The Return
From Halopedia, the Halo wiki
The Return is the twelfth short story in Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe. Written by Kevin Grace, this story follows a Sangheili Shipmaster as he travels back to the human colony world Kholo. This story takes place after the events of Halo 3 in which the Sangheili are no longer serving the San'Shyuum. The Return follows a unique writing style in which as the Shipmaster recalls past experiences, the text turns to italics to indicate a shift to a previous time period.
The Return was adapted into a motion comic by Juan "ONE" Richard Feliz, in the same vein as Halo: Midnight in the Heart of Midlothian, which initially released as a series throughout April 2010.[1]
Plot synopsis[edit]
Set seven years after the end of the Human-Covenant War, a Sangheili Shipmaster returns to the glassed colony of Kholo in order to find forgiveness for his sins. He ventures lonely through the remains of the colony, occasionally remembering the glorious days of when he interrogated a human pilot and glassed the colony, as well as the dark days of the Great Schism.
He experiences flashbacks where he showed his loyalty to the Prophet of Conviction by glassing Kholo. During the process, the Shipmaster marked the Covenant glyph representing "Faith" on the surface of the planet.
Years later, when the Jiralhanae betrayed the Sangheili over High Charity, the Shipmaster confronted the Prophet of Conviction and disarmed him. The Shipmaster then exposed the Prophet's deception and killed Conviction in front of his crew.
In the present timeframe, after several days of searching, he discovers Kig-Yar pirates fighting humans at an excavation site. After killing the Kig-Yar, he finds a lone human survivor. Realizing the survivor would soon be dead, the Shipmaster leaves him and continues looking around the base. Soon, he finds photos of humans interfering with Forerunner technology, including what the Shipmaster remarks as resembling an Oracle that once existed in High Charity.[Note 1] Realizing this could be what he was looking for, he returns to the human survivor and calls for help to save him. If the human manages to survive, the Sangheili plans on questioning him in order to collect information on his studies.
Appearances[edit]
Motion comic[edit]
- Main article: Halo: The Return
The Return was adapted into a motion comic that was created by Juan "ONE" Richard Feliz. It first premiered as a series of four weekly episodes on the Halo Waypoint Xbox 360 app, beginning on April 3, 2010,[1] with a full cut released later that year on May 22.[2] The full motion comic was officially uploaded onto the Halo YouTube channel on July 9, 2025.[3]
Production notes[edit]
Kevin Grace incorporated his enjoyment of the politics within the Covenant when he wrote The Return, as he wrote about how an individual Sangheili Shipmaster responded to the break-up of the Covenant in the years after Halo 3. As the story centred around an Elite having an internal monologue while scrounging around a barren planet, Grace considered the idea of translating it into a motion comic "interesting". But when ONE built upon an early concept shot created by an artist at 343 Industries for his adaptation, he utilised the Elite's memories as flashback sequences that visualised the human suffering he had brought, adding another layer onto Grace's story.[4]
Gallery[edit]
The Zune Video Marketplace logo for the motion comic.
Human research of a Forerunner Monitor.
A still from the motion comic.
The shipmaster in battle.
Notes[edit]
- ^ This may refer to either the Mendicant Bias fragment aboard the Forerunner Dreadnought or 343 Guilty Spark, who was also held in High Charity for a time.
Sources[edit]
- ^ a b halo.bungie.org, The Return, Part 1 - on Waypoint Saturday (Retrieved on Nov 13, 2025) [archive]
- ^ halo.bungie.org, Halo Waypoint - full of goodness (Retrieved on Nov 13, 2025) [archive]
- ^ Twitter, Halo (@Halo): "A lone Sangheili shipmaster wanders the glasslands of Kholo, the site of his greatest victory, seeking a new purpose after the Covenant's fall. The motion comic The Return... has returned!" (Retrieved on Jul 9, 2025) [archive]
- ^ YouTube - Video Archive, Halo Waypoint - Making of Midlothian/The Return: Originally hosted on Halo Waypoint (Retrieved on Dec 6, 2025)
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