like she obviously she just it very much implies that she was she saw that i was like i didn't know she was back there she was putting herself in that position thinking like i should have been there i should have been with my squad you know but how would that was like a hundred percent and and and she it gets revealed then as well what Akken gets in there she has no idea about Akken's plan and about what happened on reach and things like that Akken just manipulating the crap out of her again and at least like at least it was that because i had a feeling that they might have you know like done something where Akken told kai everything and kai was like i don't like it but i'm siding with you i thought maybe they were going to do that with her but i'm glad that she's still kind of in the dark about these things i thought he kind of did didn't he kind of say like here's the deal we we does that later oh yeah yeah later but how did they just assume they had like scans of the entire building of maybe they get battle data from people's from weapons and whatnot or cameras or computers and ai i mean proton apparently they can see everything so yeah i guess so i don't know it felt a little weird like how would they know like the hallway was a key battle point there like out of it kind of felt a little weird like i didn't quite understand why how should you see the show it's obviously the show like really trying to hammer down and show us that that kai wishes she could be at that exact battle even though she doesn't know that that happened so it's kind of that symbolic like she wanted to be right there even though she doesn't know about all of that stuff so i guess that's why i did it but i was about that like it's the exact whole way yeah with the one side blown out that you can see it reach like it's exactly the same how do they know it felt like lazy production or like we can reuse this set again like so right like it didn't feel like smart storytelling it felt like lazy production design like they they could have put her anywhere on reach fighting right like why did it have to be the hallway where they happened that happened where vanik died and chief got you know like it just felt a little like i just think that doesn't mean she wanted to be where she knows they went down early she thought they went down because as far as they knew everyone died there but how how did they like i don't know there could be reports that that's where mr. chief died oh yeah they knew this what they were told everybody died in that they didn't know that they left ship right like it's not like people survived to go tell the story well i suppose i suppose perez could have given a report saying that's where we were true which took off before that hallway battle happened like she literally took off and then they got pushed into the hallway and then the battle then the hallway happened well back back with the good guys uh the group of uh the group i guess we're calling them the good guys um and halsey knows where that's a casler uh like the exact it seems like the exact place you know is exactly where casler is and they head to onyx and we obviously know that on onyx already because chief is kind of spying on them and uh i i love this i love how it starts because chief and seren's interests align pretty nicely i think it's tied up pretty nicely in the fact that seren wants to get cast back from the unse and chief wants to confront the unse i feel like it's they they kind of align nicely to work together and i can see them fighting together some more convenience it's convenient however you want to like you know like why was cast to take it why was okay anyways we'll we'll we'll do that uh quan we see uh she's seeing things again she's seeing the old cult lady uh again the sanctuary shaman as she's called surely this pays off next season because i mean this is blood right has to pay off this season otherwise we're gonna be like what the fuck is a lot of alluding and well we said this about quan last season we said she has a story that like doesn't tie into anything that's happening in the main story surely it's got to pay off it but it didn't she just went to madrigal and said hi to some people and then left yeah i can surely do the flood stuff as well this season but how is this mystical lady flood person know about these like hidden rooms on this planet like it's sort of starting to feel a little like like there's an explanation in the book onyx is a forerunner shield world so it's connected to forerunners and forerunners are flawed okay all right sorry there's an explanation like it's all which is all the deeper lore and narrative all right just when quan gets just when quan in a story gets good it just gets confusing again yeah i guess someone who's not into the lore it does feel a little like you're you're starting to like you're hoping that it's going to pay off and maybe i'm sure maybe look at there yeah i'm feeling it won't be as heavy handed it'll be pretty subtle and it'll brush by it and people just be like okay with it maybe i don't know yeah hopefully well starting from there where we have the group on onyx um just like that everybody scatters like for some reason everyone just splits off and does their own thing all these missing she's just gone she just starts attacking some guys that i think we're shooting at quan and then he gets captured once following some lady through the woods lira and sword just head open their own mission i was like jeez i was like someone dropped a coin and everyone just went that was so chaotic like there was no explanation it's like the typical horror movie or like the scooby-doo episode where they're like okay gang this is what we're gonna split up now hold on a second there mr we're going after some creepy ghost person and you want us to split up well yeah yeah and it was like no one communicated with anybody what was going on here so like you have no idea like no one has any idea where anybody is on this planet like zero it was so funny i was like i've written down here but i was going to say it's so many things happening so fast like everyone's just running off and like we're starting a whole bunch of stories like what's happening yeah and it was filmed in a weird way you really have no idea like it jucks the position of where someone is in comparatively like we don't know where the soren in them are comparatively to where like halsey is or yeah like it was just sort of like just felt like chaos all you see all you know is john can beat the shit out of his many marines as he wants to oh dude it's just gonna get to that we're gonna get to that which was freaking cool um so an interesting part where halsey eventually quan finds halsey and they get into this like little capes and stuff which we'll get onto a little bit later but while they're walking around and trying to find their way and stuff halsey and quan have a pretty interesting conversation where halsey says to quan that she ruined her best work which was must achieve and i was like i don't know if it was specifically quan but obviously she's referring to cheap taking out his palette and getting his free will and things like that i thought that was kind of interesting is a little bit of resentment that halsey has yeah like and uh it's cool i was i was mad i missed last week's episode because i wanted to talk about this where quan first meets we're meets john again and there was sort of like little to no they're like kind of like not at each other like hey hey and i was kind of like no like you're a big deal like you're the catalyst for season one like him bringing her back to reach and then him deciding not to like because they were going to execute her probably and him saying i'm not going to do that which was disobeying an order and that was the moment that was the catalyst through the whole the whole this whole thing like this that said everything in motion is where where we are today so it was kind of a big deal i thought they brushed over in that episode last week but they kind of she kind of brings it up this week which made me feel a little bit better about it because it i felt like it