S0WE33 - What If... the Fight Was Finished?

"What If... the Fight Was Finished?" is the thirty-third episode of the W-Series and the fourth "What If" episode, following "What If... a Guardian Fell from the Sky?". Framed by The Watcher from Marvel's What If...?, it imagines a Zootopia where the Master Chief and Cortana, adrift after the end of Halo 3, fall through an anomaly onto a world that has never met anyone from another planet. The episode is a Halo crossover and has zero continuity with the rest of the W-Series.

Synopsis

A spiral opens in front of the drifting stern of the Forward Unto Dawn, and Cortana wakes John-117 from cryo. They escape the breaking ship in a damaged Longsword and crash on purpose into empty sand on the outskirts of Sahara Square, in front of the pack. At the trench John tries to move Luther away from the burning wreck and throws him instead, and the pack's bullets spend themselves on his shields until Pawbert covers his husband with his own body. John stops, kneels, and helps the wolf up. He spends the night inside a cordon that faces the crowd rather than him, while a ZFD medic leaves water and Pawbert keeps watch from a bollard. Cortana learns the language from the city's broadcasts, and at dawn John's first translated words go to Pawbert. City Hall chooses hospitality, and the pack becomes his guide. With the armor off, John builds Cortana a portable rig from parts the pack scrounges, she tells them that they and the mammals on the news all look like species she knows from Earth, and over a chili dinner at the mansion John tells them about the war and about being taken at six. That night thieves hit the warehouse that holds his armor. John borrows Luther's backup pistol, stops when Luther tells him to, and gives it back unfired. At the guest-room window Cortana admits her time is running short, and they plan a trip to the Rainforest District. Back at the Dawn's wreckage, a console warns of a slipspace rupture.

Plot

The Watcher opens with the prologue from Marvel's What If...? and introduces a soldier who helped finish a war: twenty-seven years against an alliance that called his species an affront, the rings stopped, and a portal that cut his ship in two, sending the bow home with a former enemy aboard and the stern into the dark. The Spartan went into cryo telling Cortana to wake him when she needed him. The stern's course should have carried it to Requiem and a new war, but in this universe the dark tears open first. Cortana, already past the seven-year limit for AIs like her and counting it, watches a spiral open ahead of the wreck and wakes John-117. They reach an engineless Longsword in the hangar as the Dawn comes apart around them. As they clear the wreckage she says the Dawn is finished, and he tells her he thinks they are just getting started. The anomaly carries them to an uncharted system and a living, inhabited world, and Cortana aims their fall at the emptiest sand she can find.

Luther is driving the pack east out of Downtown toward a dinner reservation in Sahara Square, with Nick halfway through a story about a witness who would only describe what a suspect was carrying, when the Longsword comes down on the district's outskirts. Luther calls the CCC, Nick calls Dispatch, and at the trench Nick clears the crowd while Luther and Judy advance on the wreck. The hull blows out and an armored figure steps into the light, taller than any wolf there, with a gold visor and a helmet blunt where a muzzle should be. Neither side has a word of the other's language. He points everyone back from the burning fuselage, and Luther blocks him. John reaches to move the wolf clear and the sweep of his arm throws Luther across the sand, hurting his shoulder and ribs. Judy and Nick open fire, and the rounds flatten against a shield of light. Pawbert runs past Nick and drops to cover his husband with his own body, unarmed and shaking, saying only "Please." John lowers his gauntlet, steps back, kneels, and offers his hand, and Luther takes it.

Costa arrives to a cordon whose officers face the crowd, with Fangmeyer pressing back the phones. ZSI tries counting and drawing in the sand and gets nowhere. Inside the armor John looks for heavy weapons, aircraft, an orbital platform, and finds only police cruisers and fire engines. A ZFD medic leaves him a bottle of water and offers him her first-aid kit, and Cortana tells him privately that the pack and the mammals on the city's broadcasts all look like species from Earth. At full dark a firefighter turns a floodlight out of his visor. Luther refuses to go home, strapped up and on painkillers, and Pawbert keeps watch from a bollard inside the tape, close enough to be seen and far enough not to ask anything. At one in the morning he sets a bottle at the tape and drinks from his own. John picks his up and holds it sealed. Pawbert tells Luther he recognizes the stance from his own past and from the clients he sits with.

At dawn the armor's speakers carry John's first translated words, and they go to Pawbert, telling him he stayed. Cortana has learned the language off the city's broadcasts overnight and introduces herself, and Nick decides at once that he likes her. Luther walks out to the visor, and John tells him he hit him trying to move him clear, used too much force, and is sorry. He says he stopped because the lynx put himself in the way unarmed, and that on his world arriving somewhere is usually a fight. Pawbert tells him the wolf he threw is his husband, then asks if he is hurt. On the floor of the Department of External Relations, Commissioner McHerd fields neighboring governments while Winddancer notes that nobody in the building has proposed a cell, and has the memo call it a guide. Costa recommends they stop trying to find the box John goes in. The guide will be the four who were there, and McHerd asks for a room in somebody's house.

In a ZSI staging warehouse two blocks off the perimeter, John takes the armor off, and the pack sees his face for the first time. Nick asks where the rest of it is. Under Cortana's direction John wires a portable rig from his helmet hardware, the Longsword's battery and projector, a phone, a picnic speaker and a ZSI headset, and Nick sources the soldering iron from a mammal who owed him. The transfer leaves Cortana briefly unsure where she is. Then her hologram stands on the bench, tells Judy that she is a European rabbit, and offers the Forerunners' Ark as a guess she cannot test for how life from Earth came to be here. On the walk to the train John names his missing squad and says the Navy never lists one of them dead, only missing. Cortana tells him privately that they have landed in the place a certain Earth subculture spent its art imagining, and Nick spends the rest of the block trying to learn what she said. A ZSI agent drives the sedan home, the rest of them take the train, and at the mansion Luther cooks a one-pot chili one-pawed until Pawbert takes the board. Asked what happened the first time his kind met someone from somewhere else, John tells them about Harvest and the glassed colonies, about the alien commander who fought beside him at the end, and about being taken at six. Pawbert asks his full name, and John gives him a number.

