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Positive:
12
Mixed:
15
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
Feb 8, 2024
Season 2 Review:
Halo feels more streamlined in its second season. While still based on a video game franchise with nearly 25 daunting years of established lore, it’s leaning into the autonomy within himself that John-117 has unlocked, which could very well emerge as Master Chief and his team’s biggest asset against the Covenant and threats closer to home.
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Feb 5, 2024
Season 2 Review:
Ultimately, by leaning on the franchise's strengths rather than Hollywood's failed generic formula for adaptations, Halo season 2 improves on the first outing and compensates for all the things it got wrong. There are even plotlines adapted directly from the Halo canon, which fans will undoubtedly find intriguing.
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ColliderFeb 5, 2024
Season 2 Review:
All in all, the first half of Halo Season 2 is pretty good TV that keeps you engaged, as well as being highly binge-able due to the mysteries involving the Covenant’s emissary, Dr. Halsey’s fate, Cortana’s whereabouts and the Halo itself. If you liked Season 1, you’ll certainly love the new episodes. If you haven’t tuned in yet, you won’t regret starting it now.
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The Daily BeastMar 14, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Halo’s adaptation accuracy is mildly undercut by the moderately creaky narrative wheels it’s set in motion. ... [However] with top-notch CGI and a lead performance from Schreiber that lends new depths to his famously one-dimensional hero, Halo appears to have the firepower to become its own uniquely formidable sci-fi titan.
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Feb 5, 2024
Season 2 Review:
Overall, the first half of Halo’s second season isn’t perfect. Its story still diverges towards the less exciting corners of the galaxy at times, and there were occasional characterization or narrative decisions that felt odd or out of place. .... But compared to the previous season, the show does a much better job focusing on what it’s good at.
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Mar 15, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Halo’s first two episodes (available for review) are exciting and captivating, though they differ greatly between one another in tone, and there’s no way to tell from watching 22% of the season whether they stick the landing. What I can say is that it is more ambitious in scope than I expected, but in becoming so it veers away from the original games.
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Mar 24, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Where this all goes and whether the balance tips more toward character and story or more toward video game-like battle scenes is unclear, but if the first two episodes are any indication, character stories will win out. As long as that remains the case, I’ll gladly go along for this sci-fi ride.
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Mar 14, 2022
Season 1 Review:
There are good parts to Halo, and scenes and characters that should interest to new and old fans. But at least in its first two episodes, there is also room to grow. Halo has the potential to be the big-budget, hugely-watched space epic it wants to be. It just needs to take a breath and focus on its story — instead of its backstory — to do that.
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ColliderMar 14, 2022
Season 1 Review:
It mostly succeeds in this regard, with the relationship between Quan and John proving to be the show’s saving grace. They offer a hopeful glimpse at a future where they both help each face off against a universe that is dead set on using them for their own means. Even when everything else around them struggles to come together, they remain the glue that holds it all together.
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The GuardianMar 24, 2022
Mar 24, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The series’s cinematography, like its narrative priorities, is uneven. ... How Halo is choosing to spend its time, though — that strange artifact, an endless war, and political backstabbing — isn’t yet as compelling as whatever weirdness could be happening in the forgotten corners of this universe.
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Mar 23, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The first couple of episodes represent a decent start that, despite its best efforts, failed to stun me. But it didn't drive me away, either. Without question, one detail the producers got right is casting Pablo Schreiber ("American Gods," "Orange Is the New Black") as Master Chief. The man has range, and that makes the possibility of what he could bring to "Halo" exciting.
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Mar 14, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Seeing the world through a vacant perspective might work for a game in which the audience has its own agency, but not for a show that requires its own point of view. In its first two episodes, “Halo” doesn’t quite have that yet. But as another entrant in the ever expanding “Halo” universe, it at least has enough ambition to make it worth a closer look.
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Mar 14, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Schreiber and Ha have good hero-sidekick chemistry, and there’s an element of dedicated sci-fi weirdness that keeps things from feeling too rote. (Bokeem Woodbine, for instance, is having a lot of fun in a second-episode role as literally the only person John knows who is not a government-altered killing machine.) But the whole thing is brought down by the writing—which never goes for a second-draft line when a first-draft line will do—and by an abiding and pervasive sense of cheapness.
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IndieWireMar 14, 2022
Season 1 Review:
While “Halo” features a few minor pivots in these early hours, there’s very little to spoil and even less to spark curiosity that’s not already present. Perhaps most surprising is how smoothly the initial narrative plays out, given how many creatives came and went during development.
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The Daily BeastFeb 8, 2024
Season 2 Review:
There are moments in the first half of the new season that successfully draw stray plot threads into the main thrust of the story and more enthusiastically lean into silliness. For now, though, Halo, like its identity-seeking protagonist, is still trying to find itself.
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Mar 14, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Maybe Halo does play as more exciting and specific if you have an internal checklist of game elements — weapon types, helpful acquisitions, character or planetary allusions — you’re looking to have acknowledged. For those of us who don’t necessarily crave or appreciate those things, Halo has a generic story, limitedly engaging characters and a clearly high special-effects budget that yields respectable but unremarkable results.
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Radio TimesFeb 5, 2024
Season 2 Review:
Many fans are sure to love the increased focus on action in season 2 and, in some places, it proves to be a well thought-out decision. However, especially at the beginning of the season, when fans will be looking for answers to the questions we were left with at the end of season 1, it takes away from some of the character-driven stories, leaving little time for anything else. All of this results in a less meaningful season 2 that's lost some of its heart.
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RogerEbert.comMar 22, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Unfortunately, based on just these two episodes, it may be a bumpy ride, as this adaptation already has significant problems—coming across as nothing more than a generic assemblage of science-fiction stories, disappointing action sequences, and uninteresting characters.
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Mar 18, 2022
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