How to give Halo a proper ending

Community Halo Universe
1

So, I have been a huge Halo fan ever since CE came out and I love the universe and its stories, when Halo 3 came out I was really excited to see how Bungie would wrap things up… they didn’t really do it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I liked Halo 3’s ending a lot, it was a nice way to finish the Human-Covenant war and the last few lines between the Chief and Cortana before John goes to cryogenic sleep are fantastic but I couldn’t help to feel that even when it was a good ending for the war, it wasn’t a good ending for the universe at all, there are way too many loose threads; the Covenant may have lost its leaders but there are still thousands of ships and millions of aliens willing to continue the fight, humanity still has to rebuild its colonies and repopulate, how will the Arbiter deal with a such a divided race as the sangheili? The mysterious planet from the legendary ending didn’t help me feel as if this was a proper resolution either.

Fast forward a few years and Halo 4 is announced, I get really excited because a new trilogy means they can give us a definitive, closed ended ending. So, between Halo 3 and Halo 4 things have changed a lot in terms of story and now things stand as follows: Humanity stands as the upper dogs in the galaxy now, but they are still trying to rebuild and the insurrection problem is becoming big again, it’s also really clear that 343 are trying to “demonize” certain parts of humanity, more specifically ONI, with all the bad stuff they did in the Kilo 5 books and everything they have done to Halsey, it seems to me like they are trying to create a “divided” humanity, not worthy of reclaiming the mantle of responsibility that is the main focus of this new part of the halo verse. The Covenant is divided in many factions that are still a threat to humanity and the galaxy. The sangheilis are going through a lot of…let’s say, political disagreements and the jiralhanae aren’t doing so good either. Also, an alive Forerunner has been awakened and is decided to wipe out humanity, that’s kind of a big deal.

Now, it’s important to remember that we are currently in the Reclamation saga, it’s mainly about humanity getting the mantle of responsibility, this can have many different outcomes that I feel could be great, from humanity and the covenant joining forces to stop the Flood when it comes back (because, let’s face it, the Flood is coming back), and humanity attaining the mantle as planned, which would be definitive enough to be the big finale of the universe while still being fairly open ended to create new stories in the future, or maybe some darker possibilities.

Now, I have had this idea in my head for quite some time now which I think would be the best ending possible: Humanity fails. This ending is logical in canon, considering that the Forerunners couldn’t stop the Flood, humanity shouldn’t be able to defeat it either, specially after that war with the Covenant that almost killed every single human being. Now, imagine for a second the Flood making a return, in as big a scale as in the Forerunner war, the recently divided Covenant would be unable to contain them and Humanity would be overrun in a really short period of time, leaving them with one last alternative: activating the Halos and destroying every sentient being in the galaxy. This ending would not only be powerful and even moving, it would close all loose ends and would effectively echo the Forerunner history, leaving the galaxy empty, waiting for a new reclaimer to appear. This wouldn’t mean the end of any more stories in the Halo universe, countless more spin-off stories could be made after this one, in pretty much any period in the story.

So, what do you think of my idea? And what ending would you like to see, if any at all?

2

There is no point to reactive the Halos again. It wouldn’t be emotional or moving, just a lazy cop-out. Things may be divided in Halo now, but that doesn’t mean things can’t be united. The Forerunners simply had too much control over the sentient races of the galaxy and stifled their technological development. ONI and the UNSC may be the top dogs right now, as far as the story wants us to believe, but they are nowhere near as big as the Forerunners. There is still a chance to get everybody united when the Flood comes back.

3

The only logical way i can see Humanity “winning” is just like you said activating the Halo Array. Lets face it Humanity is screwed when the Flood returns. The Forerunners only lasted as long as they did because they had probably billions of ships and 3,000,000 worlds to fight over. Now let us look at the UNSC… They barely have anything.
Besides that I find myself wanting a tragic ending for Halo. Don’t get me wrong I love the series and all but we must face the facts. The Flood is coming and even if Humanity and the Ex-Covenant joined together it still wouldn’t be enough.

