What Halo Gamers Need To Know About The Halo TV Series Storyline

Gamers need to understand something about the upcoming Halo TV series.

By Erika Hanson | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

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Halo has long been praised as being one of the best first-person shooters to grace video game consoles. Since 2001, gamers have dived into the popular character known as Master Chief to battle alien races and save humanity. Twenty years later, the celebrated game continues its momentum and gears up for a live-action adaptation with the premiere of the Halo TV series coming to Paramount+ in 2022. As news on the TV rendition continues to funnel through, some important information regarding the series storyline was just revealed.

In an interview shared on Twitter via Halopedia, Kiki Wolfkill, the studio head for transmedia at 343 Industries revealed that the highly anticipated Halo TV series will have a completely different canon than that of the video game series. “We do have some context and perspective that is different from some of those stories that we’ve experienced or read about in the games.” You can see a clip of the interview below.

While the news may come to some hardcore fans as a disappointment, it was a strategic decision made by the studio that will hopefully aid the Halo TV series in avoiding the pitfall that usually follows on-screen live-action adaptations. “We’re referring to this as the Halo Silver Timeline as a way of differentiating it from core canon and both protecting core canon and protecting the television story, and by that I mean being able to give ourselves the chance to evolve both and for both to be what they need to be for their mediums without colliding with each other.”

Arriving to Xbox at the turn of the century, the debut Halo game followed an in-depth storyline. Playing from the perspective of the Master Chief — the super-soldier Spartan that goes by the moniker John-117. Together with his artificial intelligence companion, Cortana, Master Chief is the last remaining troop from his division. Starting the game off to Master Chief awakening on his ship from being cryogenically frozen, you are instantly throttled into battle as Master Chief ascends on a mission to save humanity from an alliance of aliens known as the Covenant. While fans are surely hopeful that the Halo TV series will debut the familiar Spartan in a similar way as his video game introduction, there is also plenty more lore that the studio will be able to pull from.

Following the immense success of its debut, the Halo franchise released Halo 2 in 2004, and Halo 3 in 2007. Continuing on the original story arc, the follow-up games acted as a trilogy with the third game ending the ongoing battle between Earth and the Covenant and simultaneously setting the stage for Master Chief’s next battle.  Following the trilogy, Bungie released two prequel games for the franchise along with an expansion pack that put gamers in control of a new character set during the events that took place between Halo 2 and 3. After parting ways with Bungie, the Halo franchise fell into the hands of 343 Industries. Under new management, Master Chief was given a new story arc for the 4th, 5th, and 6th games released under the title that will offer even more material for the Halo TV series to take from. 

The Halo TV series is set to premiere on Paramount+ sometime in 2022. The long-awaited project was announced back in 2018 and has undergone plenty of changes along the way. While this won’t be the first time that Master Chief and Cortana were brought to life on screen, the recently released teaser trailer gives us hope that Paramount studios along with 343 Industries will deliver on bringing the beloved game to life.