should have been more of a big deal um that's that's what i was saying last week i think i i try to throw it to uh dan and tom and saying like yeah there was very little reaction between them and what do we think of that and kind of didn't talk much about it but i was like yeah i feel like there should have been more it's like two characters that have they very much both said each other off on this path of yeah of doing something so it was nice to sort of turn back around and have halsey kind of say listen you kind of started all of this yeah bitch yeah it's quite interesting they didn't spend much time together if you think about it i think like we said like what two episodes not two and a half but in terms like the time i'm not sure they weren't together long as the first chance chief got who's just like go oh yeah and the majority of the time she's just like are you gonna kill me or you're not gonna kill me are you are we we're leaving okay cool now you're dumping me with this guy on this rock thanks friend i think i think that that moment i think meant more to the audience than it did to that the characters yeah or yeah what kind of disconnect yeah it's more about like this idea that that moment it means a lot and i think i think it's kind of interesting that halsey sees that right and maybe john does it because he's sort of more singular like more focused in the moment where halsey's a little bit more like i see the larger picture right which is kind of interesting so i think from a character play that's actually pretty good that she was able to kind of see that and and bring it up it it shows that her character is not he's actually pretty pretty smart and witty and and understands the pieces like of the chess board which is cool all right so moving on from that we've got a pretty pretty intense pretty interesting scene next where we go back to the arbiter and maki not maki maki and uh the arbiter is like completely topless just got no armor on or anything he's like yeah i think he's naked at one point i was like whoa camera down yeah he is slow uh but he brands himself with the with some kind of symbol do you guys know what that symbol was they branded the original arbiter in the games like he gets branded as the arbiter but he did it to himself which was yeah and also did it in the middle and not on the side yeah he was normally supposed to be on the side yeah because the uh the armor like make sure like people can see it's not that he's branded or some whatever thing like in the games he's like held up and they stick the brand in and so that everyone can see that he is the arbiter that he is the carrying the shame and what's the shame was the failure and that what made him become the arbiter is because of his failure now he's has to redeem himself through like selfless sacrifice essentially interesting okay uh i mean that whole that whole scene was was kind of interesting for me because he has a priest with him which is another thing we were talking about last week we were talking about uh the priest and there was a priest character that we thought maybe this guy could turn into i forget what we called him what was his name oh the heretic heretic heretic that's it so i feel like he's he's kind of like they they they're amping up to that in a way because he has this priest with him and uh it gets a lot more intense a little bit later but there seems to be like a heavy religious kind of vibe to his story um so he's like it's it's i don't think he's i don't think this arbiter is gonna turn and become the good arbiter i think we've already established he's got a different name and everything it seems like it would make yeah he's got a different name from the original arbiter and i think it is kind of leaning into that notion that time if they're not there about him becoming the heretic essentially i think that's an interesting it'll be an interesting turn for him to sort of turn into the heretic and then kind of it could be a whole wild mess of things so i'm liking where where the arbiter's story is going um and maki i mean maki maki i'm gonna edit that out maki her story i really feel like her story is on a nice edge like you can kind of go anywhere i feel like her life is very much in danger um it's certainly in this scene i mean it's kind of it develops a little bit towards the end of the episode but it very much seems like she's stuck in the middle of a lot of like the decisions that are being made with the covenant and with the arbiter the arbiter kind of seems like okay this this human woman can give me what i want but she has to sort of stay in line kind of thing and there's an interesting part where courtana uh i kind of remember exactly what she says but she kind of seems to be showing some concern for maki do you guys do you think that courtana is like starting to kind of be like oh i need to protect this woman maybe she's like we have to protect this woman in order to find halo i think it links back to what happens later on where like it was just her job to get info yeah uh so she's just like you can't die yet because otherwise i need a mission so like kind of you just feel right she's trying to get info on the covenant for the admiral you know it was an interesting it like okay yeah i mean do we want to dive in because that that felt like you just gave the covenants an ai that's incredibly powerful in hopes that that ai would then be able to give you like some hints on where their fleet is or what what's going on like that's like saying like hey germany here's how to actually build a nuke but don't use it on us but that nuke hopefully will i don't know like it was like what like you get it's that's that's the play about paren goske paren goske is like let's give them courtana because she's got a plan of how to use that against them and like they think oh we've got the super super intelligent ai we can use to help us but at the end it kind of bites them and he asks that's why i feel like paren gosse's got these plans and all these different wheels in motion trying to do some more things uh like so it's very so what are your thoughts is courtana able to be controlled or not is she acting independently at this point so she is i want to bring that up i want to bring that up later i really want to bring that up later okay but i do want on this scene on this point too there there's the whole thing with uh courtana talking to mckie and you're talking about uh what mckie is trying to do and like she actually told the arbiter like oh it's just a it's a human piece of technology but she doesn't explain how important it is and how much it actually has the arbiters like whatever that gets this human trash away from me right he doesn't know that they basically have like the big unlock button to all of human civilization right in front of them that's a whole narrative in the games is we can't ever let the covening capture a ship we can't let them capture an AI you know like that's why even courtana they have an initiative built into them that they have to self-destruct essentially if there's any chance of them getting captured to protect the human race i guess that's why i i was shaking my head i'm like i don't like paren gosse's either the dumbest admiral ever ever or incredibly brilliant i'm not sure but it feels if that plan felt very like really you just have had it yeah like not quite the way i would have gone about that i don't know you know uh but whatever luckily they didn't know that that little box was an AI apparently or one of the smartest AI's ever well mike does clearly right i mean yeah but she's also utilizing courtana which we find out in this episode because she can't use the keystones anymore so are we assuming that courtana knew all of this and planned it as part of like i know what's going to happen they're gonna come and get me mike's going to need me in order and i will continue i'll manipulate her to give me access to the ship and then i'll be able to like give you relay you like it kind of all like all that was a lot of fucking variables to kind of play out and even in an AI like holy shit so moving on to the next scene we we get back