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> ONI and the UNSC may be the top dogs right now, as far as the story wants us to believe, but they are nowhere near as big as the Forerunners.

Yeah, that was one of my points, they aren’t as big as the Forerunners and in fact, they are only the top dogs because the rest of the galaxy is screwed, that’s why I think activating the Halos would be the only “logical” ending, but who knows, right now there are many possibilities and things that may change, humanity having to fire the Halos is only the ending that I, personally, would enjoy the most.

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> > ONI and the UNSC may be the top dogs right now, as far as the story wants us to believe, but they are nowhere near as big as the Forerunners.
>
> Yeah, that was one of my points, they aren’t as big as the Forerunners and in fact, they are only the top dogs because the rest of the galaxy is screwed, that’s why I think activating the Halos would be the only “logical” ending, but who knows, right now there are many possibilities and things that may change, humanity having to fire the Halos is only the ending that I, personally, would enjoy the most.

You act under the assumption the true Flood force wouldn’t strike the Halos first thus rendering that strategy moot. Humanity only knows the location of Installation 03 and 05 and it’s doubtful that the Ark is capable of activating them all.

6

It would just be an endless cycle at this stage, with the same events happening again and again. Personally, i think that humanity should succeed. If they find the remaining forerunners, join up with the covenant (naturally you would expect that once the parasite resurfaces, the warring sides would see reason, and an alliance can occur), and work together, possibly even combining their technology to form NEW WEAPONS, and share their knowledge about the flood, then i think they can find a way to counter them.

There’s one difference with the forerunner era, and UNSC era, and that is that the former had no clue about the flood, and so didn’t know how to stop them. Thousands of years later, and we now have intel about what the flood is. Hopefully, they could conceive a way to stop them, without destroying all life in the galaxy again.

IMO, the ending should be that humanity assumes the Mantle (in responsible hands), and the galaxy can be at peace - much like star wars where balance in the force is restored, and Luke and the others are at peace, with possibly a new republic surfacing.

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As interesting as it would be to see how they’d handle that sort of ending I feel like the majority of the community would go into Mass Effect scaled rage over everything being “wasted” (after all that would mean we could’ve activated the Halos in CE and nothing would change in the long run).

As for the Flood coming back, we might actually have a better chance than the Forerunners did… I mean we have a smaller population to infect with a tech level that’s getting closer to what they had at the time, plus there are no longer any Precursor structures destroying entire planets and systems like what they had to deal with. When the Forerunners had almost lost, the Flood had a fleet of something like several million hijacked Forerunner ships. If the Flood win by using overwhelming numbers of their dead enemies against them, it would be much easier to fight with a smaller population that has a relatively huge number of soldiers.

I don’t know how it would happen, but I’ve always pictured Master Chief’s end as a sort of last moment of peace before wiping out a whole bunch of people. Like him riding a collapsing ship full of overloading slipspace drives into a Flood fleet or something. Chunks of his armor stripping away and falling off in the middle of the chaos to leave only the damaged, broken soldier inside to sail defiantly right into the center of hell. Something along that theme at least, since he seems like his only purpose in life is to fight and 343 started focusing on the man inside the suit more (plus it would be a pretty cool moment to reference the end of Halo 4/CE when his armor was coming off). A Noble 6 sort of ending would also be pretty fitting…

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> As for the Flood coming back, we might actually have a better chance than the Forerunners did… I mean we have a smaller population to infect with a tech level that’s getting closer to what they had at the time, plus there are no longer any Precursor structures destroying entire planets and systems like what they had to deal with. When the Forerunners had almost lost, the Flood had a fleet of something like several million hijacked Forerunner ships. If the Flood win by using overwhelming numbers of their dead enemies against them, it would be much easier to fight with a smaller population that has a relatively huge number of soldiers.

