Paramount has canceled its live-action Halo series for Paramount Plus, according to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. But if you’re a fan of the show and want to see it continue, there’s a sliver of hope: both publications report that the show’s producers are shopping the series around, so perhaps there will be a third season.
“We are extremely proud of this ambitious series and would like to thank our partners at Xbox, 343 Industries and Amblin Television, along with showrunner and executive producer David Wiener, his fellow executive producers, the entire cast led by Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief and the amazing crew for all their outstanding work,” Paramount said in a statement to THR and Variety. “We wish everyone the best going forward.”
The Halo show had its issues, primarily the fact that we never really got to see the titular Halo in any kind of detail. Some fans of the games could never get over the decision to show the Master Chief’s face throughout the majority of the show — something that’s never been done in the games. And some folks were really unamused by the romance subplot between the Chief and a human member of the alien Covenant, which included an unintentionally hilarious sex scene.
The show’s second season was a vast improvement over the first. The season’s first episode and its later depiction of the Fall of Reach — a major moment in the game series — really captured the harrowing yet valorous essence of the Halo games despite not strictly following the game’s canon. Season 2 also added more depth to Schreiber’s Silver Team costars, especially from Riz-028 (Natasha Culzac) and Vannak-134 (Bentley Kalu). The games have done a poor job of capturing the humanity of the people under all that power armor, and that was something the Halo TV series really excelled at, despite all its other faults.
Hopefully, the showrunners will find a new home for the series to continue what’s been an interesting take on one of the most popular video game series of all time.
