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It was going well, to be fair.
Until very recently, the show-runners were doing pretty good. Not too bad, ultimately.
But, then, well… two things. They cast Captain and Miranda Keyes as being black… for literally no good reason. The actor and actress themselves, I’m sure are very talented individuals. It’s the show-runners and the producers who apparently lack talent.
The only conceivable reason they could possibly have for doing this is to virtue-signal and insert unneeded “diversity” into a product that has never been in need of it. It’s that exact type of attitude and moral-compass that has been indicative of talentless hacks who turn everything they get their hands on into garbage, and who couldn’t produce something worthwhile to save their lives. If they were confident in their abilities, and if they had faith in their own skill: they wouldn’t feel the need to virtue-signal. It is a crutch to protect themselves from criticism.
So, as a result of that: any criticism leveled at the show overall will be shrugged off and dismissed as “bigots just being trolls”. Real -Yoinking!- classy, guys.
I don’t think I need to remind anyone that the people who pull this kind of crap are usually the same people who cause the entire project to become vapid and meaningless through multiple layers of political correctness. From what we’ve observed thus far: the Halo TV show will be a philosophically bankrupt and mindless collection of action-set-pieces mixed with artificial, forced drama— probably drama derived from eye-rollingly politically correct nonsense.
That alone would have been enough for me to shrug my shoulders and say “-Yoink- it”— and permanently lose interest in the production. However: because twice is nice and because the show-runners apparently felt the need to -Yoink- the bed even harder than before… there’s also something else to talk about.
A human… “raised by” the Covenant. Anyone with a moderate amount of expertise in Halo’s lore will know fairly well why that, in itself, is the cause of fifty-thousand red flags. The Covenant has only ever taken prisoners all of three times (that we’ve seen) throughout a thirty-year war. And two of those occasions were done on an individual, small scale, because of suspicions of particular higher-ups. As a rule: the Covenant do not take prisoners. They do not put anyone into slavery, they do not show mercy whatsoever, and they don’t discriminate. They kill everyone they find— men, women, children, the elderly; EVERYONE.
The reasons for this hardly need to be explained. Humanity were dubbed “Heretics” by the Covenant’s hierarchs. When someone is deemed heretical by the Covenant: they are seen as a parasitic, unnatural, demonic blight upon the stars— a cosmic mistake to be corrected and purged. Barely considered more than an animal, and worth half as much. Humanity was seen as a vile, blasphemous stain on the glory of creation— at best humans were seen as a malignant tumor on the galaxy’s -Yoink-. Fit only to be cut out, ripped from the body of existence, and annihilated with as many nuclear explosives as is feasible.
The fact that humanity ever achieved spaceflight was dismissed as a cosmic fluke. From the Covenant perspective (especially early in the war): so much as touching anything made by human hands was deemed extremely unclean— nevermind using a human tool. Members of the Covenant. from Elites to Jackals, would rather resort to their bare hands than ever consider looking at a human weapon. Doing so would be tantamount to a Christian picking up and using a sword explicitly created by demons.
Letting a human live through inaction, much less taking one in and raising it, was the absolute height of heresy. Any Covenant caught doing so would, at best, be called “absolutely insane”, and at worst, “possessed by heresy”. Probably executed on the spot either way.
There is no room for this to be possible. The only way it might make sense is if a high-ranking Elite with a begrudging respect for humans decided to try and get a Hierarch’s blessing to try and take human young and reeducate them to worship the Forerunners. And we already know damn well why that would be shut down at the outset (cough, cough, Reclaimers, cough, cough, Truth, Mercy, and Regret, cough, cough Luminaries). I suppose it’s somewhat possible an Elite might take in a human in secret, but at that point there’s already a few hurdles of suspension of disbelief in the way.
It would be interesting to see what happens when members of the Covenant are confronted with something that defies their faith. But given that there’s still a thirty-year long war that happens, and given the number of hoops you’d have to jump through to have it all make sense: I find this concerning.
However: I’m also getting other red flags about the idea of a human “raised by” the Covenant. It might just be my paranoia, but for some strange reason, I get the distinct impression that the writers of the show may well use this concept as a way to try and draw parallels between the Covenant and real-world Islam. I seriously wouldn’t put it past them to try and use a human member of the Covenant as a way to “humanize” the hegemony and try to say “they’re not that bad, just misunderstood”. A bit like the nonstop “religion of peace” shtick that various pundits have had a habit of repeating ad nauseum.
I know it sounds idiotic, but believe you me, much crazier things have happened in pop-culture. And the crazy-train has no brakes. Can you imagine if they retconned the “black Captain Keyes” as Muslim, and the human “raised by the Covenant” tried to convince him of the Covenant’s efficacy by comparing it to Islamic terrorism?
Now, don’t misunderstand me. I am hardly the type of person to preach coexistence or multi-culturalism. I consider the idea naive and the concept untenable. However: trying to equate Islam to the Covenant strikes me as insulting to Muslims. The Covenant, quite uncontroversially, believe in a lie and worship extremely dangerous super-weapons. Suicidally striving to achieve godhood. None of which, I think, any Muslim would say represents them in any capacity.
To make that comparison, even in a vacuum, would be earth-shatteringly stupid.
However: the kind of people who would retcon a character’s race for selfish, stupid reasons are exactly the type of people to be tone-deaf enough to make that kind of comparison. And that, I think, scares me more than any questionable casting decision.