Halo Season 2 Ending Explained: Who John Was Talking to and What Happened to the Rest of the Characters?
Halo Season 2 came to an end on Thursday, March 21, 2024, with the release of the episode “Halo,” directed by Dennie Gordon and written by David Wiener. Thus, we were able to find out what happened to the cast of characters led by Master Chief John-117 and the exciting plot of the Paramount+ series. But, if you reached this note, perhaps it is because you were left with some doubts about the outcome of the chapter. Therefore, in the following lines, I present to you the ending (ending explained) of season 2 of the fiction. It is worth pointing out that this television adaptation of the famous 343 Industries video game franchise stars Pablo Schreiber, Shabana Azmi, Natasha Culzac, and Olive Gray.
Thus, in the second installment of the production, Master Chief John-117 cannot shake the feeling that his war is about to change and risks everything to prove what no one else will believe: that the Covenant is preparing to attack the greatest strength of humanity. So, with the galaxy on the brink of the abyss, our protagonist embarks on a journey to find the key to humanity’s salvation or its extinction. The finale of Halo Season 2, prophetically titled Halo, finally brought viewers to the long-awaited ring, concluding this second story arc with a cliffhanger in which Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber) appears to arrive at the opening scenes of the events of the first Halo video game: Combat Evolved. Although the path to Halo was plotted very differently in the Paramount Plus series, the final destination was still largely the same: Master Chief enters the installation on Halo and must encounter an AI caretaker representing an ancient civilization and its technical progress.
Halo Season 2: Story Recap
This new season of Halo picks up where we left off, with Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber also now a producer) who is called to seek a compromise with his new superior, Colonel James Ackerson (Joseph Morgan), who has succeeded the fugitive Dr. Halsey (Natascha McElhone) is in command of a team in which new members and old problems continue to coexist. After discovering something about his past, Master Chief is left with doubts and hesitations about the role he and his team will have in the fight against the Covenant, who he senses is preparing something big, but he doesn’t understand exactly what. He is not believed by Ackerson, whose position and strategy do not always appear clear. Meanwhile, unanswered questions remain: where has the artificial intelligence Cortana gone? Who is he and what fate awaits humanity? What role can the Rubble resistance play in all this? Only the Halo seems to be the resource they need. Or not?
The first season of Halo was one of the biggest television disappointments of recent years. It arrived on Paramount+ with a lot of expectations, with a lot of hopes, not only for the massive number of fans of the most famous video game saga of all time but for science fiction lovers in general. But instead of having something faithful or in any case coherent with what was given to us by Seropian’s Bungie in 2001, from showrunners Kyle Killen and Steven Kane we had a sort of inconsistent and not very cohesive mix of different short-lived narrative lines, devoid of their true driving force, of an ability to give us something that would honor that very varied and varied gaming world. There’s no denying it, Halo represents something so iconic, so important in the triumph of video games in our civilization, that breaking away from it as it was done was a gross mistake.
Pablo Schreiber himself had recently criticized the first season, above all with the desire to also create a sentimental dimension for his Master Chief without a reason, the digressing too much into parallel narrative lines on the secondary characters which then, gradually went on, they were simply pushed aside with bad grace. Even more importantly, Halo did not have an aesthetic up to par, at various times it was noted that the CGI, the sets, and the direction of the action scenes themselves, were not so dissimilar to those of a B-movie, someone even risked a fan movie, despite the vastness of the budget available. All of this was the result of a rather troubled production process with substitutions, changes, departures… all defects which, however, this second season seems to have understood and remedied.
The first season of Halo suffered from an identity crisis. As a video game adaptation, it deviated too much from canon, with a humanized Master Chief that many fans did not recognize (especially without the helmet). As a first approach to the world of Halo for a new viewer, it was an overexposure of information with no emotional anchor to support it. The result was a series that could rarely fully satisfy anyone, neither the fan nor the neophyte, but that had enough virtues (interesting and gray characters, genuinely brutal action scenes) to deserve a second chance. And from what we have been able to see, they know how to take advantage of it. The first thing you should know is that one of the biggest defects of the first season, the division into two parallel plots (that of Master Chief and the Spartans in the UNSC, and that of Soren and Kwan on the planet Madrigal) has been corrected in this one, at least as far as we can see.
