While Kwan continues to search for her family’s ‘true purpose’, Soren is troubled by the spectre of unfinished business and the damage it may cause to his reputation.

Having focused quite hard on the mythology around the Spartans and the artefacts for a couple of episodes, the Halo TV series remembers it has other characters to play with and gives us a whole episode of just Soren and Kwan. And by golly, it’s not half bad!

Having successfully ditched Soren and stolen his car, Kwan heads off into the Madrigal desert in search of the mysterious witches who gave her father his ‘sacred mission’ so that she can find out for herself what it is and maybe salvage some small amount of honour for her family name. The way in which she finds them, and the revelation of her family’s destiny, is – to be fair – a little hokey. On the other hand, it’s nice to see the character actually get some backstory in the way of flashbacks and some actual, proper, honest-to-goodness agency. Kwan is faced with several difficult decisions here, and proves not only that she can measure up to them, but why she is a worthy inheritor of her father’s – and her family’s – mantle.

As for Soren – I’ve had reservations about this character from the start because it’s always felt like he may well be one step removed from doing something awful, even though he never does. Here, we get some insight into the complexity at the heart of this brigand though. Yes, Soren is a hard man. A man unafraid to take tough decisions or act in harsh ways in order to assert his own authority. But he’s also a man with a sense of honour – his own code by which he abides. That means that he’s quite happy violently letting insubordinate business partners exactly who’s boss, but he’s not about to break a promise he made to a friend.

The episode basically flits between the two of them doing their own thing until its back third, in which it contrives to reunite them and give a choice which may determine whether either of them survives, metaphorically and literally. What emerges is the idea that they’re perhaps not as dissimilar to one another as they might have imagined. Soren is hardly an idealist freedom fighter like Kwan – he’s too cynical and clear-eyed for that. But he’s also a man who got where he was not simply through physical strength but self-belief. Similarly, Kwan may not have all the hardened edges and capacity for cruelty that Soren has, but she’s no shrinking violet either. It’s an unexpected partnership but one that works surprisingly well, and suddenly I feel like the next season needs to give us a whole lot more of both characters, preferably together.

Verdict: An interesting little episode which invites us to remember there’s a whole universe out there beyond John, Cortana and the artefacts. 8/10

Greg D. Smith