SPOILER ALERT: Major spoilers are ahead for the first episode of Halo on Paramount+Fans didn’t have long to wait before they got that promised face reveal of the always-masked Master Chief character in the new Halo series on Paramount+. A live-action adaptation of the popular video game franchise, Halo premiered on Paramount+ on March 24 after many years of other attempted projects based on the games fizzling out in development hell. With the series now streaming on Paramount+, the long-awaited project has finally come to be with Pablo Schreiber in the coveted role of Master Chief.
Directly based on the games, Halo follows Master Chief Spartan John-117 (Schreiber), the commander of a Spartan unit, amid a war between humanity and an extraterrestrial menace. In the video games, Master Chief never removes his helmet, and gamers have grown accustomed to having the character stay masked. Prior to the series debut on Paramount+, it had already been revealed that the show would be seeing Master Chief’s face at some point, though it wasn’t clear exactly when that would happen.
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In the closing moments of the first episode of Halo, titled “Contact,” Master Chief attempts to gain the trust of a refugee, Kwan (Yerin Ha). To prove himself to be a human being, he removes his helmet, completely revealing Schreiber’s face. This marks a major moment in Halo franchise history after Master Chief had gone so many years without removing the mask, even if this is part of a separate story unconnected to the games. You can take a look at Master Chief’s face below.
Related: Halo Opening Episodes Review: Paramount+ Introduces the Silver Timeline with the Iconic Master Chief
Halo Revealed Master Chief’s Face in Episode No. 1
Paramount+
There had been some fan complaints prior to the series premiere about the decision to unmask Master Chief. In a new interview with Collider, producers Kiki Wolfkill and Steven Kane have spoken out about why it was important for the series to go this route. While having the character masked in a video game setting works, keeping the mask on for the series would stand in the way from connecting to Pablo Schreiber’s version of the character.
“It wasn’t something where from the get-go we said, ‘His helmet needs to come off,'” Wolfkill said. “We’d left it open, but it was also always a goal and a priority that this was going to be about Chief’s story. And more importantly, it was going to be about John’s story because John as a character isn’t someone that we explore in the games very much.”
Wolfkill added, “So as we started getting into what that evolution looked like and what it meant for John to understand his role as Master Chief and what that means, and frankly his role as a human and the broader question of humanity at stake, it was so clear that we needed to be able to see the person in the helmet and we needed to see John outside of the armor both, I would say, emotionally and physically. Then when it came to the writing of the moment, it was so important that moment reflect why it was important in this story because story’s going to drive everything.”
“We didn’t just treat it like he gets on a ship, throws his helmet off and oh, okay. He’s taking off his helmet. We made, essentially, the season about taking off the helmet. So really, we leaned into the helmet removal as the wellspring from which the rest of the season progressed, flowed,” Kane noted. “The goal was to make the helmet removal a big enough moment for all of us so that if you don’t know the show, you’re like, ‘Okay, this is obviously an important moment.’ But if you do know the game and the lore, you’re thinking, ‘Okay, our journey’s going to begin.’ We’re going to take you along this journey with John as he discovers his own humanity. So you’re right there with John, taking off the helmet with him and discovering who he is together.”
You can find Halo streaming on Paramount+.
Halo TV Show Will Provide a New Portrayal of Master Chief
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