That is still a problem however. What is stopping the Flood from infecting the thousands of other planets in the galaxy and former Forerunner worlds and making more hosts. And if they develop Keyminds it is pretty much game over.

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> > > ONI and the UNSC may be the top dogs right now, as far as the story wants us to believe, but they are nowhere near as big as the Forerunners.
> >
> > Yeah, that was one of my points, they aren’t as big as the Forerunners and in fact, they are only the top dogs because the rest of the galaxy is screwed, that’s why I think activating the Halos would be the only “logical” ending, but who knows, right now there are many possibilities and things that may change, humanity having to fire the Halos is only the ending that I, personally, would enjoy the most.
>
> You act under the assumption the true Flood force wouldn’t strike the Halos first thus rendering that strategy moot. Humanity only knows the location of Installation 03 and 05 and it’s doubtful that the Ark is capable of activating them all.

That’s true, but as I said, there are still a lot of games, books and other media before we reach the big finale (if there’s even one) and lots of things could happen in that time, with the Absolute Record humanity could learn the locations of all the Halos and how to activate them.

> IMO, the ending should be that humanity assumes the Mantle (in responsible hands), and the galaxy can be at peace - much like star wars where balance in the force is restored, and Luke and the others are at peace, with possibly a new republic surfacing.

I would be happy with an ending like that too, finishing a story in a positive note has lots of pros. But, if we have an ending like this one, I would like to see John die by sacrificing himself for humanity and the galaxy, an heroic, bittersweet death seems like the most fitting ending for him.

> As interesting as it would be to see how they’d handle that sort of ending I feel like the majority of the community would go into Mass Effect scaled rage over everything being “wasted” (after all that would mean we could’ve activated the Halos in CE and nothing would change in the long run).

Yeah, that would probably happen but 343 has already showed that they are willing to do some bold things, like killing Cortana in Halo 4

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> I would be happy with an ending like that too, finishing a story in a positive note has lots of pros. But, if we have an ending like this one, I would like to see John die by sacrificing himself for humanity and the galaxy, an heroic, bittersweet death seems like the most fitting ending for him.

But if he activates the Halos or the Halos are activating…what good is his sacrifice?

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> > I would be happy with an ending like that too, finishing a story in a positive note has lots of pros. But, if we have an ending like this one, I would like to see John die by sacrificing himself for humanity and the galaxy, an heroic, bittersweet death seems like the most fitting ending for him.
>
> But if he activates the Halos or the Halos are activating…what good is his sacrifice?

Well, my idea involves the ending being rather dark and depressing so there would be no clear good outcome out of it, if anything, his sacrifice would be as meaningful as that of the Forerunners; sacrificing all life for the chance that in the future, new life may be born.

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> That is still a problem however. What is stopping the Flood from infecting the thousands of other planets in the galaxy and former Forerunner worlds and making more hosts. And if they develop Keyminds it is pretty much game over.

That’s the key difference though, the much smaller number of hosts. While the Forerunners had colonies everywhere (many of them with populations in the billions and not much for defenses), the current factions are primarily existing on only a few largely populated homeworlds with advanced tech already built for them and lying around the Milky Way. The Forerunners lost largely because they were spread so thin and because by the time they’d built the Halos/Line Installations the Flood had already amassed a force of billions of their colonists. We’re much more concentrated population and territory-wise than the Forerunners were (but still have multiple government structures with all the different species), and so have a defensive force that can be responsive, lean, and decentralized. If they did get to the point where they started creating Keyminds though we’d be pretty much screwed…

13

I really don’t think that firing the Halos is going to be the solution, nor do I believe that it’d be in any way satisfying as a solution a second time round. It was emotional in the Forerunner Saga and other media, and continues to be so, because it was their last resort which they had no choice but to use because the Flood had already won - the Forerunners’ past with the Precursors, their self-appointed role as guardians, their treatment of other species and the political battles going on crafted a thrilling narrative which was written with that set ending in mind.

