‘Halo’: Here’s How Cortana Contacted Master Chief

‘Halo’ Episode 6 of Season 2 has finally given us what we’ve been waiting for this entire season, Cortana and Master Chief finally reunited. While Master Chief was trying to infiltrate Onyx, he was badly beaten up by Kai and imprisoned until Cortana came to his rescue, and revealed something about her plans with Makee. But why & how did Cortana show up just now instead of on Reach?

Makee was desperate and she allowed Cortana to communicate with Master Chief and ONI

In episode 6 we learned that Makee is leading Var ‘Gatanai on a wild goose chase and basically lying to him as she doesn’t have a slightest idea on how to find the Halo or how to interact with the Artifact in the first place. Var ‘Gatanai was under the impression that it was Makee who showed him the vision of the Halo due to her connection with the Keystone but in reality, it was all Cortana. Cortana saved Makee’s life and Episode 6 revealed exactly why.

When Var ‘Gatanai refuses to execute Makee, she desperately admits to Cortana that she can’t communicate with the Artifact any longer as her connection to both the Keystone and Master Chief seems broken. Cortana used this moment of weakness and talked Makee into granting her access to the Transmission Array so Cortana could fix her problems. Makee retorted that she couldn’t trust her while Cortana answered back that Makee couldn’t afford not to trust her, and obviously, Makee realized that the AI was right and granted her permission to contact others outside of the ship.

Cortana immediately contacted Master Chief who was at the time imprisoned within Onyx, badly beaten by Kai, possibly awaiting execution. Cortana allowed him to escape but before that, she also dropped by Margaret Parangosky and had a little chat with her.

After their chat was over, Cortana unlocked all doors and stopped all attacks on Master Chief, guiding him toward the Keystone until she interacted with it once again, both him at Onyx and Makee on the ship.

What is Cortana’s plan?

Back when Makee first captured Cortana, we wondered why ONI and the UNSC would allow such a dangerous piece of technology to fall into the wrong hands because Cortana was the biggest and the fastest database of human knowledge and information.

Turns out this was on purpose, Ackerson left Cortana behind on purpose in hopes that Covenant would capture her and that she would be able to spy on them. If you think about it, Cortana revealed nothing about humans but learned quite a lot about Covenant’s plans with Makee and Var ‘Gatanai and her talk with Parangosky confirmed as much.

Cortana wasn’t helping Makee, she was using her to find out the location of the Halo. We still don’t know whether Cortana is loyal to Master Chief, as the fact that she released him doesn’t have to mean anything. She obviously released him so that he could interact with the Keystone at the same time as Makee to reveal the rest of the star map needed to locate the Halo. As of now, we don’t know whether Cortana was reprogrammed to serve ONI and Ackerson exclusively and whether she still has her “old feelings” for Master Chief.

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