Review Halo the Series S02E07 – Thermopylae (Full Spoilers)

Halo the Series 2^nd season’s penultimate episode, Thermopylae, sets up a potentially thrilling conclusion.  Chief has his armor back, Kai is leading the Spartan-III’s on a suicide mission, Ackerson isn’t a monster, but the Flood certainly is. 

The episode begins with Makee and Chief in their mental projection of the Halo ring.  John wants to keep the ring out of the Covenant’s hands and Makee wants the same, though with the addition of no humanity thrown on top.  Makee wants to use the ring to “create a better world”, just her and Chief.  She senses his doubt, and both are forced to leave their brain dance before real-world enemies do them in.

Thermopylae is a different type of episode for the series.  It’s nearly full setup, with little action and lots of “people talking in rooms”.  That works just fine as it is written well and impeccably shot.  Bear McReary’s soundtrack is beautiful as well, feeling like Halo but not requiring 343 and Paramount to help pay for Marty O’Donnell’s Congressional run via licensing fees.  Multiple concurrent storylines are running in parallel. Makee and The Arbiter win their fight against the Priest’s boys and she burns his sigil into her chest to make him go goo-goo eyes.

Chief & Kai, as they search for his suit with help from Cortana, Ackerson and Parangosky as he realizes that she’s willing to sacrifice everyone to stop the Covenant from taking the Halo ring; Halsey, Kwan, and Miranada as they discover an entire Covenant city and my god is the architecture gorgeous.  We even get a full-on hard light bridge and it looks glorious.

Focusing on the Halsey plot threads we get an explanation of just what it was she was looking for in the kids they abducted.  343’s love of the librarian’s gene song is here in full force.  In her prior work at the Onyx facility, she discovered a mix of human and non-human DNA, which put her on a course to find those in humanity’s ranks who possessed it.  After Kwan realizes all the Covenant doohicky’s work because she’s got her special “protector” connection, they enter a research lab facility with a dead forerunner scientist clutching a new maguffin.  That scene ends when the lights all start turning red in the Forerunner history space map/clock thing and we see The Flood’s tear across the cosmos play out in evil red lights.

Jon and Kai have heart-to-hearts before they run into Ackerson, who had been running simulations on what the data spike does.  Turns out it causes the engine in a Covenant ship to go poof with enough oomph to take out an entire solar system.  He’s pissed, at first because the Spartan III’s are his life’s work, though in the end because they trusted him and he’s sent them unknowingly off to die if they succeed.  Jon gives him a nice one-handed choke 4 feet off the ground as a reward and eventually, they have things out just enough so that the Chief gets his suit back and Ackerson is ready to throw his career away to take down Parangosky.

The weakest part of the episode is once again Laera and Soren’s pursuit of their son.  They’re running all the purchased/abducted orphans through a Spartan II-style gauntlet to see who can make the cut, and the parents aren’t having it.  Soren defends his son and beats the shit out of all of the Oni workers and for some reason, Kessler and Laera recoil from him before being snatched away through a bunch of mood fog that Oni’s engineers must have felt would set the appropriate mood.  It was weird, I don’t get the motivation of his family in that scene and it does feel like Soren is being set up to go back to working as a Spartan eventually.

There are some scenes with Perez as she tries to calm the nerves of the lady who kept yelling bad instructions in the last episode.  After getting his suit back and wearing all of it except the helmet Chief runs into Perez.  It’s a nice little reunion that goes a little sour after he tells her he won’t be joining her mission.  That mission is for all the Spartan III’s to go data-spike the covenant outside of the Halo ring.  That’s right, thanks to Chief and Makee’s early show reunion she and Cortana could pinpoint Halo’s location and the Arbiter’s fleet is there.  Unfortunately, most of the covenant fleet is there as they chased them down and now humanity is sending wave after wave of Spartan III’s out in a desperate attempt to get one data spike off and, unknowingly, blow the entire solar system up.

By the end of the episode, we’ve had Halsey reconnect with her daughter before running away from security.  Kwan took off like a bullet after realizing that the monster in her nightmare, aka the Flood, was real.  Kai is going to probably die with Spartan IIIs, and Ackerson is arrested after helping Chief.  John makes a big show that he’s still alive by walking out of the facility in his full suit, holding his helmet of course, and calling his name out over the comms as he leaves.  The episode closes out with the Chief seeing the Arbiter’s ship, which has Cortana and Makee on board, making a mad dash to the Halo ring.

We finally got to see not only the Halo itself, from afar, but a lot of gorgeous looking Forerunner architecture.  The writing in all but a few scenes was excellent.  There was a ton of information to convey and they were able to get it out naturally and it might be the most the show has felt like the games.  It’s mostly because of how fantastic the sets looked but still, I’m excited for next week’s season finale which I will also be staying up until 3 am EST to watch and review.  See you then.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Halo the Series S02E07 Thermopylae

Played on

Paramount+

PROS

• Incredible Forerunner Sets
• Solid Writing in Most Scenes
• Excellent Setup for a Huge Finale
• We SAW the Halo… finally (I could cry)

CONS

• Two weaker scenes/subplots

8.5 out of 10

GREAT

XboxEra Scoring Policy