The whole point of the Forerunners’ sacrifice was that the New Galaxy would rise from the ashes and be better than they were before - humanity’s geneplan dictated that the Mantle of Responsibility would be theirs to care for, that they would be ready to assume the role of guardians, that they would learn from the mistakes that the Forerunners made. Firing the Halos again would completely destroy that thematic concept, therefore it’s really not a good idea to repeat history. It would all feel like it amounted to nothing, especially without a new Conservation Measure like the one enacted by the Librarian (which you don’t specify in your post), so it’s not like the galaxy would be reseeded with life again. It’d come off as lazy because it’d just be a repeat of what the Forerunner Saga gave us when 343 has been directing the narrative to tell us that the future of humanity is not meant to be like that.

Yes, humanity is divided. It’s a theme which 343 is building on from Origins, it’s what the Precursors designed life to be - “All that is created will suffer. All will be born in suffering, endless greyness shall be their lot. All creation will tailor to failure and pain, that never again shall the offspring of the eternal Fount rise up against their creators”. But a huge part of the Reclaimer Saga that we’ve seen already in Halo 4 is the necessity of transcendence with regards to one’s role - John must transcend his role as an indoctrinated, “inhuman” human soldier, to attain independence and regain contact with his humanity. Cortana must transcend her role as a mere “tool” designed to maintain John’s efficiency at killing, and (like John) struggle with her own sense of humanity in order to ultimately beat back rampancy and depart the narrative on her own terms rather than what the nature of her creation had set out for her.

I honestly don’t see 343 building up these rather heavy themes for about 5/6 years now and then deciding to do a 180 on them at the eleventh hour and decide to make the universe a new blank slate by firing the Halos again… Humanity, indeed all races in the galaxy, have to overcome their conflicts with one another and transcend what the Precursors tailored life for - failure and pain. Humanity will rise up again in arrogance and defiance, as the Timeless One said, and that is already setting up the inner-conflict that humanity has to overcome.

So no, I do not think that firing the Halos again would be a good idea at all. It would lack the emotion that the Forerunner Saga had because they were a society doomed to that fate, humanity is not.

14

> > > I would be happy with an ending like that too, finishing a story in a positive note has lots of pros. But, if we have an ending like this one, I would like to see John die by sacrificing himself for humanity and the galaxy, an heroic, bittersweet death seems like the most fitting ending for him.
> >
> > But if he activates the Halos or the Halos are activating…what good is his sacrifice?
>
> Well, my idea involves the ending being rather dark and depressing so there would be no clear good outcome out of it, if anything, his sacrifice would be as meaningful as that of the Forerunners; sacrificing all life for the chance that in the future, new life may be born.

We all saw how well that happened the first time, though.

The Halos kill the Flood’s food source, but that didn’t stop them from surviving until the Spirit of Fire found a Shield World and until the Pillar of Autumn stumbled upon Installation 04.

I mean, I guess that’s your point, but I wouldn’t really like to have an ending like that for Halo, and I like tragic endings.

15

@op
If what you envision happens, then expect the fan outcome as Mass Effect 2.0 : Nerdrage Evolved.
Its years past and some people still can’t get over the fact that Noble Six had to die in Reach…what do you think happens when the same emotion is amplified 10 times to the fickle minded players (who form a majority bass of the game sales)?
It would nullify all the epic moments and stuff, the sacrifices and the pain The Master Chief, Sgt.Johnson, The Arbiter, Dr.Halsey and even Jacob Keyes had to go through to save Humanity and in part the whole damn galaxy.
The Flood returning in Full force to screw us is not a big possibility because humanity doesn’t have the same strength the Forerunners had for the Flood to use it against the Forerunners themselves. And most of the Star Roads were destroyed by the pulse of the arrays as well.
So there is no conceivable way the Flood would pose a bigger threat now, unless a Precursor himself arrives in the galaxy and creates a whole new species similar in destructive power to the Flood.

16

As a human (duh), this idea is appalling. I don’t want to play the games anymore if I find out my own race is doomed. Halo is about the perseverance and ascension of humanity. How we get there is where the fun happens.