to the UNSC or to annex and uh we see parese is doing another drill um and they they're trying that's that drill of infiltrating the ship again and she started to show show some initiative um i think maybe she wants to sort of not redeem herself but like she saw keys or sacrifice and what happened on reach so i think she kind of wants to join the fight and try and do what she can um which i think is interesting and seems seems like kai is pretty pleased with it she's kind of like okay the soldiers working pretty hard um then they have a mission where they're actually able to pull off uh you know getting that spike into the ship and disabling the ship and then they they get exfil and they're able to get out and it's like missing success and everyone celebrates and everyone's like oh yeah but uh what's interesting is parese then says um why was the exfil so easy like why were we able to get out of there so easy um you know it seemed like as soon as we put the spike in they went on more covenant like it was super easy i don't know if this was supposed to be like planned differently or anything but what i got from this was that this is a proper 100 suicide mission like they don't train them for exfiltration because there is no exfiltration they're not supposed to get out this is a van god get in there blow the ship up and yourselves and we're not going to simulate that part afterwards because there is no part afterwards right exactly that yeah you don't you don't make it i'm sorry you don't make it but we're not going to tell you that i like how parese is already questioning it she's like this is weird which feels weird as in the sense that like i think while a lot of people would volunteer even if they didn't make it knowing that it would make a major blow to the covenant after what just happened to reach right like i it seems weird that they have to make that a uh like a hidden agenda right like where i'm like well i think a lot of these soldiers probably would go on a suicide mission to get something to to make to for fatal blow when i'm gonna play out and start your troopers is the after blenas era as they all went run into that what planet it just all got murdered yeah yeah totally yeah oops oh what a great movie dude anyways we're back with chief and chief is being restrained by chains and six guys i just thought this was so funny he walks in there chained up and there's just six guys i've got him like oh don't let this guy go and i'm laughing because it's like six guys it takes six guys to like hold chief down and then once he's kind of talks to everyone he says he wants to be wants the admiral he wants to speak to parengoski and then as soon as he's like okay it's time to make my move effortlessly it's just like okay i was so everybody out i was so expecting during that initial scene when they're walking him in i wanted to just look at them like you know i can get out of this at any time right yeah but my favorite thing too was after he had the the chat with like the the commander of the brooks i think was her name or breaks um she leaves and then he looks at the one guy who's trying to put the one chain down first and then he means eye contact and he's got those really bright like baby blue eyes he's like oh you're the first you're going down i loved as well there was when he was taking out all those guys one of the i actually laughed out loud is that uh chief had a guy was holding him and he was about to punch him but then he was stopped by the restraint so he pulled the gap higher and then punched him what do i feel like it it would be like getting punched by cap in america like all those guys are probably dead like if you could punch somebody where they go flying into a wall you shattered that dude's skull like i'm sorry like that guy's dead like yeah brick said like i've got 10 guys that are injured one of them might die and i was like really because chief hit them pretty odd like that's flying up against the metal door like i'm pretty sure you shattered your spine jesus christ it's good though it's fun to watch it's fun to watch them just beat the shit out of like people like it's kind of they do a good job of choreographing those those those scenes it's cool but uh what's interesting this whole thing has been recorded and uh actison then chi the footage of chief beating up everyone and he's still very much playing games with chi saying that chief is he tries i think this is kind of like a lost resort like a hillmarie play for uh for actison he says to kai that no like he thinks now that he's swapped sides and that he's working with miki so like chief is like chief's like probably working for the covenant now and like i think kai you i kind of got a sense at the beginning that kai just ate this up and and she was like oh yeah chief's the enemy now well actually it's still like he's alive you know like she clearly yeah was completely taken back by the fact that he was still alive but then you get actison just feeding her all of that stuff that was like oh it just is so convenient and it's hard for her to not say yeah you're probably right i still like i wish kai i wish they're making it it's unfortunate they're making her pretty pretty like gullible yeah and i was hoping she would kind of see through a little bit of it but they didn't they didn't go that route it doesn't look like because here's the deal like if if if miki was a vision like a not real she could i could definitely see her being like okay yeah he's lost it right like he's definitely like but like he acryson even confirms like yeah miki was on this planet and she was on this planet and that's where he converted her again right like so she confirms miki was on on reach right like to her like she's alive which would make which would make her think like oh john was right like this whole time like everything john did was actually right and all those decisions he was making to make her doubt him ended up being correct so like i'm sort of like he's giving her the the the knowledge for her to kind of put it all together that like i don't know mate i think you're the fucking idiot here like uh so i was a little like okay you're making kai feel a little stupid i took it to be that she was actually like calculating things and she actually was like letting him think that she was taking into it because then they play out the the scenes that we're getting to but then there's a later line where she says to acryson that she's like i trust him and she takes everything that she says as gospel at that point so i think yeah maybe she was playing acryson at that point after she sees it it could be i mean i i kind of i kind of saw it as like she's she's putting together all the information throughout the episode obviously later on acryson tells her kind of the truth which will get to that but i think it's that so i think that's how they wrote it for her was that like they give her bits of information as the episode progresses and she starts putting two and two together but i drew you absolutely right at the beginning she's very gullible to the to the point of like she's still alive what's he doing here there must be something going on and instead of saying acryson tell me the truth tell me exactly what happened because this is all a bit fishy she's kind of just going along with it but i think like i said i think she's just trying to piece things together yeah and uh ever since a pretty a class like douchebag manipulator here like he's really like to the even the point where yeah he throws it back at her like if you can come up with a better solution let me know yeah and that was pretty like i was like that's really good like because her she doesn't have the time to kind of like she's not she's not that strategic to kind of tell me how chief got off her reach you know yeah yeah and it's kind of like oh okay right and the fact that she can't come up with something right away like she's gonna default to whatever his story is so i really didn't like that that that play like there were some really good lines there that made me think like okay uh there's he's good at what he does which made it more believable