Halo Season 2 Ending Explained
Towards the end of the Halo Season 2 we see Miranda reviewing the artifact she found in the old Forerunner laboratory. However, unknowingly, she spreads a parasitic entity known as The Flood. The result? All those who become infected end up turning into wild creatures similar to a zombie, in the purest style of “The Last of Us”. On the other hand, John-117 manages to save Cortana and is forced to crash-land on the Halo ring, where he meets Makee and Inquisitor. Unfortunately, Kai sacrifices himself in battle, and Soren, for his part, manages to save Ackerson and Kessler. Unfortunately, his wife Laera discovers that she is infected by The Flood, so she does not continue the fight and encourages Soren to press on. Dr. Halsey also becomes infected, as does Halsey. However, Miranda manages to save her mother and preserve her body to stop the progress of the infection. Likewise, we watch Kwan Ha meet The Mother for the first time, identifying her as the descendant of a group of protectors who can control The Flood.
After an exciting battle, John-117 manages to defeat the Inquisitor and finally kills him. Then, Makee enters the Forerunner building in front of them and tells our protagonist that “the only thing left is to start over.” John refuses to let him but watches another building emerge in the distance and a Covenant fleet approaching him. Season 2 of the Paramount + series culminates by revealing that the Master Chief was actually talking to 343 Guilty Spark. As fans of the original video game know, he is also known as The Monitor or The Oracle and turns out to be the caretaker of the Halo ring. It should be noted that the AI warns John that something is stalking him: “He is awake because you are here. You are here because he is awake (…) he has been down there all this time. Waiting to meet you. In the dark. I will be watching…”, he points out. In that sense, 343 Guilty Spark is expected to play a key role in an eventual third installment of the production. Would you like to see it?
The Discovery of the Flood?
Meanwhile, outside the Halo ring, Dr. Catherine Halsey (Natascha McElhone) and her daughter Miranda were also making discoveries regarding that same ancient civilization, as well as the nightmare creatures that had once threatened it. Halsey and Miranda find a Forerunner installation beneath Onyx; the laboratory with the dead scientist inside was where the Flood sample was found, suggesting that the facility may have been crucial to the Forerunner-Flood War.
The Halo TV series never makes an official reference by the name, but there are enough clues dropped for anyone who’s played the Halo games to know that the ancient city Halsey and Miranda found beneath the planet Onyx (where Halsey first discovered the Halo Key and the human hybrid DNA that created the Spartans) belonged to the ancient race known as the Forerunners. The Forerunners are an important piece of Halo mythology: they were ancient Guardians of the Galaxy, created by an even older and more powerful race. However, the Ecumene Forerunner empire eventually took the place of their creators, assuming the mantle of their creators’ responsibility to care for the universe and foster life.
Who are the Forerunners?
The Forerunners populated over three million worlds in the Milky Way, seeding life forms that included humanity and building technological marvels such as the Halo ring installations, the Ark (main control center for the Halo rings), and the Worlds Shield (protected from Halo’s annihilation pulse). The Forerunners achieved peace within their own species, seeing themselves as a mere link in a chain of evolution, ultimately deciding that humans would become their successors.
However, when the Flood’s infestation began to manifest itself among humanity’s ranks, the Forerunners were forced to go to war with the parasitic species, eventually constructing the Halo arrays as a means to purify The Flood (and all potential hosts) from entire sectors of the universe. After heated debate within their culture, the Forecurors ultimately decided to activate the twelve rings of Halo, wiping the galaxy clean of all meaningful life, except for the species (such as humanity) they protected by placing them in the Ark. The Forerunners were eradicated by Halo’s impulses, and the memory of their culture and technology was lost along with them. The Flood will eventually survive thanks to the spore samples that the Forerunners kept in their installation laboratories.
Who is the Monitor?
It is also Forerunner technology that the Master Chief encounters within the Halo ring installation, in particular 343 Guilty Spark, the Monitor that watches over the installation. Guilty Spark is a famous character from the first Halo game, in which he is remembered as the Monitor left behind by the Forerunners as guardian of the Halo installation over which the Master Chief and the Covenant clash. The conclusion of the second season of Halo sets up the plot for the third season which will follow the plot of the game Halo: Combat Evolved, in which the Master Chief undertakes the infiltration of this Halo installation to save the galaxy from potential annihilation. Along the way, John 117 must confront Forerunner technology and the Flood to complete his mission.
