Halo TV series renewed for a second season

Looks like the Master Chief is going to get another chance to… finish the fight (that’s a Halo thing), because Variety is reporting that Paramount+ has renewed its Halo TV show for a second season ahead of the video game adaptation’s premiere. The show won’t start until March 24, but Showtime and Paramount+ boss David Nevins said in a statement that this renewal “reflects the confidence we have in the power of this epic series to attract and engage viewers.” The show is also probably pretty expensive, what with the army of religious aliens, the heavily-armored super-soldiers, and the ancient Chevy Tahoe that people are still driving in 500 years, so Paramount might as well gets its money’s worth.

With no details about what might happen in season two, this is the part where we’d normally put on our nerd glasses (they are remarkably similar to our regular glasses) and describe the plot of the second Halo video game—which involves a semi-friendly alien called the Arbiter, the ability to dual-wield certain weapons, and a plant-like tentacle monster called the Gravemind—but it seems like the Halo TV show is going to take place before the games. Hell, the trailer clearly takes place before anyone has found any of the eponymous universe-killing Halo rings, so it’s way too early to be talking about the Gravemind.

What this does mean, though, is that the Halo show might now have more opportunities to bring us closer to the plot of the games, specifically the first Halo and the prequel Halo: Reach (the franchise’s highpoint, give or take Halo Infinite).

Paramount+’s Halo series stars Pablo Schreiber as John-117, a.k.a. Master Chief, with Jen Taylor reprising her role from the games as his A.I. companion/babysitter/love interest(?) Cortana. It also stars Natascha McElhone, Bokeem Woodbine, Shabana Azmi, Bentley Kalu, Natasha Culzac, Kate Kennedy, Danny Sapani, Olive Gray, and Charlie Murphy.