Who/what do you think the Endless are?

Community Halo Universe
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By now, the campaign has been out for almost 2 months. There will be major spoilers for Infinite’s campaign.
Close to half-way through the campaign, Chief and the Weapon meet the Harbinger, who introduces a new species to the franchise, the Endless or Xalanyn. We get very little on the Endless. What we do have is that when the Forerunners fired the Halo Array, it was meant to wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy. However, Despondent Pyre was shocked to learn something, the Xalanyn survived the firing. The Forerunners then moved Zeta Halo to in close proximity to the Xalanyn homeworld. Delegates from both the Forerunners and Xalanyn would meet on Zeta Halo. At some point, Offensive Bias was deployed to deal with them. Inside the Silent Auditorium, the Forerunners judged the Xalanyn, imprisoning them inside Zeta Halo. It’s also said in the legendary ending that the Engineers would be busy studying the Xalanyn, and eventually the Forerunners would learn their secrets.

So, who, or what are the Endless/Xalanyn? Since this is just their introduction to the franchise, there’s bare minumum info we get on them, but many theories have be made as to who or what they are. I’ll list some of the biggest ones, so you can see and agree/disagree with, or come up with your own. It’s cool that we have these mysterious things to speculate about again for the next couple years.

Theory 1: The Endless/Xalanyn are a form of the Precursors. This theory states that the Endless/Xalanyn are a form of the Precursors, the most advanced/transsapient race in the Halo Universe. The Precursors would evolve, advance, die out, and repeat the process several times over the course of the Universe. However, 15 million years ago, the Forerunners rose up and revolted against the Precursors, nearly wiping them all out. The Primordial and 2 other regular ones survived, while the others turned into dust, which then became their next form, the Flood. Getting back to the Endless, this theory states that the Endless are a form of the Precursors that have evolved before, during, and after the revolt and birth of the Flood. The theory goes that the Forerunners learned that the Endless are a form of Precursors, and to keep the truth of what happened from getting out, the Forerunners locked the Endless away. Some suggest there’s evidence for this theory being true regarding stuff involving the Harbinger. In the audio logs, the Harbinger speaks to a Human, repeating Gravemind’s line of “I shall talk, and you shall listen.” She even says the line basically in the same cadence as Gravemind. After hearing from the Harbinger, the Human goes insane, much like when ancient Humans listened to the Primordial.

Theory 2: The Endless/Xalanyn are able to manipulate/move through time. The 2nd theory is that the Endless/Xalanyn have incredible mastery of manipulate time, and are possibly able to move through it. During the final moments of the campaign, the Harbinger contacts someone, to which the Weapon says the signal being sent is very old. During the legendary ending, in a conversation between Despondent Pyre and the Grand Edict, Pyre says, “Time is not a construct we can control,” to which Grand Edict responds with, “And we cannot allow it to be theirs.” The theory goes that maybe the Endless have an ability to move through time, possibility changing events, and that possibly they jumped forward in time to avoid being wiped out by the Halo Array. Doing so could be catastrophic not just for the Forerunners, but the Universe as a whole. If the Flood were to get ahold of the Endless, they could then theoretically go back in time and change events of the cosmos as a whole.

Theory 3: The Endless/Xalanyn are biologically immortal. The theory states that the Endless are biologically immortal, and thus not wiped out by the Halo. The theory states the Halos are essentially massive reverse timelocks that rapidly age an organism’s nervous system to entropy rather than destroying it. The theory states that the Endless don’t have a standard nervous system like ours and the other species, and thus immortal. There are animals on Earth that are actually biologically immortal, the jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii. The theory says that the Forerunners locked the Endless up as to find a way to achieve immortality the Endless have.

Theory 4: The Endless/Xalanyn are/were the intended inheritors of the Mantle. This theory states that the Endless/Xalanyn are or were the original intended species to inherit the Mantle. 15 million years ago, the Precursors had determined that the Forerunners were not fit to inherit the Mantle. In the Forerunner Saga, it’s stated that the Precursors had selected Humanity to inherit the Mantle, which is why the Forerunners revolted. However, this theory introduces the idea that this actually isn’t what happened. Rather, the theory states the Precursors had chosen the Xalanyn, and the Forerunners revolted and all that. The theory gets pretty wild in saying that the Forerunners rewrote history, saying that Humanity was actually meant to inherit the Mantle, due to Humanity and the Forerunners’ shared past.

