If I’m supposed to like Kwan, it’s not gonna start now. This episode of Halo mainly featured her journey to speak with the elders who advised her father during the war. Meanwhile, Soren was living a life of luxury back at home after being duped by Kwan.
The fundamental problem with the character of Kwan is we are currently in the back half of the season. During that time, none of the writers have really taken the time to develop this grieving rage-filled character. As I’ve said in previous weeks, she is reckless and strong-headed. Usually, this is a personality quirk that I would ultimately find acceptable given the terrible tragedy she suffered.
My issue is that she has little regard for the people around her, and he’s blinded by a mission that it’s only going to lead her to experience more suffering. None of this is the fault of the actress playing the role. Yarin Ha is fantastic at causing the high level of irritation that I get from watching this character do anything on screen. The character is supposed to be annoying and foolhardy, but it doesn’t advance her story as much as I would have liked it to by this point. This is a significant growing pain of doing a sci-fi series on such an epic scale. Eventually, it feels like you have no time to support the characters that you’ve asked the audience to invest in.
Honestly, I found it pretty cathartic to watch Kwan Ha be beaten up by her own rage. I feel like it was a bit of a cheat to allow her to connect with her recently deceased father to discover the portal. This was her episode, and Ha did her best, but they gave that character too many free passes. The level of believability of this world is crumbling around that one specific character because they don’t make things hard enough for her. Essentially she finds out about the portal by dream walking. The entire season she’s talked about how brave and strong she is, and it’s a front. The reality is that she has no idea what she’s doing, and this is the first episode we actually see her admitting to that. For me, that’s not enough.
I liked that we finally got some screen time with Burn Gorman and his Trump-like character. He appears to be the poorly conceived idealist who wants the rich to rise to the top. I loved the chaos his character was able to create In such a short span of time. Strong character comes from intriguing experiences we see the character goes through over time, not just in one episode. This is why Kwan and her story are a complete failure. Is it great that she could fight off the oppressive forces trying to capture her for bounty? Absolutely. The problem is that I don’t think I can count that as character development when she’s still going to be looking for a way to save Madrigal.
I only hope they continue to build strong stories with Master Chief to save the series. This was the weakest episode so far and not the proper way to set up a complex character. Hopefully, episode eight can provide some redemption.
Halo is now streaming on Paramount+.
