I don’t want to put any details before more people have seen it, but this is an episode that started to really paint the picture of what we should expect going forward. Ton of action and some unexpected character deaths really created the feeling of actual stakes. I’ll put some other opinions in the following spoilers:
::: spoiler The absence of the spartan armor felt like a budgetary play more than anything else. Like they wanted to spend the money on the Covenant CGI and had to cut from somewhere else. :::
::: spoiler Unless they decide to stray from the games completely, I don’t believe that Keyes is dead. They do a good job of only assuming his death and not showing it. Vannack’s death shocked me. I believe his character is exclusive to the Silver timeline, but still made me gasp :::
I was cautiously optimistic about this episode but it was a real let down to me. Lots of plain dumb stuff.
My main criticism is still that the scope and scale felt way too small. Reach is supposed to be one of the most heavily populated and militarised planets in the UNSC. There’s a few dozen transports getting all the people off and a few hundred marines with 1 tank. The stakes are still not clear to the audience either. The whole blasé “we’re giving up reach without a fight” thing certainly doesn’t help. It definitely doesn’t feel like the death blow to the UNSC that losing reach would be.
Somehow, Makee has returned. Dumb. I was glad she was dead. Stupid character. Chief better get cortana back off of her.
The lack of armour is mostly just confusing to me, how will chief leave reach to head to the ring if he doesn’t have his armour? Are all they Spartans going to be in the shirts going forward?
The complete lack of space action is very upsetting to me. Probably due to budget concerns, but in my mind if you can’t afford do do a story justice - don’t bother!