17

I do not want an ending where all species hold hands and sing songs about peace. I want a tragic, poetic, yet hopeful ending. One that mirrors that of the Forerunners but not exactly. Perhaps being a reclaimer means retreating away and letting new species reclaim the galaxy. Letting pride and greed rule lead to the downfall of both Forerunners and Ancient Humanity. This pulls me in the direction of wanting an ending where life springs up once again without interference from past reclaimers.

18

> I do not want an ending where all species hold hands and sing songs about peace. I want a tragic, poetic, yet hopeful ending. One that mirrors that of the Forerunners but not exactly.

These are not mutually exclusive… as a matter of fact, the surviving Forerunners and humans literally sat together and had a great feast on the Ark to mourn the passing of the Old Galaxy and celebrate the birth of the new, reconciling their species together as the brothers they always should have been.

It’s perfectly possible for humanity and the other races to resolve their issues and join together as brothers, especially since the Forerunners and humanity were known to have had a long history of animosity - way longer than that of humanity and the Sangheili.

> Perhaps being a reclaimer means retreating away and letting new species reclaim the galaxy.

This doesn’t make sense… Being a Reclaimer means that you are intended to reclaim what has been left behind for you, this is humanity’s role in the series - we’ve known this since day 1. Why would this suddenly change? Why would they do a complete thematic 180 on this and have humanity say “oh, never mind, we’ll pass on our destiny to you”?

> Letting pride and greed rule lead to the downfall of both Forerunners and Ancient Humanity.

Pride and greed was the downfall of the Forerunner Ecumene, but we have no indication that this afflicted humanity in the past…

> This pulls me in the direction of wanting an ending where life springs up once again without interference from past reclaimers.

Then the whole concept of reclamation, the Mantle, Living Time and so on is moot…

19

Halo having an ending… probably not… but Halo tying up loose ends perhaps… alot of possibilities though.

Halo could actually end in a more sinister way… like the Master Chief after years of defiance and war, has finally succomb to sorrow and yields to the Flood… he finally see the unity of the Flood.

My hope is that Humanity attains the Mantle, which is shared amongst the custodians of each species… thus sharing the weight of guardian ship. The way they overcome, not defeat, the Flood would be a resistance, or cure… my take is that the composers and Promethean technology and flood super cells need to find a middle ground to have a cure… perhaps a digital/biological immunity… synthetics if you will… that guarantees immortality.

https://forums.halowaypoint.com/yaf_postst238129_Cure-to-Composition-Flood-Infection.aspx

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> > ONI and the UNSC may be the top dogs right now, as far as the story wants us to believe, but they are nowhere near as big as the Forerunners.
>
> Yeah, that was one of my points, they aren’t as big as the Forerunners and in fact, they are only the top dogs because the rest of the galaxy is screwed, that’s why I think activating the Halos would be the only “logical” ending, but who knows, right now there are many possibilities and things that may change, humanity having to fire the Halos is only the ending that I, personally, would enjoy the most.

I see what you’re saying, “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” It would be logical for the new reclaimer saga to pan out like that but I don’t think it would be good. Not good for the fan base or good for halo canon. I mean how much better of a state would humanity be in if the rings were fired yet again casting life in the universe into darkness for about another 100,000 years?? And who would be around to carry out the Lifeworker’s work of cataloging all the species for re-population efforts? How could the mantle be maintained with the absence of sentient life? I dunno, even if it could happen I still don’t think it would be very fitting, in fact it would be cliche at best. I think tapping into an age old precursor resource like the domain for knowledge on how to defeat the flood would be much better… That said it would still be a good idea to have the flood push both humans and aliens to extinction; cementing a stronger bond of friendship or at least unity throughout the surviving species. John could be lost along the way to get to whatever ending 343 comes up with; but MIA would be a more fitting way for a spartan to go out.

Just a couple of thoughts…