That evening a call comes: an armed crew is loading the armor and the wreck salvage into a truck at the staging warehouse. John asks Luther for a weapon. Luther hands him his backup pistol grip first with two conditions: arrests, not killing, and when Luther says stop, John stops. Inside, John runs down an impala, Judy and Nick take a mountain goat and a llama, and a polar bear charges the unarmored stranger and ends up on the concrete. When John's hold starts toward breaking the bear's shoulder, Luther says his name and "Stop," and John stops. Afterward he hands the pistol back unfired.

That night at the guest-room window John asks Cortana how long she has. AIs like her are shut down after seven years, before rampancy sets in, and she has been running for more than eight. The one person who might help her is on the other side of the anomaly, and she refuses to give John a date she would only be making up. What she wants is for some of the time that remains to be theirs, starting tomorrow with the Rainforest District. John tells her to wake him when she wants to go, and they choose a stop on a transit map. The Watcher closes on a Spartan who rests, and the camera goes back to the Dawn's drifting wreckage, where a cracked console comes back to life and a flat recorded voice announces a slipspace rupture.

Key Moments

• Cortana wakes John as an anomaly opens ahead of the Dawn's drifting stern
• The Longsword escapes the dying Dawn, and the anomaly takes it
• Cortana aims the crash at empty sand on the outskirts of Sahara Square
• John tries to move Luther clear of the burning wreck and throws him instead
• Pawbert covers Luther with his own body, unarmed, and John stands down, kneels and helps the wolf up
• The cordon faces outward; a ZFD medic leaves water and a firefighter turns a floodlight out of John's visor
• Pawbert keeps watch from a bollard through the night and shares water across the tape
• At dawn, John's first translated words go to Pawbert
• John apologizes to Luther for using too much force
• On the DER floor, the city chooses to treat John as a guest and the pack as his guide
• The armor comes off and the pack sees John's face
• John builds Cortana a portable rig, and her hologram tells Judy she is an Earth rabbit
• John names his missing squad on the walk to the train
• Over dinner John tells the pack about Harvest and about being taken at six
• John borrows Luther's backup pistol, stops when told, and hands it back unfired
• Cortana admits her time is running short, and she and John plan a trip to the Rainforest District
• A console in the Dawn's wreckage warns of a slipspace rupture

Key Lines

Characters Introduced

Locations

• Forward Unto Dawn (aft section) — the drifting stern; the opening bookend and the closing stinger
• Sahara Square outskirts — the crash trench and the cordon where John spends his first night
• City Hall — the Department of External Relations floor, where the city decides what John is
• ZSI staging warehouse — two blocks off the perimeter; where the armor comes off, and the site of the raid
• Sahara Square streets — the walk to the train past a freight yard
• Pawthorne Mansion — the kitchen dinner and the guest-room window

Items

• MJOLNIR armor — John's powered armor; removed by choice and racked at the staging warehouse, where thieves try to take it
• The Longsword — the damaged craft they escape the Dawn in; its battery and holographic projector go into Cortana's rig
• Cortana's portable rig — built on a warehouse bench from helmet hardware, a phone, a picnic speaker and a ZSI headset; carries her voice, translation and hologram
• Luther's backup pistol — lent to John with two conditions and returned unfired
• Water bottles — one from a ZFD medic, one from Pawbert at one in the morning; John holds Pawbert's and leaves it sealed

Music

End Credit Song

"Behold a Pale Horse" (From 'Halo 3'), Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori

Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori's cue scores "The Ark" in Halo 3 (2007), the level in which John arrives at the Forerunner installation that Cortana offers here as an untestable guess for why the mammals of Zootopia look like species she knows from Earth. The title comes from the Book of Revelation, where the rider of the pale horse is Death. The cue is keyed to the stinger, not the window. The episode ends on a Spartan who gets to rest and a plan to see the Rainforest District in the morning, and then a console in the Dawn's wreckage warns of a slipspace rupture with nobody aboard to hear it. The music comes in after that warning and holds what John and Cortana cannot see from the guest room: something is coming through where they left.

Notes

• The Longsword escape and the "finished" / "just getting started" exchange restage the ending of Halo: Combat Evolved (2001) with the same speakers: Cortana calls it finished, and John answers that they are just getting started.
• "Wake me when you need me" is John's last line in Halo 3 (2007).
• "I need a weapon." is the iconic Master Chief's line to Sergeant Johnson in Halo 2's Cairo Station.
• Nick's "for a brick, he flew pretty good" is Sergeant Johnson's line about the Chief at the end of Cairo Station in Halo 2.
• "Don't make a girl a promise... if you know you can't keep it." is Cortana's line from Halo 2, echoed at the start of Halo 3.
• John's "The Navy never lists one of us dead" refers to the UNSC policy of listing dead Spartans as missing in action, the source of the line "Spartans never die" in Halo: Reach (2010).
• The console's "Slipspace rupture detected" is Auntie Dot's warning in Halo: Reach as the Covenant fleet arrives over Reach.
• Spice Road Table, the pack's Sahara Square dinner reservation, is the Morocco pavilion restaurant at EPCOT.