These are some of the biggest theories of who or what the Endless/Xalanyn could be. Which of these do you lean more towards, or do you have a theory of you own? Would love to hear your thoughts. Let’s discuss!

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I think theory 4 is the most likely.

  • They just don’t seem powerful enough to be Precursors themselves. Though if created as these perfect inheritors of the Mantle or ultimate servants of the Precursors that makes sense. She does have a reclaimer symbol on her head.

  • I think they might be able to come back like Guardians in Destiny. Why wouldn’t the Forerunner just kill them with conventional weapons? The end cutscene says they can’t be purged so must be contained instead. A jellyfish without a true nervous system doesn’t prevent you disintegrating it with a Light Rifle. Also, why experiment on “the extent of what their kind can endure” if it was limited to just immunity to Halo? This suggests it should be something more profound than a biological accident making them not rely on a nervous system.

So yeah, they’re like evil version of the Guardians but with the Precursors who presumably created them taking the place of the Traveller. That power could be connected to time manipulation and Slipspace. Perhaps they are extra dimensional beings partly removed from reality. Hence the hopping about and such.

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I believe a variant of Theory 1 is correct:

The Precursors exist outside of time, and they created bioloigical representations of themselves to function within time. Those avatars would advance and eventually die out (sort of like if you’re playing the sims, with a mod that let you rewind time… each character you control is born, ages, and eventually dies, but they’re all you, but nothing that happens to that character affects you in any way, because you are outside the limits that the characters exist in).

The Precursors created the original race of humans for the purpose of letting their civilization develop, and then giving their descendants the “Mantle of Responsibility”, which is literally the responsibility of making sure that each mortal race is afforded the oportunity to reach their full potential as a civilization. The Mantle isn’t the right to govern, or police the other races.

But in the distant past, humanity split. (there’s a lot of clues to this through Greg Bear’s trilogy, but it isn’t explicitely stated)

One faction explored a distant part of the galaxy, but at some point between settling and their descendants being re-discovered by the other faction, they lost their history. This faction are the ancestors of the Humans who would later inadvertantly release the Flood.

The other faction stayed in their home system, and became masters of genetic manipulation, as well as stellar engineering, though the latter resulted in them accidentally destroying their natal world of Ghibalb. That destruction is likely when they lost track of the other faction, and may have been related to Humanity’s loss of history, if they’d been recording it on some kind of network based on their natal world. This faction that slowly spread out from their natal world extensively genetically modified themselves to the point where they weren’t recognizable as the species they previously were. This faction are the Forerunners.

As such, both the Forerunners and Humans are descendants of the race that the Precursors promised to bestow the Mantle of Responsibility onto, but the Precursors decided that the Forerunners weren’t worthy, so the promise would be kept through Humanity.

The Forerunners were furious at the “betrayal”, and attempted to take the Mantle by force (completely missing the point of it). And the Forerunners started their conquest of extermination against the Precursors’ avatars, even pursuing them beyond the limits of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Precursors (instead of fighting back) put some of their avatars into stasis, and broke others down into dust that would be eventually re-constituted into the Flood.

I believe the Endless are the final avatars of the Precursors, in the forms they held before the creation of the Flood. That would mean the Harbinger’s actions (like the Flood’s) are all intended to manipulate the other races in ways that will ultimately result in their cultures being fully realized.

I suspect the Harbinger employed reverse-psychology on Escharum, manipulating the dysfunctional Banished towards an inevitable collapse, so the component races could rise on their own to heights they’d never have seen in the Covenant or the Banished.

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Tbh I’m still more excited to fight the flood so I hope the endless can live up to the expectations of being more dangerous then the flood

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Maybe the Endless have the same knowledge as the precursors. The Ur-Didact (Halo 4 one) was able to keep his sanity for a pretty long time after being told what made the others insane, even though it changed him permanently. Maybe the Xalanyn have that knowledge and aren’t too affected by it. Either that or they are completely affected and insane.

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Who? New. What? Dangerous.

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Have you listened to the audio-logs in Halo Infinite about the prisoner? The Harbinger breaks his mind by telling him terrible secrets beyond his ability to comprehend. That’s exactly what the Primordial did to ancient Humanity when they tried to use it as an oracle in the Forerunner Trilogy, and everyone it told the secrets to was driven to suicide. The Harbinger’s ability to share this type of information that calmly definitely shows a strong connection to the Precursors.

