While Paramount’s Halo has already broken viewership records for the industry mogul, it seems that the company is hell-bent on bringing their new live-action adaptation of the popular video game franchise to as many people as they possibly can.
Indeed, despite the fact that Halo had the most viewers of any premiere on Paramount Plus and was even released for free via Microsoft’s Game Pass — giving the 25 million subscriber base a four-week trial of the streaming service — the distributor has decided to release the series premiere on YouTube for free, which you can check out here if you have neither a Paramount Plus membership nor an Xbox Game Pass subscription.
After spending many a year in development hell, Halo premiered this March to mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike. Though, all things considered, I think it’d be safe to say that the show has fared well in the volatile landscape of video game adaptations given their disastrous track record.
If anything, most reviewers seemed to hint at the fact that Halo has the potential to rise to the occasion of its game counterpart, though how successfully is a question that only the rest of season one, consisting of 10-episodes, can answer.
Fans of the video game series will certainly have a hard time adjusting to this new show given all the changes the producers have made to the lore, but if you can see past these inevitable discrepancies, Halo might just turn into your next sci-fi obsession over the next few years — just as the likes of Battlestar Galactica and Firefly did — provided that the writers do a well enough job of weaving this ambitious narrative together.
Paramount’s Halo continues next week with its third chapter on April 7.