The controversial Halo TV show may be getting better with Season 2, but many fans of the games aren’t happy with the alternate universe’s many changes from core canon. One of the biggest issues fans have with the show is the replacement of Blue Team with Silver Team, consisting of Master Chief, Kai, Vannak, and Riz.
343 Industries confirmed years ago that the members of Silver Team all existed within the unreleased Halo Bible before the release of the show. However, fans have argued for years over whether or not the characters actually exist in core canon.
In a new Halo Canon Fodder blog post, 343 Industries has revealed where Kai, Vannak and Riz come from in the core, or blue, timeline. In fact, the three characters all appear in Halo Wars as the three unnamed members of Omega Team.
“When we formally meet Omega Team in the original Halo Wars during the Arcadia Outskirts mission, they are composed of six Spartans. In Halo Wars 2 and Hippocratica, we centered on a team of three - August-099, Leon-011, and Robert-025. So, who were the other three Spartans?” writes Halo community writer Alex Wakeford.
Years after the battle of Arcadia in Halo Wars, the three Spartans would retire from Omega Team and form the core canon version of Silver Team where they don their iconic armour we see in the TV show. However, the events of the show are still, obviously, non-canon.
Prior to the creation of the TV show, 343 Industries provided the show’s original writers with the Halo Bible, a mass of documents that game and book writers can draw from to create new stories in the series. Of course, being its own timeline and canon, the TV show could’ve just created its own Spartans, but surprisingly didn’t.
The Halo TV show is far from perfect, but it doesn’t have a blatant disregard for canon. While Season 1 did have some truly awful characterisation for the heroic Master Chief, it did pull from some deep parts of the core canon for its main story.
Halo Season 2 is currently streaming on Paramount Plus. For more Halo content, Halo Infinite has finally become a brilliant game with Season 5, allowing you to engage in awesome Firefight matches against campaign AI and better armour customisation.