Halo and Arcane are both streaming series that have premiered within six months of each other, and both adapt very popular video game series. Halo obviously takes its story from the eponymous game released in 2001 that has captured the minds of a generation. Arcane bases its characters on the lore surrounding League of Legends, a MOBA game that became popular after 2009. And while it isn’t necessary to play either game before enjoying their matching series, some may find it better to go into one or the other blind.

Both Halo and League of Legends have epic and profound backstories woven from the games as they grew as franchises. Both have novelizations of their game’s extended universe, and both have an extensive community of players that write fan fiction and discuss canon. But while the series took place in the universe of their respective games, neither of the productions is canon. That means each show contradicts its source material in some way. So avid fans of both games might be in for a surprise because even if both shows received good reviews, there are parts that might be different from what video game purists might be used to.

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Halo and Fan Expectations

     Paramount+

The Halo TV series on Paramount+ diverges in a big way from the regular Halo canon. Halo’s executive producer and 343 Industries’ Studio Head of Transmedia, Kiki Wolfkill, essentially gave the series open ground to play with, naming the events of the TV series “The Silver Timeline,” called so after the Silver Team of Spartans that Master Chief is a part of in the show. She said at IGN Fan Fest 2022:

But that “core canon” has proven challenging to avoid, given that the video game has already had a number of movies made from it. The show has skirted the edges of some big points in Halo history. For example, it seems to take place at a time so far before Reach that humanity hardly even knows the Covenant exists, which would mean the events of the Human-Covenant war are either drastically sped up, or everyone is a lot older than they said they were in the first game.

There are some unspoken rules the show breaks as well. Fans might dislike the fact that the show gives no qualms about showing Master Chief’s face, which was a big no-no in the games. And Cortana’s too-human appearance had people up in arms before the show even came out. The show also makes a moral point of turning humanity into the villain in some places, eliminating a lot of the honor and esteem the UNSC held in previous movies and games.

Many of these things were done thinking it would allow the show’s producer to tell a good story, which would be fine if they had succeeded. But the story was a rush job at attempted fan service that shoehorned drama into the storyline and dangled familiar characters in front of us like carrots on a string. Perhaps it would have been more enjoyable if we had never heard the world Halo before and thus could not have our expectations exploited in such a fashion.

Arcane and Limitless Potential

     Netflix

The Netflix series Arcane did something similar with League of Legends. However, where Halo previously established movies and canon to work with, or more aptly, try and avoid, Arcane was the first big production in its extended universe. While there were some more minor League of Legends things – short films, comics, and various fan fiction –, Arcane was the first large storytelling venture on a major streaming service. And adding to Arcane’s benefit is that the video game itself doesn’t have an extensive role-playing or storytelling mechanic to it. So, while lore was eventually created for the game, there was a lot more space to work with for Arcane’s development, as opposed to Halo’s.

Keeping that in mind, Arcane is still not technically canon in the League of Legends universe. Despite its massive amount of breathing room, Arcane has gone against some points of the game that editors are not willing to retcon. In January 2022, Thomas Cunningham, Senior Manager of Narrative Editing for League of Legends, said to Polygon:

This means that Arcane is generally using the same excuse as Halo in order to play with the characters. What changes here is that Arcane did deliver a good story. Perhaps that’s due to the lack of previous TV/movie productions, or maybe the writers are just generally of a higher quality. But where Halo attempts to leverage the expectations of its fans to make up for its downfalls, Arcane can give its viewers a standalone show that would be good even if the video game didn’t exist.