‘Halo: Nightfall’ Trailer Drops A Bombshell, Series Will Be Film Length
343 Industries released a trailer for the live-action Halo: Nightfall series Wednesday with Franchise Director Frank O’Connor throwing in some informational comments. While the previous first look video held some surprises, this new trailer drops a bombshell by revealing the background of one of the characters in the Ridley Scott produced piece.
For those unfamiliar with Halo: Nightfall, it is a live-action episodic series that will be released alongside Halo: The Master Chief Collection for the Xbox One on November 11. Here’s the official description from the trailer.
“Halo: Nightfall is a live action series providing insight into the origin and backstory of legendary manhunter Agent Locke (Mike Colter, The Good Wife), a pivotal new character in the Halo universe who will play a key role in Halo 5: Guardians. A strange and treacherous world exposes elite UNSC operatives to a much deeper danger.”
According to posts made by O’Connor at NeoGAF, the series will consist of five episodes variable length episodes that will be streamed through the Halo Channel for those that purchase The Master Chief Collection. A disk release will eventually happen.
The episodes put together will make the series a feature length film, per O’Connor. That suggests something along the lines of a one-and-a-half to two-hour movie with each episode taking around 18 to 24 minutes.
Now, here’s the bombshell part and the potentially spoiler-ish part of the trailer. If you are worried about potential spoiler material, please stop reading now and definitely do not watch the trailer.
The Halo: Nightfall trailer reveals that the Randall Aiken character played by veteran British actor Steven Waddington is a former Spartan. The following from Halopedia is the description of the character provided by Halo Waypoint before an overhaul to the site made his information temporarily unavailable.
“Randall Aiken is a military commander on the human Outer Colony planet of Sedra. He is known for his remarkable history and has a deep-rooted mistrust for the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).”
If Aiken is a former Spartan, then his mistrust for ONI is completely understandable. His age suggests that he was part of the Spartan-II program, the same as Master Chief. This is the program that kidnapped young children, raised them in a military environment, and performed medical procedures on them to enhance their ability.
However, the majority of the Spartan-IIs that survived the training and surgeries are either dead or accounted for in the extended universe in the books and comics. Aiken is an all new character and it is possible that he is one of the “wash-outs” who survived parts of the augmentation process, but didn’t make it all the way through.
The Kilo-Five trilogy of Halo novels introduced another wash-out in Serin Osman. She was taken under the wing of ONI after she failed the augmentation process. They repaired the damage to her body, trained her, and groomed her for a leadership role in the spy organization. She is currently the Director of ONI as seen in the last Spartan Ops episode from Halo 4.
It’s possible that Aiken is one of these wash-outs, but it is equally possible that he is a full-fledged Spartan-II that managed to disappear during the Human-Covenant War. Spartans that died in the field were always classified as missing in action, after all.
Either way, the reveal that Aiken is a former Spartan adds another healthy dose of intrigue into a package that is already shaping up to be surprising. What did you think of the trailer and the Spartan revelation? Sound off in the comments below.
[Images via YouTube Xbox channel]
