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Kwan's Plan
- Why did Kwan Ha think she could threaten the UNSC with a false story, after everything she went through during the Covenant attack!? Has she no tact or grasp of the situation!? No consideration for what's going on outside of this idiotic Civil War with the UNSC!?
- No, she does not have a grasp of the situation. Why would she? Here's what she knows: 1, aliens (which she didn't know existed) kill everyone she has ever known. 2, Spartans (who have been a tool of her oppressors her entire life) kill the aliens. Then she wakes up on a UNSC ship held captive by the Spartan who killed her mother. There's a lot of things in that situation to be suspicious about, not to mention that she's a teenager who is still in shock after watching everyone she has ever known be brutally slaughtered in front of her. And then the UNSC immediately call her up and awkwardly ask for some propaganda, please. Obviously, her blackmail was never going to work, but the UNSC really should have known better than to try to get her to help people she's hated her entire life before she's even wiped the blood off her face. What they should have done is set her up in a nice hotel room on a military base, give her as much information on the Covenant as she asks for, and wait a few weeks. If they're careful, she'll offer to help without them ever asking.
- It was less of a threat that she could actually pull off and more a roundabout way of saying "F-off" for thinking rescuing her and only her from a worse threat makes them friends now. Given the Insurrectionists in the main canon were crushed early in the war and Kwan says no one will believe their video evidence, this is likely setting up the Innies to more fully comprehend the Covenant as a threat.
- Pretty sure having an entire human planet being glassed and releasing videos of that would sell the threat.
- As everyone else said, this is frankly a totally understandable reaction on her part due to the UNSC completely bungling the attempt, probably because deep down they didn't even care that much and saw her as an expendable enemy prisoner from the get-go. They had countless other options to handle the situation and could probably have very easily convinced her by just not, you know, completely ignoring her obvious psychological distress while making demands that she would have considered insane and insulting less than a day ago.
- Really, it's less about whether she thinks she'll ever get to employ her threat, and more about making it clear to the UNSC that she isn't going to be their spokesperson. She was probably raised among the backdrop of the insurrectionist struggle and fighting the UNSC is just part of her culture at this point. Add in that everyone she knows is dead, and Chief has been pointedly ignoring her since she woke up, and she's probably just happy to have a face she can lash out at, however unproductively. Meanwhile, Lt. Keyes' attempts to buddy up to her by complaining about the politicians comes off as disingenuous at best, whether due to a lack of sincerity or this sort of discussion just being outside of her wheelhouse, as Keyes is implied to be more of a tech expert than a people person.
Halsey's Plan
- Halsey's plan in the first episode seems to consist of three key points:
- Step 1: Silver Team takes up arms against the assembled UNSC Marines on the landing pad to prevent them from getting at Chief, in the middle of one of the UNSC's largest and most heavily-defended bases.
- Step 2: ???
- Step 3: Silver Team executes a Freeze-frame high-five.
- Halsey had to scramble due to the whole "sudden execution order" thing, but presumably the idea was simply that they'd be able to hold the military off long enough for the Chief to get the ship back to working order, then they'd all escape together. Halsey would justify everything to the brass later and find a way to downgrade everyone's punishments from "summary execution" to "slap on the wrist." Chief's EMP and escape before anyone realized Silver Team had turned on them was the best possible outcome; John has always been lucky.
Makee
- How in the blue blazes did a human end up in Covenant custody!? Did they find her amongst the ashes and corpses of a colony that was attacked by either them or the UNSC!?
- Episode 2 explicitly explains that the early stages of the Covenant's invasion saw them abducting large numbers of humans in order to locate one with the genetic markers necessary to activate Forerunner technology. Soren-066 introduces John and Kwan to one of the only rejects who managed to survive and escape, who was driven to total madness by the ordeal and seems on some level to still be indoctrinated to the Covenant's faith, albeit in a "crazed doomsday prophet" sense.
- Answered in Episode 3. Makee was from a borderline slave planet, got caught not working as a child, sharing her first kiss with a boy that was teaching her how to read. She was in the process of being electrocuted to death via cattle prod when the Covanant came to her rescue, yeeting the murderous guard several yards. This also explains the scars seen on her back during her undressing scene in Episode 2.
