Last week, McFarlane Toys sent out a bunch of press photos of their old Halo 4 Series 2 figures prototypes that we’d already seen a million times before. Nothing to get excited about there. But–but! Todd McFarlane has also updated his official Facebook page, where he uploaded photos of what look to be the finished, final prototypes for McFarlane Toys Halo 4 Series 2–including the Unmasked Didact and a very different looking Storm Jackal…

Breathe easy, Halo collectors. Todd McFarlane has definitely confirmed, as I expected, that the Halo 4 Didact Deluxe Action Figure will in fact come packaged with both his helmeted and unmasked heads in the same package. There had been some speculation that the Unmasked Didact might be a variant and you’d have to buy the same figure twice to get the second head, but we now know for absolute certain that that isn’t the case. The huge 9″ tall deluxe The Didact McFarlane Toys figure is up for pre-order now, and should ship out in September 2013.

Meanwhile, we also got some great photos of the non-deluxe Halo 4 Wave 2 figures. The bad news is that we’re all going to have to buy the Halo 4 Master Chief figure–again.

The good news is that he comes with an all-new UNSC Railgun and a really nice handheld micro Cortana figure. I’m going to choose to think of this as buying the Cortana figure, and getting the Master Chief figure as a bonus.

Officially, this is the Violet Spartan CIO action figure. Forgive me if I slip and start calling him purple. The CIO Spartan mold looks really nice, and I imagine it’s going to look even better on the exclusive Steel/Green Spartan figure coming out in Halo 4 Series 2 that isn’t purple.

This is the first opportunity we’ve had to see the completed Orange Spartan Scout action figure. He was already my favorite figure in McFarlane Toys Halo 4 Series 2 based on the virtue of his being orange, but I actually really love the white insignias and details that have been added to the figure. And to all the Halo fans out there who say the Sticky Detonator is a terrible weapon–you people have no souls.

The Halo 4 Elite Ranger figure has some very extraterrestrial looking colors going on, but he looks too much like a deep sea underwater G.I. Joe in these colors for my liking. I much prefer the awesome Halo Reach Elite Ranger action figure from a few years back.

Finally, we have the Halo 4 Storm Jackal figure, which has changed massively since the early drawings of the figure. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what this Covenant Jackal action figure reminded me of–until I heard someone compare him to the Godzilla creatures from the 1998 Godzilla movie (Did you know the story from has a direct continuation in children’s cartoon form? It’s true!). Contrary to my initial impressions, the sculpting on this Jackal Storm figure is excellent–it’s just the colors that are appallingly off. Hopefully there’s time for McFarlane Toys to tweak the paint on this before it reaches the manufacturing stage (though I somehow doubt it).

Halo 4 Series 2 is now available for pre-order and is scheduled to ship out in September 2013. The official Halo Waypoint site scared me when they said October 2013, but Todd McFarlane himself has confirmed that it’s going to be September 2013, thankfully. I will (of course) post full reviews and photo galleries of every single figure from this series once they’re released in just a few short months (finally).