Halo has been one of the most popular franchises in the world over the past two decades, with the series expanding into video games, books, comics, and more. Fans and audiences have loved the mature-rated content from the second they saw Master Chief and the UNSC take on the alien lifeforms known as the Covenant. Luckily, it doesn't seem like that love is going away anytime soon. The open-world video game Halo Infinite was released in December and quickly won fans back after a decade of poor game releases (Halo 4, Halo 5). The hype only grew larger with the premiere of the original Halo series on Paramount+.
While the show's content is the same as that of the video games (centered around the Master Chief, UNSC, Halsey, the Covenant, the Halo rings, etc.), the plot's story is different. It allows audiences familiar with the content to get brand-new material. Not only that, but it means that people who know and adore everything about Halo will still get to enjoy the show just as much as people who don't know anything about the franchise since the story is entirely different. While that particular fact has angered some loyal fans of the series, it's safe to say that the creators of Halo made the right choice since the series is lined up to become Paramount Plus' biggest success story.
Halo Broke Viewership Records
Paramount+ might not be as well known in the streaming world as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, or HBO Max. Still, the streaming service is quickly catching up to the world of content creation leaders and is doing so by producing some truly captivating original series. Some of those shows include Seal Team, The Good Fight, iCarly, and several different Star Trek projects. Halo's first episode beat all of them in terms of viewership record for the streaming service. The prior record holder, 1883 (the Yellowstone spin-off), had the title for three months as the series premiered back in December, but that didn't stop Halo from coming in and taking the crown.
While the actual numbers aren't released by Paramount as they are for other rating services, such as Nielsen, it did report that the series premiere broke the record for viewership. Keep in mind that a pilot episode is literally as far away from a series finale as an episode can get, so it's not indicative of how well the rest of the series (or even the next episode) will do. That being said, it certainly doesn't hurt to break a viewership record with your very first episode, either.
Halo is Based on a Widely Established IP
As already stated, Halo is one of the largest and most well-known franchises globally and has plenty of material created prior to the series. Also, as we noted, the show isn't holding true to the same narrative of the video games. The show is reported to consist of all the same elements that the video games, comics, and books contain -- they still have Spartans and the Covenant and the UNSC and things like that -- the events are just going to play out differently.
Therefore, having so much established IP content for the show to go off is nothing but good news for the series. Essentially, they've been given all the building blocks of the entire Halo universe and are trying to construct it in a way that has never been done before. Again, this has made some loyal video game fans angry as they were expecting a show based on said content, but this allows the show much more creative wiggle room and will ultimately pay off much better in the long run. Especially since the show is trying to relate to all audience members, not just players of the Halo video games.
Halo Is Renewed for a Second Season
Even before the first episode of Halo aired and broke viewership records for Paramount+, it seems the studio already knew that they had a home run since season 2 was already confirmed. The first season will conclude after its nine-episode run and should be returning for its sophomore effort sometime in 2023, with star Pablo Schreiber confirming that they're set to begin filming the second season this summer. The best part of the series already getting renewed for a future season is that the show specifically focuses on Master Chief and his story, while the games are mostly about how Chief is a killing machine.
With a character as complex as Spartan 117, getting to understand a little more about his backstory will be exactly what fans are hoping for. Future seasons will only allow Master Chief to be explored in greater depth.