Silver Team embarks on an apparently suicidal mission to stop the Covenant and save humanity from the power of the Halo. Halsey awaits her fate back at Reach.

So, Makee pressed the button. Silver Team were locked in an inter-team feud. Halsey was on the tarmac, waiting to take off with everything. So as we commence this finale on all these cliff edges, where do the writers take us?

Unsurprisingly the action picks up exactly where we left off last time out, with everyone picking themselves up again in the wake of the shockwave generated when Makee touched the artefact. Silver Team’s standoff is set to continue but a timely intervention helps Chief and Kai make their point, while also shattering yet another relationship in the Reach fold as decades of lies and secrecy are exposed – that dirty underbelly to the USNC that’s been present and apparent since the start of the show? Yeah, it’s all getting aired out here.

Makee meanwhile takes her chance to steal away with the remaining artefact and get the hell out of dodge on the Covenant ship still in the hangars. Off she flees to the secret Covenant homeworld, to reunite the artefacts and locate the Halo. Silver Team aren’t able to stop her, but thanks to John’s newfound trust of Cortana, he’s able to figure out exactly why they haven’t yet been able to find any trace of the homeworld where Makee told him to look.

Before they can get there though, there’s the small matter of apprehending Halsey, who realises her plans have come to naught and tries to leg it, only to find that she’s got a very pissed off Kai on her tail. If this episode proves anything at all, it’s that Halsey literally doesn’t care about anyone or anything other than her grand design for humanity, and to be honest even given that grimy underbelly we’ve always seen of the USNC, it’s more than a little disturbing. Here Halsey willingly sacrifices even those closest to her, and makes it clear she’d go further still, all in the name of advancing the ambitions of a humanity she herself admits is flawed and ugly. Natasha McElhone has certainly been given a peach of a part with Halsey, and nowhere more than here, as she gets to showcase exactly why the brilliant doctor is so very dangerous indeed.

Back with Silver Team, John leads his comrades on an apparently suicidal mission to reclaim the artefacts and stop the Covenant getting hold of the Halo. Cue some more action scenes aping the games and a lot of violence, but push past all that and once again we get to deal with serious nuance and themes here. John and his comrades might not be strong enough to stop the opponents they face, but John might have the answer, in a way in which he might sacrifice his soul that his body be allowed to finish the fight. On one hand you could argue it’s all a bit cliched, but again Schreiber sells it well, as does Jen Taylor as Cortana and Kate Kennedy as Kai. When the smoke clears and the casualties are counted, nothing is necessarily a given anymore, and as the credits roll, it seems we are in for a hell of a ride in season 2.

Verdict: A fitting end to what’s been a surprisingly interesting series. I look forward to seeing where the writers go with this next. 9/10

Greg D. Smith