Nathan Fillion is one of the nerd community’s favorite actors thanks to his stint as Mal Reynolds on Joss Whedon’s Firefly. Fillion first made his way into the Halo universe as Edward Buck in 2009’s ODST, and he’ll be returning again for Halo 5 as part of Fireteam Osiris. What many people don’t know is that Buck almost didn’t make it into the game at all.
Halo 5’s writer Brian Reed tweeted a picture of the cover of the game’s art book. The cover shows both Blue Team–Master Chief, Fred, Linda, and Kelly–and Osiris–Locke, Tanaka, Vale, but…not Buck. Instead, the fourth member of Osiris was originally Gabriel Thorne, which quite a few people took notice of:
https://twitter.com/BrianReed/status/654721210417221634
https://twitter.com/fourthechelon19/status/654727579207757824
Reed quickly explained that yeah, Thorne was originally part of Osiris instead of Buck when they were first conceiving the team.
https://twitter.com/BrianReed/status/654732366204682244
Sadly, Thorne has to sit Halo 5 out, but you can still catch the Spartan-IV in the Halo Escalation comics. And who knows, maybe he’ll show up next time!
https://twitter.com/BrianReed/status/654732898281492481
https://twitter.com/BrianReed/status/654733493562269696
Just don’t mention it to Thorne, he’s still taking it hard.
@BrianReed @Greenskull Thorne on hearing the game went gold… And he was still waiting for their callback. pic.twitter.com/mOsSvC88fG
— Reaper 💀 (@thyReaperMC) October 15, 2015
Halo 5: Guardians hits the Xbox One on October 27. Get ready to clear your hard drive for free space! You can pre-order the game’s art book here.