The Halo TV show has just premiered, and within its first two episodes, a lot of things have happened. The show is not a direct retelling of the video games or the books, but is set in a new timeline, and as such, various things occur that never happened in them.
Case in point, Master Chief never removes his helmet in the games/books, but in the show? He takes it off in the first episode. And one of the team explained why they did that:
“I think when we set out to make the show, our focus was, we wanted to tell a character story, and we wanted to tell a character story with the Master Chief,” executive producer Kiki Wolfkill said. “And ultimately, that meant telling a story about John, the man inside the armor, who isn’t somebody that you experience as a player in the games as much. We’ve described him in extended fiction and he exists in that form, but this is really a chance for us to spend nine hours taking John on this character arc. And so understanding that, and once we got into the story, it was very clear that we needed to be able to see who that person was, and we needed to be able to watch his journey and watch him on his journey as he grapples with his role as the Master Chief and as a person.”
They continued:
“And so with this, doing it in the way that we did in this moment with Quan, in the same way there was a story reason for him to take his helmet off, we also wanted it to feel meaningful for the audience.”
They defined it as him “being human” in that moment, and that scene as a whole is something that many are talking about with this series. We’ll just have to see what other surprises they have as this series goes on.
Source: ComicBook.com