‘Halo’: Dr. Halsey and Miranda Keyes’ Relationship Is More Complicated Than You Think

Halo on Paramount+ isn’t just expanding Master Chief’s story. One of the new series’ most interesting plots has to do with two characters who often appear in Halo lore but are rarely closely examined: Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey and Miranda Keyes. Natascha McElhone and Olive Gray broke down this mother-daughter relationship for Decider, and teased that it may be even more complicated than it seems.

“Most of the conflict is described by other people rather than actually seen. So there’s some perception going on there and in terms of other people’s agendas and whether to pit them against one another for another outcome,” McElhone told Decider.

In both the series and in the games, Dr. Halsey (McElhone) is the mother of UNSC officer Miranda Keyes (Gray). But theirs is far from an untroubled relationship. Halo‘s first two episodes repeatedly portray the two at odds. While Dr. Halsey will do anything to further her research, Miranda seems to be more sensitive to the gray moral areas of the United Nations Space Command. For example, Miranda is the one who wonders whether the UNSC should kill a teenager, a question that doesn’t seem to enter the minds of many of her colleagues.

“I think in Halsey’s case anyway, her mission statement is so much about the progress that she’s obsessed with, about building Cortana and making sure that that works and optimizes Spartan’s performance,” McElhone said. “She’s on a mission, and she seems to leave everything earthly and biological and natural behind her for the sake of that.”

Despite their opposing points of view, Gray doesn’t see the relationship as a rivalry. “I think that if any of that is felt at any point, it’s almost certainly solely by Miranda,” Gray said.

“It’s a mother-daughter relationship, and it’s also a mother and daughter who work in the same company in similar jobs. And it’s complex. I think that there’s an inherent thing within a child to want to make your parent proud. But I also think that there’s like an inherent thing within abandonment that makes you feel so many layered emotions of anger and desperation in terms of that person,” Gray explained. “There’s a war going on within Miranda about that relationship that is so much more than actually, maybe, the conflict back and forth between them.”

New episodes of Halo premiere on Paramount+ on Thursdays. 

Watch Halo on Paramount+