“Chief? Can you hear me?” [Epilogue, Halo 3]

The Chief’s helmet lights cut on and he looks around. All is dark and there appears to be no gravity – debris floats around.

“I thought I lost you, too.” [Epilogue, Halo 3]

He presses his hand against a wall and pushes off, spinning himself enough to be able to look out through the massive hole at the end of the ship.

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure. When Halo fired, it shook itself to pieces. Did a number on the Ark. The portal couldn’t sustain itself. We made it through just as it collapsed.” [Epilogue, Halo 3]

Cortana explains the situation as the Chief reaches the hole in the ship.

He looks out to find that they are floating through the emptiness of space. Earth is nowhere in sight.

“Well… some of us made it.” [Epilogue, Halo 3]

It is a miracle that the Chief survived. Apparently, the firing of the Halo caused the Ark to rip apart, which disabled the portal – splitting the Dawn in half as it attempted to pass through. How the Chief survived the Halo’s pulse is a mystery – perhaps the Dawn was completely inside of the portal as the Halo fired and the portal collapsed – so that the entirety of the Dawn wasn’t transported, but the portal shielded the back half of the ship from the Halo’s blast. The complete emptiness of space coupled with the blue cloud in front of the Dawn suggests another theory, however – the portal collapsed as the Dawn was inside, and one half of the Dawn was sent to Earth, while the randomness of slipspace caused the latter half to be transported elsewhere. Perhaps another set of coordinates associated with the portal, or simple somewhere completely random.

“But you did it. Truth and the Covenant, the Flood – it’s finished.”

“It’s finished.” [Epilogue, Halo 3]

In a symbolic gesture, the Chief takes a last look at his AR and then places it in a holster on the wall.

“I’ll drop a beacon, but it’ll be a while before anyone finds us.”

“Years, even.” [Epilogue, Halo 3]

Cortana watches the Chief as he silently climbs into a cryo-chamber.

Since he doesn’t respond, Cortana tries again:

“I’ll miss you…” [Epilogue, Halo 3]

As the lid closes on the chamber, the Chief finally says:

“Wake me when you need me.” [Epilogue, Halo 3]

Cortana looks at him for a moment longer, almost in sadness, as her expression changes to one of solemn understanding. In this scene, it seems as though she wants something from him – a remark, or a kind word – something to fill the longing that she has – whatever that longing may be. Their words to each other are testaments to what this war has required them both to become – Cortana, an artifical intelligence, has become more human than any other UNSC AI, because of her interactions with the Gravemind. She appeared to have been near rampancy, and was brought back by the Chief.

And the Chief himself – whatever he was as a child is no more. The UNSC has turned him into a near-machine – since he has not been totally isolated from other humans, he is not completely alien: he gets angry, he makes jokes, he has emotions like anyone else. But when it comes down to it, he is simply a servant of the UNSC. Bred to fight the Insurrectionists – before humanity’s encounter with the Covenant – war is all he has ever known. And so now, with the war over, he does the only thing that makes sense to him to do in times of peace – he waits. He waits for the UNSC to call on him again.

The camera pans out to give us a wider view of the area. Cortana stands motionless, and then hangs her head. The Chief’s pod lies next to another just like it, a nod back to the beginning of the series, when we first saw the Chief emerge from his cryo chamber on the Pillar of Autumn (see here).

And so the Chief’s story ends the same way it began – he lies, asleep, in a UNSC cryo-chamber.

Or is this the end?

After an undetermined passage of time, the Dawn floats toward a speherical object. A source of light rises behind the planetoid… As this light floods the screen, the planetoid itself is lit up, revealing something…

Numerous glyphs can be seen on surface of what appears to be an artifical world. Joseph Staten spoke of these glyphs in an interview with Gametap in 2007:

“There is a crazy planetoid floating out there. Who knows? If you look really, really carefully at the lights on the planet, though, there is something to be seen in those lights.” [Joe Staten, Gametap, 2007 (original article no longer online)]

The symbol that he is probably speaking of can be seen here (the Marathon logo can also be seen on the planet, so he may have been referring to that, as well).

The symbol we’ve highlighted in that link has appeared many, many times throughout the Halo series, and in various places. If you’re interested in reading more about this topic, I’d like to point you toward an extensive article that Vociferous has written and published here at Ascendant Justice.