Halo TV Show Will Have Its Own Canon Known As The "Silver Timeline"

With six core games to its name, several spin-offs, and an expanded narrative universe on multiple forms of media, Halo has a massive amount of content to chew on. For the upcoming Halo TV series, the project won't play around within that established canon and will instead tell its story in what it calls the "Silver Timeline."

343 Industries head of transmedia Kiki Wolfkill explained that the creation of an entirely new timeline allowed for a Halo story that didn't interfere with the canon of the video game series.

"We do have some context and perspective that is different from the stories that we have experienced or read about in the games," Wolfkill said in an interview shared on Twitter by Halopedia. "We're referring to this as the Halo Silver Timeline as a way of differentiating it from core canon, and both protecting core canon and protecting the television story. And by that, I mean being able to give ourselves the chance to evolve both and for both to be what they need to be for their mediums without colliding with each other."

This approach doesn't sound too dissimilar from the path that Disney took after it acquired the Star Wars franchise and jettisoned the Expanded Universe--RIP Star Wars: Legacy--out of the airlock. In the years after the acquisition, elements from the EU have cropped up in Star Wars media, with one notable example being the appearance of Grand Admiral Thrawn in the animated series Star Wars Rebels.

The Halo series will launch on Paramount+ in 2022, is being produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Television, and stars an extremely shredded Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief. While it'll still be a while before the show debuts, you can sit back and read the main timeline's novels and comic books, watch the several vignettes from Halo: Nightfall, or try out spin-off games such as Halo Wars 2.

If that sounds like too much homework, we've got you covered with a digestible catch-up on the events before Halo Infinite, so that you won't be left behind by that game's story.