for her to do what she does moving on from that we go back to mikey and uh cortana and they are trying to locate the halo what what was very interesting in this scene was mikey she says that she's lost her connection to the artifacts i'm guessing why do we think this is so she's she said she's lost her connection and she died she said she she that's what i was gonna allude to sorry she said she can't go there without him obviously that means chief uh she said something shifted between them maybe it was because they banged i don't know um but what do we think uh what do we think shifted what do we think changed with with mikey because it seems like she's lost her connection to the artifact because we see later that they actually the the the covenant or the the arbiter has the bigger artifacts i actually didn't remember that or know that they have the bigger artifacts so surely mikey's trying to attach it no she took it originally when they went to sword base oh yes correct yes um so i'm wondering like is she lost her connection to it or what are we reading into that because it's pretty like that's pretty intense and i was gonna say do you think it's when she died maybe when she was revived she lost her connection to it or something she gave it to chief via osmosis this is the the hand signal home osmosis yes it was a double on undra but keeping it clean here on what you know yeah sure yeah um i'll say it's like um the avatar state from outhouse there then uh when ends if it gets shot you can't do it anymore so it's like a similar thing like she was connected to the artifact got shot and now like maybe it's like a mentoring or like something like that that's what you can't do it to ever to her interest like a spiderman loose his powers and spiderman too if you've got a bit of information again i'd love to hear it don't you act like a son nice oh that was great i don't know actually that's a good point i don't really have they don't really explain that and and maybe they don't need to i don't know maybe maybe when they banged she passed her connection over to chief like an scd that's that's what day was that's what day was that is not how osmosis wicks kids i don't know right that in your tests i also think that there's definitely a notion here that we learn that miki has lost her connection so she has no value to the covenant anymore and they don't know that so they're going to murder her on the spot as soon as they find out and she's doing everything in her power to avoid that like she even says to arbor like he's like have you touched the keystone lately and she's like of course i have i'm the chosen one i've definitely i've definitely touched the keystone you know so she's like she's trying to like make them not realize that she can't do it anymore so now she's trying to say her story is on a nice edge i feel like she could just be murdered at any time literally knives have been pointed at her multiple times throughout the house yeah but uh after that we get back to quan and halsey um what are they looking for i don't understand where where was the halsey going here it was a previous base of hers she used to she used that was hers like she used to be a part of that facility right so i think she was trying to use it to get into the onyx base and then they find that it's bored at all okay yeah because so quan was pretty much following her visions um it was an interesting part where where halsey says no the whole cave system has changed i don't know if that's like the planet terraforming or they're just dug it out to cause things and that but forerunner saw the time it had it could be it could be something along those lines yeah the shield four on shield worlds are just giant like artificial planets so you can there is a chance that you can oh interesting i don't know like legos so that whole planet is is artificial is what you're saying if if they're keeping it the same as the the game stuff then yes onyx is the shield world interesting so that could be useful that's that could be useful in the next episode board next two episodes um at that's pretty interesting but in terms of their direction quan is very much following that uh shaman lady uh for some reason i have no idea why but um yeah she's just following him and then they kind of just you know sneaking around these cave systems and we're like okay i guess you guys can do that i mean it didn't feel like there was any purpose in their stories they were just sneaking around i mean i've just it's it's sort of hard for me to buy like if i start seeing people i'm going to go to the person next to me be like hey by the way i'm following this person do you see this person no maybe i'm not someone something's wrong like i'm having weird visions they're i'm following some crazy lady through these caverns i don't know it just seems where she keeps like why do these people always keep these moments to themselves i'm like it's like i don't know because she's because she's a little bit more like another quan just because she's a little one that's like her that's her street rapper name yeah killer quan dropping fire next anyways we head back to uh it's a chief and uh chief is now in the base he's escaped from his captors and uh he's now sneaking around the base i'm so glad that they didn't delay on us or something i wanted to mention i'm so glad they didn't delay on like chief getting to you know kai and akistan and onyx i'm glad we didn't get like a fillet episode of them like traveling or trying to build up someone else's stories i'm glad that we're kind of getting to the point uh with all of these things and then here it is kai walks in and uh the first very first thing chief says to kai is that they lost vanik and it's like that moment like i was waiting for like the big reveal of like telling kai exactly what happened and to see how that all plays out and uh chief tries to tell kai the truth but you can see kai still sort of unsure she's still kind of debating it and fighting with it this is one of the big scenes of the episode so what did you guys think of this just the beginning part we'll get into what kai does next but what do you think of that setup for this for this scene i think his reaction was a little bit softer because of what happened with riz at the end of last episode where you know riz is like he's not she's like i'm not coming with you and he's like stand up soldier and that's when he was she was like on her crutches and it's like dude chill um and i think that's cheaper softer now because he kind of sees that like there's more to this person than just being a soldier just being a spartan i don't know i think he's pretty angry i think he's angry with her as much as she's probably angry with him i think there's a lot of like they're both kind of i think she's mad he's mad she wasn't there like she left she so she there's a little bit of a trail because like we were a team like we grew up together like you know we've known each other all our lives kind of moment and you weren't that you left to go do this thing with acryson right and you're kind of like what the fuck right and on her side she's sort of like hey you're betraying everything we used to you know you should have followed orders i'm following orders like we're soldiers like why don't you fall in line you know like so i think there's they're both coming at it from their POVs and it's just sort of all bubbling up to this moment which is you know you know i i don't know it's it's a little hard it's it was hard to watch i thought like it was not in the sense that i don't know i i have a hard time kai just seems very and it's it's part of the narrative storytelling like we were following chief so we're supposed to believe everything chief to like it's his story right so we're supposed to he's the hero so when kai's kind of rubbing up against that it we sort of don't like her character like and i'm inherently not liking what they're doing with her character because it feels like everything she's doing is counter to what should be the right thing to do right you know because chief is in the right so it was hard to watch a character like kai kind of