The attack on the ship even finds time to inject a surprising (and welcome) dose of horror. Makee conniving her way onboard a UNSC vessel, though, keeps the show’s momentum ticking over nicely. Unlike the Cortana deception, this story thread fails to ignite any sort of intrigue it becomes abundantly clear that the show is putting too much narrative weight into characters that have – up until now – been treated as afterthoughts. Master Chief’s Spartan allies inevitably begin to suspect something is wrong with John-117 when Cortana makes her entrance and starts cracking wise. The real downside to the episode’s fascination with Cortana is the reaction of Silver Team. Better yet, it’s also kept the show away from the interminable UNSC plots that have sagged every episode’s runtime up until now. Cortana’s using a double agent working against Chief is another example of skilfully taking the source material and subverting it in ways that play with audience expectations. In a fun twist, Cortana is in league with Halsey to keep Chief on the straight and narrow as she uses him as a pawn for her own ends. Yet, there’s only so much Halsey wants Chief to know. A blast of music and overseeing a Det-and-Makee-like couple sharing an intimate glance on a train sets Chief off on his own journey to discover the truth about himself, the artefact found on Madrigal, and his parents on his homeworld of Eridanus Two. With Cortana in tow, the bulk of the episode revolves around Master Chief’s wistfully coming to terms with his newfound humanity, sans emotional repression pellet. And that’s the last time I’ll be using ‘voice actor’ to describe her, because it’s a performance that – though familiar to fans of the games – introduces so much life and energy into scenes that could have felt incredibly disconnected with the subpar CGI at its center. Thankfully, Cortana-gate can be overlooked thanks to voice actor Jen Taylor, reprising her role from the games.
At worst, some of the iffy movements (clearly with an eye to try and get Cortana to ‘exist’ on a physical set) and lip-syncing resembles a cartoonish mascot in a low-budget commercial. The blemishes really begin to show when Cortana is surrounded by human actors – who are quite clearly staring at a blank space where Chief’s AI companion should be. The holographic design is rough around the edges and ultimately too distracting.
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