What you need to know
- The Halo TV series launched this week, and early reviews for the show are a mixed bag.
- The show has a 61% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 66% score from fans, but many comments about the series are negative.
- Only one episode of the show has aired at this point, so things could improve by the time the season ends.
The first episode of the Halo TV series aired this week. Early reviews for the show aren't great, though people will need to see more episodes before they can judge the show in its entirety. The Halo TV series currently has a 61% critic score and a 66% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The Tomatometer isn't a perfect scoring system, but it takes feedback from a wide range of sources to create an aggregate score, which provides a general idea of how people feel about a show or movie.
"The video game Halo excelled at letting players become the hero — with the new Halo TV series, audiences are instead saddled with a series devoid of a soul," said Max Covill of RogerEbert.com.
"The goal shouldn't be about being everything to everyone, and while 'Halo' treats the source material with respect, it does so with a tentativeness, as if it is afraid to miss a key element," said the LA Times.
Reviews from standard audience members on Rotten Tomatoes don't appear to be drastically different than those of critics, at least generally speaking. "One and done for me. Master Chief looks bad ass the rest of the show looks like it some bad 90's B movie. Starship Troopers might have better effects," said Chad R (it appears he did not proofread his review).
Another audience member, Ty H, had similar thoughts, saying "the visuals are okay, but the acting is horrendous. The cast is very poor. Putting together the cutscenes from various Halo games would create a more moving story." Incidentally, this is an option for fans of the franchise. GameCin has a supercut of all Halo cutscenes that can be viewed like a movie (alternatively, you can just play the games firsthand on your Xbox Series X).
There were, however, fans of the first episode of the series. "I was ready to be disappointed based on all the reviews I've heard. But, I was surprised and wanted to watch more, after episode one was finished," said Johnathan C. Plenty of others commented on how they enjoyed the show carving its own narrative path so as to not be overly reliant on the games, and Pablo Schreiber (who plays Master Chief) got lots of love.
The show's first episode has a 7.7-star ranking on IMDb.
If you haven't watched the first episode yet, our guide on how to watch the Halo TV Series can help you out. The Halo TV series is on Paramount+, and you can get a free month of the streaming service if you're an Xbox Game Pass subscriber.