like fall from fall from grace as it were um this far right to the point where she's willing to just beat the shit out of chief for no reason really you know like it was it was hard to watch this is where my theory from earlier was coming into though because chief is saying these things to kai he's explaining like they left us they left with us there to die they took our armor and he's because she was like i thought you died on reach and he's basically explaining like yeah because only in accuracy left us there to die they planned this they knew about it they let the planet die and i think when kai was hearing that she processed it in a way that she was like okay how is the best action for me to proceed from here because again this is going into the following scene with kai when she's talking to accerson next she proceeds to fight chief and beat the shit out of him she doesn't kill him she does hesitate a couple of times and then when she talks to the accerson later she's fully confronting him on everything chief set so i think she followed through with the beating him up for show to get back in the room with accerson to confront him i mean that's that's what i thought it was quite interesting as that said like that and like you were saying um chief like cannot touch kai because she's got the armor on and chiefs i mean he's he's battling through broken bones and broken ribs so he can't fight back there's no way he wins that fight at all and kai flattens him like beats him up against a couple of walls you can see how much chief is bleeding and he does not fight back at all which i thought was quite big i thought that was pretty cool not that he would want to fight back but that he didn't even block any of the attacks and there's that scene where or that part of the scene where like kai's holding him and he's like looking into her eyes and saying he looks at the camera and he's like orders or orders and he's like saying do it and maybe that is chief kind of saying like yeah you have to put up the sprint so kick my ass for the cameras but on the show interesting that's quite an interesting way to look at it that is interesting i don't know if i quite feel like i definitely felt like she was getting it out and following her orders right because that's what she knows but then that's how i feel about this and then she's getting up there and actually now questioning if i did the right thing i think letting him live was her defying orders to be honored i think it sounded like they were expecting her to kill him and he says they're sending the black ops down to finish him afterwards right exactly so in essence he didn't really fail i mean she in essence she failed right like her mission right um so there i think i think it was a real up until the moment she decided not to kill him right i think it was all like um but yeah it's an interesting take though like that she's playing two sides they were playing playing it to show but i don't know i don't know if i buy it uh because i just wanted to say this there was some really cool dialogue between kai and chief in that scene as well where uh chief says to kai says just be their spotan and he says where does the spotan end and where do you begin and i think down you were talking about it i think before the show you were saying there was quite similar to when uh seren was escaping the the the augmentation camp or whatever in season one when they were younger and he said something similar yeah he was i was trying to make a comparison to that episode where uh seren originally escapes after augmentation and chief tries to stop him and there's a kind of like a back and forth of like you know don't be a machine you know don't um i would just obey orders blindly so i had kind of like some mirroring going on there so moving on from there we see uh paren goskey and acasson have a bit of a conversation and paren goskey actually justifies acasson and he says listen you made the right call it was a tough decision but you made the right call about reach and everything uh he she even has a thing where she says like are you religious and he's kind of like he's like sort of like explaining it and then she's like yeah well then it doesn't matter so it's like pretty interesting and i'm gonna call it now i think she's the new real bad guy i think she's going to be one that that wants to like take power of the halo or something and acasson is going to revert acasson is going to like become a good guy or something he's going to like make a noble sacrifice or something like that i don't know i just i can see it happening yeah they're definitely giving him uh well a little it's good they're giving him some shades of gray he definitely is sort of teetering right like there is definitely some some doubt there that he's doing the wrong thing and and the things they did with his dad and his daughter early on are were a lot of work there for character that should probably just be simple and evil and die like in our minds right like but they they've given him a lot of good juicy backstory there for him to turn right to kind of do the right thing uh where where or the admiral kind of still feels very like like yeah i'm not grounded at all no yeah yeah we could kill her and everyone would be like yay yeah yeah i mean there's times where acasson kind of shows a little bit of remorse about what happened on reach and and things like that so i feel like he's he's still got a bit of you know human to him but we'll have to wait and see how that develops but then paren goski goes back into her office or her sort of bridge or wherever she is and they're getting a message from an unknown frequency and it's courtada and uh what happens which was so cool in the scene is that she's talking to paren goski and she's giving information and things like that but she can communicate with chief somehow how in the friggy frackin hell can she do that can the speakers in the room no but it's not through speakers is it because then they would hear like true like she would be busted truly well it's like when chief's been alone it's whenever she talks to him like no one's around him and like especially like later on it's like are you gonna get that through or whatever and then she doesn't say anything just opens it so she's just in the system and can like select which like audio output she has which is how she avoids people now that's how it's okay that's because i thought it can't it cannot be the speaker systems because she would get busted like paren goski would be like oh okay we can see that someone's going through the speakers and then figure out that courtana's talking to chief i don't know i felt i felt like maybe there was some way she was like chatting to him through his implant if it's still in there or something i thought i don't know it's just a bit interesting but yeah anyway so courtana is talking to chief and she've kind of unloads a little bit on her um you know he starts saying like oh i lost panic i lost everyone and reach and like it's very much feels like he he wants courtana back so badly because he felt so close to her for some reason and i can't wait for them to be reunited man yeah and it's it's weird that he misses her so much considering like most of the first season he was so anti-courtana like he didn't want like they didn't really build that relationship well enough for me to like feel like that that yearning for her or yeah i don't know it's kind of weird that they went the direction on that this season like i get that he wants her in the sense that she can she's he sees how valuable she is in a battle situation and or can manipulate like how powerful she is but that connection i think they need to spend more time on that kind of like what they do in the games you really start to feel that closeness right uh yeah like where he's really he's almost saving a lover not a ai right like it feels like absolutely yeah closer to that level of connection which is interesting in the games you feel that here i'm not quite sure they've delivered on that i mean it's interesting in the scene as well that uh courtana tells chief that the covenant of finding the