Halo Season 3 Still Isn’t Confirmed Despite the Huge Cliffhanger

This Halo article contains spoilers.

There’s no denying that the Halo season 2 finale delivered the goods, not only finally getting Master Chief and Cortana to the ring itself but also setting up storylines from the original game that will hopefully pay off in big ways in a third season. But despite a cliffhanger finale that introduced both 343 Guilty Spark and the Flood parasite, and that ended with John-117 preparing to trek deeper into the depths of the ring, we still haven’t heard anything about Halo season 3.

Not that the Halo team isn’t already thinking about what could come next. In fact, judging from comments made earlier this year, they’re more than ready to finish the fight.

“You always have to assume the best, right? And you wanna be writing with that long-term view in mind. So, definitely there’s story beyond season 2. We would love to be able to explore,” executive producer Kiki Wolfkill told Collider in February ahead of the season 2 premiere.

“I hope we get the chance to make more. That’s totally the intention. You do think about it. I would be lying if I said we didn’t,” showrunner David Wiener echoed in the same Collider interview, teasing there’s still so much lore left to explore on the show.

“I think if you’re true to the story, you wanna leave yourself with doors to walk through at the end. We have a lot,” Wiener continued. “It’s such a huge world. There’s so much of the legacy, of the lore, but also, every solution brings about its own problems at the end of the season, and I think that it’s a great springboard.”

After changes to the show behind the scenes that saw Wiener step in as showrunner, the series is kicking things into high gear, hopefully moving away from the slow-drip, ill-advised political thriller that plodded along for much of the first season and a half and onto the actual events from the games — with some tweaks to fit the story of the Silver Timeline, of course. While there’s finally a ringworld to adventure on, there’s no Pillar of Autumn, the Flood’s escaped sooner than expected, Captain Keyes is dead, and Makee seems to be filling the Arbiter role recently, er, vacated by Var ‘Gatanai.

That’s not even taking into account all the other supporting characters running around on Onyx, including ex-Spartan Soren, Dr. Halsey, Miranda Keyes, Kwan, and former ONI commander Ackerson. In fact, it’s the latter’s actor, Joseph Morgan, whose given the most recent update on Halo season 3, specifically that he hasn’t heard anything yet about returning for more…

“I know that the show was well received critically, and I know that we’ve had a very passionate and positive response from the fandom, and I know that it got some great numbers in terms of viewing figures, so that’s it. That’s all I know,” Morgan told Screen Rant while talking about the season 2 finale. “I’m waiting for the phone to ring, man. I would love to come and do another season, especially because I feel like there was a changing of the guard for season 2 and the new showrunner, David Wiener, brought me on.

“He was responsible for me being a part of the show, and he was responsible for changing the vision of the show and the direction of the show. But he also had the cards dealt to him from season 1 of like, ‘Here’s where you start. You have to play off this.’ But now, I feel like, especially with the introduction of the Flood now, season 3 is going to be epic if we get to do that. So yeah, I am very hopeful.”

There’s plenty working in Halo‘s favor at the moment, including an energetic jump into its next phase of storytelling, a more warmly received second season with a 89% Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, and solid streaming numbers on Paramount+ to match. But the series, with its big sets, heavy costumes, and ambitious VFX, also isn’t cheap to make, with season 1 reportedly costing a whopping $200 million. There’s no doubt the execs and bean counters at Paramount will be thinking about how much it will cost to make a show on the actual Halo ring, with Pablo Schreiber presumably in full armor for much of it, and with even bigger Flood monstrosities running around. The VFX won’t be cheap, that for sure. But with a little luck, we’ll still get the season of Halo action fans deserve.

Halo is streaming now on Paramount+.