Before Bridgerton, Sophie Baek Actor Yerin Ha Starred In A Short-Lived Sci-Fi Video Game Adaptation

Yerin Ha has gotten a pretty major profile boost recently thanks to her involvement in "Bridgerton" season 4 on Netflix. In the hit show, Ha plays Sophie Baek, a tweaked version of Benedict Bridgerton's love interest from Julia Quinn's original books. (There, the character is named Sophia Maria Beckett.) And while Ha has been a working actor for some time, being on a series this popular is naturally going to help lift any actor to another level. That said, "Bridgerton" is not the first big franchise that Ha has been involved with. Rather, she previously played a part in a major (albeit short-lived) video game TV show.

In 2022, Ha specifically became part of the core ensemble cast for the "Halo" TV series, which is based on the uber-hit Microsoft video game property of the same name. Unfortunately, Paramount+ canceled "Halo" after just two seasons despite clearly having larger ambitions for the project. In the end, the sci-fi series simply didn't connect with viewers as intended. Coupled with its high price tag (with the show reportedly budgeted at more than $10 million per episode in its first season alone), the math just didn't math after a certain point.

"Halo" focuses on the epic 26th-century conflict between humanity and an alien threat known as the Covenant, with Pablo Schreiber starring in the TV series as Master Chief (the primary protagonist from the original games). As for Ha, she portrays a character by the name of Kwan Ha, who was invented specifically for the show and didn't originate in the games or the expanded "Halo" universe of novels, comic books, and so forth.

In the "Halo" TV show, Kwan Ha is the only daughter of Jin Ha, the leader of the rebels on the planet Madrigal, and ends up bonding with Master Chief amidst the conflict with the Covenant. Suffice it to say, however Kwan Ha was also (sadly) far from a beloved character among fans. "What is the point of Kwan?" as one popular thread on the HaloStory subreddit reads, and there are many others like that across social media.

Mind you, this isn't a knock against Yerin Ha as an actor. For many people who watched the "Halo" TV show, the character Kwan simply felt superfluous. There was also the issue of her pulling focus from Master Chief and the elements that fans of the original games wanted the series to focus on. Case in point: "Halo" season 1, episode 7 put Master Chief on the backburner to highlight Kwan instead, and the result was an episode with a mere 4.8/10 rating on IMDb.

In truth, Kwan was just part of a much larger problem that the show had from the very start. The team behind the "Halo" TV series was battling expectations the whole way, from fans not wanting Master Chief to take his helmet off to calls for a more faithful take on the story from the original games. In many ways, this show feels like a product of a bygone era when Hollywood really had a hard time figuring out how to translate the interactive experiences of video games to television and film.

Ha, for her part, has moved on nicely. She's since starred in "Dune: Prophecy" and "The Survivors," in addition to her work on "Bridgerton."

"Halo" is streaming now on Paramount+.