Did you know that the abbreviation Mrs., referring to a married woman, is actually a contraction of "mistress"? Not as in "illicit side-piece," but as in "feminine version of the word 'master'." So while we were trying to figure out whether to open this review by calling her "Mrs. Chief" or "Mistress Chief," they were both secretly the same thing! Here's a review of Mis'ess Chief.
Linda-058 is stoic and oftentimes eerily calm during combat, a demeanor perceived as adversarial even by other Spartans. Her discourse if generally terse and task-focused outside of combat, which has left little room for cross-team integration and generally kept her
moored exclusively to Blue Team. Linda's visual acuity and deft skill with marksman weapons is unparalleled, and she's considered the UNSC's most talented sniper. Her skills have proven invaluable, particularly when operating within her marksman role, where she's often pitted against high-priority targets at extreme ranges or tasked with providing overwatch support for teammates.
It's a well-established trope that in mixed groups, the men are the melee fighters, while the women are ranged. It's not difficult to find counter-examples, obviously, but because decorum requires that we don't show women getting physically hit, it's easier to just keep them out of hitting distance, which is why it's some big buff barbarian dude who's using a sword, while his companion girl is an archer or a magician. And that even carries over into modern and futuristic settings, where guns make everything even (all the upper body strength in the world makes no difference when you only need to pull a five pound trigger), which is why men are frontline fighters and woman are snipers.
Linda doesn't wear the standard Mjolnir armor,
but rather a variant Gen 2 "Argus" model, designed by the Office of Naval Intelligence. While Master Chief is swanning about in his knockoff Doomguy helmet, the Argus Class armor trades in the big, single visor for close-fitting goggles. Plus, there are several devices on the temples and cheeks that appear to be cameras or other imaging tech - suitable for a scout/sniper, and it also makes it clear who the "Argus" armor is named after.
The armor below the neck covers all the same parts of the body,
but it's a different shape - not majorly different, but if you put them right next to each other, you'd see they're not the same. The biggest difference is the chestplate, with is narrower here, but sticks out farther to the front and has a scoop-neck collar in the front that sticks up slightly. Instead of the flat jet boosters John Halo wore on his back, Linda has... I don't know what those are. They appear to have more cameras on top of both of them, but are they still thrusters as well? They're mostly mirrored shapes, but the one on the right has an extra piece extending down from it.
Like John-Boy, all Linda's armor is removable, allowing you to display her in just her Techsuit. Halo armor takes the same path Iron Man's armor did: originally it was a full, standalone suit that just connected to itself, but eventually it was modified to be modular pieces that clip onto a separate under-suit. In this case, that suit is made of thick, nonrigid titanium-based material, making it both protective and flexible,
and is heat-resistant to help diffuse enemy plasma weapon blasts. The techsuit is custom-made for the Spartan who wears it, while the Mjolnir pieces that go onto it can be mass-produced. They can't be worn by normal troops, because Spartans have cybernetic implants in addition to their genetic modifications, and the techsuit has to interface with those to work.
The female Universe Series body is not quite as detailed as the male body was. It has all the small armoed plates, shaped to match the shape of the wearer's body, but while those get various seams and panel lines, the black suit doesn't get as much of the honeycomb pattern we saw before. And although the gimmick of this line was supposed to be that the armor was removable and could be swapped around among figures (just like Iron Man's 1990s toyline), that doesn't work perfectly between genders: it's not a question of size, surprisingly, because a lot of the bits can be traded; no, the issue is more the placement of the holes where the armor plugs in. Like, try to put Linda's shin armor on Master Chief, and it comes down low enough to bump into his shoes and keep the feet from moving at all. Also, while this figure gets all the same rempvable pieces the other one did, she also gets separate booties that you can take off her feet.
Instead of being Doomguy Green, Linda-058's armor is some kind of dusty, faded beige. She looks like some kind of weird Stormtrooper, and that's why I got her. Well, that and "girl"; if you have a choice between
random dude figure and random chick figure, why would you ever not pick the lady? The details on the armor are decent, for a mass-market figure, but obviously they're not a perfect match for the game; there are blue and copper accents on the chestplate, copper on the helmet, yellow for all those flashlights she's got strapped to her head and shoulders, and even a few darker panels in various spots on the armor, but the back is mostly unpainted. A customizer could have a field day with her!
The figure stands a bit over 6" tall, which doesn't make this a 6" scale line: remember, Spartsns are supposed to be 7' tall, although really no one ever thinks of them that way. How else could they be in Fortnite if they weren't the same height as literally every other character!
Her articulation is the same as Master Chief's, with swivel/hinge ankles, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljointed hips, a balljoint chest, swivel/hinge wrists, hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, and a barbell head, which means she's still got that problem where the hip joints are too tall and will get blocked by her butt when you try to move the leg forward. She's a series 1 figure, and displays how much Mattel had improved by Series 2: compared to the other figure, her joints are made from gummier plastic, and the tolerances are looser, so a lot of her bits will flop around more than you'd want them to.
Unfortunately for me, since Linda-058 is a sniper, she's got the same rifle as my Master Chief. It's got a different deco,
grey and white and overall brighter colors to represent her personal customized "Nornfang" rifle, but it's still the same accessory, right down to the moveable bipod legs. In stead of the Boltshot pistol, though, she gets a standard M6H2 magnum, the standard starting pistol for Halo 5. And of course, the set includes pegs so you can attach the weapons to her back and leg, respectively.
And there's a Build-A-Figure piece, though this one is
much less iconic than Series 2's Grunt: it's an Alpha Crawler, which is some kind of robotic alien insect-dog? They first appeared in Halo 4, as the game was in need of a new type of enemy to keep things from getting stale. She gets the head, which is at least a decent part to have if you're never going to complete a BAF. It's white and gold, with hinged mandibles that open to show off its salmon-colored mouth.
Linda-058 was the second-to-last thing I got at Toys "Я" Us, and I got her because a girl wearing Halo armor was just cool on the face of it. Yes, the Argus armor isn't the most traditionally "Halo" thing ever, but just like with Stormtroopers, I've always got a spot for the "weirdo" looks. I may decide to sell off Master Chief (I think it's been too long to just return him, my receipt's probably expired by now), but Linda will be a keeper.
-- 06/25/26
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