halo and she needs him to get up because like you know she needs him to help like with the plan to stop the covenant from finding the halo and she says to him you need to get up because you are the master chief and then chief is like not anymore you're the master chief anymore it was that was like what do this guy is broken and it's like it's you starting to really see the effects of all the stuff he doesn't believe it's the master chief anymore he doesn't believe he's that strong anymore and i wonder if they're gonna make it a cheap moment where he like just puts his armor back on and he's like okay i am master chief now and i want to see him emotionally get back to that point instead of just putting on the armor so that we think oh it's just the armor it's like tony stock and iron man kind of thing and i think i'm gonna do it guys i'm gonna i'm gonna officially give up my hopes for kotana to go back to her season one appearance because she didn't actually comment on her appearance at all well he hadn't seen her i didn't know he did it didn't he did he or he just seen he appeared as a hologram he appeared as a hologram so she wasn't there and he didn't say anything about that whole scene i was like just one line of chief saying do you look different or something i know i know yeah i think we we're firstly we're firstly let's arrest season one kotana it's drastic enough where you're like it needs a call out right it needs someone who needs to put it in it it's drastic research i i i've been like telling myself i'm not going to research it at all this whole season because i want to be surprised by like oh she's like gone back to her appearance but apparently they changed it because fans didn't like it for some reason in season one uh and they they wanted to make it look more like the game so yeah i'm gonna officially say they do i see the one kotana no not a big fan so sad she looks so good at this one yeah anyways moving on from my grief um we find out that uh kotana has been feeding the admiral information on the halo uh and that was the mission that was the thing that paren goske wanted from kotana was for her to get information on halo uh and obviously now she's been you know she's infiltrated the covenants and been uh showing some secrets secrets there as well uh a pretty interesting thing and this is what i wanted to talk about on kotana was uh she asks paren goske will i be remembered and paren goske is like yeah of course we'll remember you but doesn't that sound like a very human thing to say kotana sounds like she's getting a lot more sentient now a lot more syllabus like she's showing a bit more empathy towards some characters and it's a very human thing to say it's not like an ai would say will that be remembered like an ai would be like logically you will be remembered well that links back again i sent it to halo for where kotana that's the whole like discussion is like is she human is she a machine because she shares my own chief it's like that whole thing nothing again they're just like expediting that process for like this show's timeline because that's also like in halo for like there's the conversation between chief and partana and kotana is like who's more machine you or me so that there could be building up to that already like batama saying yeah yeah well i guess my my thing is like what's if she's sentient then what's her plan like she's clearly playing lots of angles here she's got chief doing what she thinks is best for probably humanity right so chief's gonna get to the halo right like her that's her vessel right like but then she's sort of playing the admiral and giving her whatever she wants but she has to clearly know like she even says like your odds of defeating the fleet are and then the admiral cuts her off before she can say it because she doesn't care right which is a strange thing to want not to want to know uh and then uh and then she's playing maki for for whatever reasons to stay out i'm assuming to stay alive and also to do whatever she's able to do now uh so it's a lot of so i'm trying to understand at what point is is she like programmed to follow orders right like or is at one point she's sort of doing this to everything's there to she's playing a long chess game to get the chief to where he needs to be which is on halo i don't know i'm i guess i'm a little lost i and i don't know if they need to explain it right away but it's it's interesting is what i was saying i could probably give kurtana a little focus in the near future if it's not the season then sometime in the beginning of next season give a really good deep dive on kurtana and yeah those you know parameters that we don't understand yeah yeah you're right it needs that it needs like a singular episode where haisley and kurtana are doing something or like a or like a cold open or something where they explain some some of that i think it needs it um could be good i think it'd be good if maybe it'll come don't you mean whole z no i'm going i'm not doing anyone against names wrong after whatever you say nick i'm just following you i'm never said whole z wrong i'm never said the whole that we know yes i was wondering if you're going to call on that back to whole z whole z and quan and uh whole z meets up with marenda it's marenda right yes oh wait okay i was just yeah yeah marenda because we don't need her in age it's marenda we haven't seen her in ages but uh she's back marenda has been on onyx and uh she has been continuing whole z's work which is pretty interesting so it looks like she's kind of picked up where whole z went off not much to do with whole z and quan so that's kind of the whole thing unless you guys had anything else to say about them other than the simple notion that like halsey seems to have this kind of like relief that she sees marenda and when marenda sees her she goes dr halsey like completely cold dead as ice like dr halsey what are you doing here you know it's like that's interesting thing though is is halsey didn't actually say anything to marenda about keese's death true marenda even know that keese is dead surely like people died on reece you would assume that he's presumed if you could have said that he died on reach regardless because of just how many people died and if they didn't make it somewhere else yeah they would have heard from them by now i thought that was kind of interesting is that they didn't talk about keese at all but obviously surely they're saving it for the next episode i think they're not talking about keese so that we don't think about keese so that when he shows up at the season finale like oh he's still alive indeed i'm gonna hate it i'm gonna hate it everyone's gonna hate me oh god not i hate you i'm gonna hate the show like just chill i hate it when they do when they're like oh you didn't see the body so like we can bring the fucking god died leave him alone let him rest in peace i loved keese i loved him but no he needs to stay ahead sorry keese one thing if someone's not dead they're not dead fuck say vanex not dead say it oh i said he anyways we move on we move on to soren and lira who got very little screen time in this episode and the only thing that we really see from them is that they discover this uh i think it was a ship they discover uh which soren calls thermopoly is it thermopoly thermopoly and then they immediately soren's like we gotta get out of here and they turn tell and head out immediately and that is from the game i believe that was a spartan training center and they were about to run a drill that's why he was like we got to get out of here uh thermopoly of course referring to like the spartans in their battle like the 300 kind of thing the spartans all learn about them i was gonna say thermopoly is another a name or reference to greek greek history and things like that so i like how there's these little ties to like little things it's very cool anyways uh so we get back to uh kai and kai meets up with akistan and akistan actually sent kai in uh he chose her to go in there and uh confront chief which is pretty interesting and this scene i feel like he shows a bit of remorse um he starts telling