My good friend, PensHalo, has come up with a theory for Halo 5 Guardians that deserves some attention. Take a read and let me know what you think of his theory.

With the release of the new of Halo 5: Guardians last week along with the initial image, the anticipation for the next Halo game has started.  The questions are flying regarding who is the person in the top half of the image.  I started wondering myself who this could be.  As many have pointed out the person is possibly an ONI operative as the ONI logo can be seen on the chest plate of the armor being worn.  In addition, this person (who is not female as reported by Josh Holmes and Frank O’Connor) is male.  He has a slighter build than Master Chief which is why many, myself included, thought this could be a female character.

For some reason, I was reminded of the opening cut scene of Halo 4 that has Halsey being interrogated by someone.  During that discussion the following is spoken:

Interrogator: “Do you believe the Master Chief succeeded because he was, at his core, broken?”

Halsey: “What does John have to do with this? …you want to replace him.”

In the Halo universe after the war, ONI has been extremely busy trying to keep the Sangheili busy with their own Civil War so they can’t turn on Humans.  There also seems to be a bit of a struggle between ONI and the UNSC as seen in the Kilo-Five Trilogy by Karen Traviss and in the Halo Escalation #1.  So what would ONI need to help swing the balance of power in their direction?  Master Chief.  Or more specifically, the legend that Master Chief has become.  Without argument he is the greatest Spartan II and is a mythic figure, right up there with Achillies, Ajax, Roland, and the other great heroes of legend.  Whomever the public feels he is siding with, they would side with them.

However, there are two items that make this more difficult for ONI.  First off, as we saw in the early E3 trailer from 2013 it appears that Master Chief has gone rogue and is out there on his own.  The second item is that he, like the other Spartan II’s, see Catherine Halsey as a mother –figure.  As those in charge of ONI now and in the past have been at odds with Halsey it stands to reason that they would do whatever they could to take her greatest creation away from her.  So this ONI operative in the image is pursuing John like Actaeon is pursued by his hounds.  However they still need Master Chief.  How do they do that?

They clone Master Chief.

Now I know that the only cloning that is ever really mentioned in the Halo universe is Flash cloning.  This is a medical process used to clone body parts.  It uses a sample of a person’s DNA to grow a cloned organ which can be transplanted back into that person with virtually no chance of rejection.  This is the method used to replace the original Spartan II’s when they were kidnapped from their home.  The cloning of an entire human is illegal as per the UN Colonial Mortal Dictata 1.  In addition, those clones created by the flash method are highly unstable and in almost every case the clone dies from “metabolic cascade failure”.2

However, in this case ONI could just get their hands on Master Chief’s DNA and create the cloned embryo and then let it grow normally, which would avoid any of the problems that flash cloning brings.  Letting the clone age normally until he was 13/14 and then going through the augmentation process would explain the comparably slight build as compared to Master Chief.

During the campaign, I can see you starting off as Master Chief trying to stay ahead of the ONI Operative and then switching to the Operative in trying to track Master Chief down.  And in honor of Halo 2, the end is the two finally meet up and the screen cuts to black marking the end of this entry into the Halo universe.  This would then be followed up by a boost in the economy as gamers go out to purchase new monitors/TV’s to replace the ones that they threw their controllers at and broke.

This is actually very interesting. Considering the timeline, it’s quite possible. Mind you if the clone was say 20 years old, he would have been alive before the events of Halo Reach an on. Still, Master Chief’s career was quite impressive, even before then. Imagine a clone of Chief though. He’s younger which could mean faster. However, he’s not as experienced. The shape of the ONI “spartan” makes sense too as he would have the time to bulk up as much as Chief.

So what do you folks think? Master “Clone”?

-Sal