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The fact that they say things that are so similar to the gravemind/primordial is very concerning.

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Just to offer a counterpoint.

343 said they wanted Infinite to be a simple plot line like the original trilogy that doesn’t require prior knowledge and is more grounded. Which is in the spirit of the original games. After the Prometheans and Created 343 has decided it wants to play things safe.

Involving the Precursors and introducing space magic doesn’t match that.

So the simple explanation is that the Endless have some quirk in that their nervous system makes them immune to Halo. This means they will simply want to take control of the ring and fire it to cleanse the Galaxy. An act of spite against the designs of the Forerunners as they were punished so that the Galaxy could be reseeded.

Which would be spectacularly boring/underwhelming and make no sense why the Forerunners didn’t just shoot them or destroy their planet; but hey it lines up with what we see. These Skimmers are just another bunch of aliens to stomp. It could be it really doesn’t go much further than that. Which would be a shame because a mystery box should be worth opening and that would be a very cookie cutter faction. Squids with pew pew guns.

You might say well why are they making such a big deal of them? Well, why did they make such a big deal out of a third rate pirate faction with six Dreadnoughts? It’s a lot of talk and hyperbole not backed up by anything. Either you laugh at the idea they’re more dangerous than the Flood or you’re left to imagine something worse than them; which risks falling very flat.

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I think the simplicity in plot 343 was going for was more in terms of how many characters were the focus of the story. Halo 5 had Chief, Fred, Kelly, Linda, Locke, Buck, Tanaka, Vale, Halsey, Cortana, Arbiter, Lasky, and Palmer.

For Infinite, this is pared down to Chief, Echo 216, The Weapon, Cortana, Escharum, and the Harbinger as primary plot participants.

For what it’s worth, I do think the Endless/Harbinger will end up being at least Precursor adjacent - a story that’s more straightforward with fewer characters doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t dive deeper into the lore for some of those characters.

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The engineers are immune to the halos because they are synthetic. So I assume the same can be said for the endless. I guess there were the second result of the attempt to bring the precursors back.

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It’s a little odd that the Harbingers head looks a bit like a Promethean Knights with the General shape and the mandibles. Plus the helmet is like the wardens. They can teleport. Glowing orange/yellow lights.

Perhaps they are what the Forerunners were attempting to achieve per Halo 4. This transcendent life form that’s neither fully flesh nor digital and can move between them. So they can’t die because they just return to the Domain or whatever and the teleportation is really then blinking into their digital form. This is the weird glow we see around the Harbinger when we defeat her. Which is why the Cylex is the only way to contain them because it freezes them in that digital form.

This would explain why the Harbinger is able to hack the Weapon as she is an AI herself. Along with her mastery of technology. Plus things like the connection being sentient.

Again I have no idea how that could naturally occur on a random planet. Which would lean towards them having been created by some kind of entity as an experiment and then the Forerunners just stumbled upon them. Alternatively they existed elsewhere and then journeyed to their homeworld.

I mean, Time Travel…literally anyone could have made them.

Major reason against them being Precursors and their servants is that the Flood are the Precursors. The Flood are already the Precursors instruments of revenge. Surely this game isn’t going to have one monolithic faction with Banished, Endless and Flood working together?

Also the Endless theme included a fair bit of the female “wailing” choir that’s in the Silent Auditorium and Judgement tracks. The ones that are meant to echo Halo 4 and Cortana. Yes, that could just be representing Forerunner stuff judging the silent endless. But maybe it’s something more profound than that.

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Does the Harbinger is an Endless ? Her Cylix is different from the Endless, so I understood she’s from the Skimmers species, a sort of evolved queen or a augmented skimmer (like spartans are superior too human)

Also, if the endless can resist to the Halo, the real risk is that the flood discover their capacitie and use it to survive to the Halo, so nothing would stop them

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Tin foil hat theory. Joe is bringing Vex time travel insanity into the story.

Cortana went back in time through the Domain and created the Endless; she went Lucy. This is why they just pop into existence like the Tau from 40k. They’re the “perfect” fusion of digital and organic life. She knew how the Forerunners would react and has went to Zeta Halo to collect her experiment.

“The intricacies of any action are complex, the reactions numerous but mostly predictable” - Sounds like the butterfly effect.