kai uh about you know the entire thing he tells kai about what happened on reach and how they had to make the tough decisions and this is what i was talking about earlier where it seems like akistan is actually showing some remorse where like he did it because that's his orders and that's what he needed to do but he's like actually feel really bad for what i've done now though which i feel like is quite interesting but at this point i think kai like we were saying earlier i think kai is now really starting to piece it together and she questions everything i also took that bit with akistan is just more her trying to play her like play up the like you know feel remorse for me this kind of thing it could be i mean that this i feel like akistan really could go either way um which is a guy that has one i think his character is so good uh but yeah kai then starts to question uh everything you know she starts to question the the training like the the exfil glitch or how there's no one to exfil them and things like that she starts questioning that she starts thinking about the other things and uh akistan obviously then you know explains everything to kai which uh kai is now finally you know in in the nose she kind of knows everything and like i think daniel was saying earlier she 100 believes chief and she's like bam and uh she heads to to save chief they end like the simulation that they're in and uh immediately kai is heading off she's like okay she's gonna go follow chief again she's gonna go save chief and akistan says it's too late he's already sent the black ops who are the black ops is that a reference to any other one in the game just because it's just like yeah there's just the black ops only black ops and some kind of militia so it makes sense so to deal but yeah so kai heads ought to go and save chief and we don't get to see and i thought we were going to see some kind of fight at the end but we don't get to see that um sort of happened just yet but then they are all kinds of system malfunctions around chief as uh katana starts leading him somewhere and she starts telling him you know you've got to go through this door and like you're saying earlier there's like a little keypad or whatever and chief is like can you handle that and katana like opens the store and we find out that she's been leading him to the forerunner artifact and we go back to miki and uh she's in a little bit of trouble they found out about the transmission that they've sent to the new nse and everyone the priest demands that she be killed and uh it's pretty interesting how this is like what did the arbiter say i don't actually have ever written down but he kind of sits on those that are faithful non-believers will stick with me and those that won't yes that's me or something along those lines so like basically anyone who's with the arbiter like they know he's basically saying to them if you're on my side you know like if you know you know because like if any attacks and then like you can see they immediately start splitting and like he gets his people they get their people and they just start fighting and there's just a big crazy fight scene everyone everyone with the plasma swords and they're just going at it i did think in the scene that it was going to be the arbiter just slicing off the priest's head and then everyone else was going to be like whoa okay well we behind you dude but there is a bit of a fight and i thought that was interesting because it feels like they may be hinting at it symbolically they say that this is going to be like an internal conflict between the covenant maybe there's like a bit of a civil not a civil war kind of thing but maybe again like we say i think the arbiter's going to become the heretic and he's going to maybe branch or start a branch of the covenant that are going to fight i mean if it's not leading up to the heretic it could be building up to the events of halo too where the covenant starts to fall apart because of internal struggle that's how i'm kind of thinking that there could be something so so quan and the flood and this idea with the heretic could be things that they're hinting at to give you know some more substance to see two and that's the kind of stuff they'll go into in season two uh season three so they're going to focus halo now but they're sort of dropping some some little hints at what you know we look forward to in the future like the halo five us silly civil war as well like just where elites fight elites but i think Dan's more right with the halo too sort of deal while this whole battle is going on with the arbiter taking our people maki uh then starts crawling on the ground she's terrified at what's going on because she has absolutely no idea like if she's going to live right now i mean the the arbiter could lose the fight and or she could get like a plasma sword just like dropped on her like it's crazy so she's terrified but she starts crawling towards uh the big four run artifact that they have and um as she starts getting closer to it we see chief approaching his smaller artifact and they get close and close and close and close and then boom credits and that's the end of the episode i mean a bit of a cliffhanger i loved and hated that yeah i i kind of really wanted to see it but it's it's good to kind of keep the excitement to like get you like see what happens now to the the one word the two words i said after that like they found it was just fuck off oh i thought you would have said blue balls i saw it coming up no way and we've been blue balled again i didn't think that i mean after that episode i thought no we've had enough like they don't have to like amp it up more but it would have been cool if they touched it and then they saw each other on the halo and then they ended it but maybe they're not going to see each other maybe mikey is connection is dead that's the thing but i'm thinking maybe that now that chief is touching his artifact at the same time mikey is touching hoes maybe mikey's connection will be restored kind of like when you you know unplug your rudder and plug it back in have you tried turning it off and on again like chief is touching his artifact this thing felt like oh yeah he's just masturbating oh man he touched his sacred artifact but mikey is also touched mikey is touching chief sacred artifacts oh god this is a dirty episode a dirty dirty episode as most as baby those bombshells most of us baby oh boy on those bombshells in that dirty notes let's uh we've just recap the whole episode episode six we've got two episodes left guys do you think we're gonna get a double episode drop or the season finale yeah there's no reason to i don't think so there's no reason to fair enough i haven't actually checked the dates but i'd assume that we're gonna get two more weeks so just talk with us we're at least another two weeks um but that was episode six onyx i was very excited to see this episode and i'm glad it delivered so why don't we head straight into our scoreboard by episode six all righty's who's going first we uh should we start with drew drew headed uh yeah i uh episode rating i really this is a good it's a good solid app right it's again there's a lot of building here um and and i i i i have a hard time giving any sci-fi show a bad rating because it's a great sci-fi show right like it's sort of like it's it's still checking all the boxes i love right like it's got cool it had cool action space battle space jumping it's got like political intrigue it's got people doing dumb things for the right reasons uh and yeah aliens it's got yeah it's checking all my boxes so it's hard for me to give this a bad rating but it still felt like uh i don't know i i guess i want things to move faster i don't know why like i guess i'm excited here it is here it is i want master chief to have his fucking armor and to do cool shit in his armor right and and and until until that happens i'm never going to give an episode that doesn't have the chief in his armor doing badass shit in his armor i'm never going to give it more than an eight so i'm going to give this a 7.5 uh like and that's that to me is still pretty fucking solid for this episode uh but that's kind of where where i'm landing it's still good it's still all great i'm like i can't really shark on anything even all the nitpicks i have it's still fun i i i enjoyed it like there was cool stuff happening chief you know being up rent uh you and then see people was fun to watch especially like as we said get punched and just goes whew um super such yeah i i i kind of wish there was a bit more to the chief kai did discussion and fight even because it did it did feel very sort of like bang bang bang bang i just that was like the whole episode really like everything happened really fast and they jammed a lot in and it just didn't have enough i think like had enough time to breathe but still enjoyed it so i'd be seven out of ten okay so yeah another slower episode um with some cool action moments though we've got some really dope action moments i freaking loved that space jump action sequence right at the beginning it was so really like really well shot and i thought it was i thought it was just awesome like a great way to open the episode but other than that everything was was pretty slow but i think this show is doing a really great job at getting to the point on some things uh giving us you know something to chew on every single week instead of kind of beating around the bush and slowing it down to fill up these episodes because this is a filler episode uh to an extent that we did progress the plot a little bit but it didn't really do a lot um i was i i don't like to say filler this episode though so i think what i want to call it is like a pacing episode because what they did was they slowed things down but they did a really good job it's still raising some stakes and the emotional tension and things like that which i really enjoyed about this week's episode um i liked it i think it's a solid episode i think it's it's setting up a lot of cool shit for the last two episodes um i like what they've done with aksen um i like how kai's returned i mean fuck kai is what we're saying for a while but i'm kind of like uh mild mild defuck kai now um i'm coming back around because i think she's gonna she's definitely going to be on chief side again come episode seven next week's episode uh so like i said it's like cool little pacing like a slowdown episode just to keep building things up but i like how the tension was still there and how things were amped up so this one i'm gonna give an eight out of ten because i really enjoyed the action sequences and i think they did a good job with the the tension and things um so i like this one i like this one as well i think it was a pretty good episode all around and i noticed something as i was watching this episode i found myself just getting that kind of like i don't know what you would call it like a comfort with when it comes to watching a show and i don't know if there's a cinephile word for this of like i'm hitting that point with this show where i just genuinely enjoy watching it just regardless because i enjoy the writing i enjoy the characters i enjoy the shots i like i enjoy the cinematography the action and it was just this like realization of like this is a show that i enjoy watching just because i do and like that i think that means a lot for me because i don't watch a lot of shows i don't watch a lot of television i don't watch a lot of movies so for something to have that effect i think is a good thing for this episode specifically i enjoyed a lot about it i think it did do a lot for the story especially because you got that bit at the end where cortana's talking to chief and leading him and it felt a little reminiscent of the games as you're like watching doors opening and closing and cortana's like leading him along and explaining like how she's doing things and it's not quite there but it's kind of given us a little bit of an ivy drip of like what we want to see happen what we're hoping for there was a brief moment to at that point when the door was closed and i forgot that cortana had said that she needs him to go touch the artifact and i was waiting for the doors to open and see the mule near armor and be like oh i was thinking that too and i was like and then it was the forerunner artifact and i was like oh yeah that's right that has happened first maybe next week we'll get that i was thinking that exact same thing i was thinking we're about to see the all man he's about to put that shit on i'd exactly the same yeah i wanted that uh but yeah yeah i'm glad that it stayed pretty well focused on chief uh i would have liked more with kai but i'm i'm going team kai here i think kai is gonna come around i don't think kai ever went a hard fuck everyone i think it was just a lot of herd being like manipulated and not knowing the truth and uh ultimately i enjoyed the the entirety of the episode in all of its aspects uh the highs and the lows i'm glad that some of the side stuff was really quick and short and sweet but then the better main moments had like had really great stuff to them especially the like the the shots with the arbiter like i'm glad to get more of those cool covenant alien shots like i want more of those yeah uh so i'm gonna give this give this one an eight as well i think this one was pretty good solid i mean i just did to echo what you were saying about the show being like a comfort show it's a very easy show to watch now that you that we kind of getting into it and it's like i was i was saying the other day i really feel like this show is hit its stride that it's kind of figured out what it wants to do to figure out that figure out this is what halo tv show is and it's kind of it's nailing that and week after week it's like we know what this is now we understand everything we're in it and i like i have to echo that and say i'm also just like so easy to just slap it on and be like i'm excited to watch this new episode i wonder what it would be like if we had done this show last season and we got to the episode of the osmosis and we'd be like fuck the show fuck this like rage rage flip the table why are they banging i mean did they bang though did they actually it was like a spiritual experience that was penetration oh gosh everyone hated it anyways so that is episode six of halo season two we have two episodes f guys two episodes left we're coming up to i think they're gonna do a big thing for the finale so that's gonna be exciting i'm very excited to see how they wrap up the story for season two but that is this week's episode thank you guys so much for watching if you're in the live premiere with us on youtube say hi something type osmosis in the chat right now do it but otherwise join us again next week on tuesday's at two p.m. pst over here on youtube you can join us a day early if you become a member over a couch hoop so do that and there's a whole bunch of other cool stuff if you become a member too maybe you can listen to us talk about dirty things on there and yeah tom said fuck again i think we should get a swear job to the show that'll be fun that'll be great that's the way to raise money but uh yeah join join couch hoop become a member do all that stuff you can also listen to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and uh for everything else that you like cool weird wonderful everything to do with pop culture keep it locked in here on couch hoop and we will see you next week's buttons see you then osmosis osmosis i'm gonna have like a series you know i don't like to do are you ready to go down the rabbit hole the all things alice podcast will explore the cultural phenomena of alice in wonderland frank bedore the author of the looking glass wars trilogy is your host through a wonderverse of interviews from all types of creators as they chronicle the dark yet empowering reality of luice carol'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
Drew joins the team for this Episode 6 breakdown, in which we jump into Kai training new Spartans and dealing with her guilt of not being on Reach. Chief is wrecking marines left and right to get to Ackerson and McKee is no longer blessed and is walking a thin line with the Covenant and Cortana.
