In a lot of ways I feel like I could copy last week’s review of Heroes Reborn, make only a few minor alternations and post it here, no problem. It’s sufficient to say this episode was a big ol’ load of filler.
Again, like the previous ‘sode the strongest, most progressive throughline of the whole deal is the Noah Bennett contingent. After Molly Walker’s suicide, HRG and Quentin want answers and they (again) employ the bewildered and inquisitive Taylor Kravid to get them.
The big plan is to have her lure her mother, Erica, to their pimp-ass home where HRG will interrogate her at gunpoint. It’s right about there that the show slips into worn ways. So, you’re telling me Erica, obviously smart and capable, doesn’t suspect her offspring may be working with an opponent? It’s never explicit (things rarely are in this show) that she knew that Taylor was with HRG when Molly Walker shot herself, but wouldn’t she be skeptical of her loyalties?
I won’t wholly dismiss “The Lion’s Den” as unproductive fluff; we receive some more detail about the bigger picture, which up ’til now has been overtly fuzzy. For one, we find out that, yes, Renautas is a direct successor to Primatech, and at some point the amnesic HRG worked with Erica on her grand plan. She also purports to know the final fates of Claire and Hiro but doesn’t let HRG in on the juiciest bits. The Renautas leader seems to hold all the answers and she’s expectedly coy in disclosing them.
When (one of the) Harris (clones) shows up to thwart HRG’s Q and A session the trio are saved by Miko the Katana Girl who, with Ren, tracked her father’s sword from Renautas HQ to the Kravid crib. She kicks a few Harris clones, grabs the Sword of McGuffin and dips out. No one in the HRG group really questions why this Asian chick blasts through a window and then disappears, and thus any synergy or unification is completely lost.
Still, we get an adequate info drop in the show’s closing moments. Through Richard, Renautas super scientist, we discover the nature of the impending catastrophe that has put everything motion: a giant solar flare thingy is headed straight for Earth and it’ll cause a near-extinction event. That’s horrifying…and actually a lot more mundane than what I was expecting.
In northern North America we spend increasingly more time with Malina and her clandestine guardian Farah. When the duo try to meet up with a contact in Quebec they find they’re being stalked by another Harris clone who has the “the Shadow” (Quentin’s sister) in tow. The dialogue between Malina and Farah is so ridiculously veiled that they might as well have not said anything at all in this hour. It’s actually kind of funny that Malina admits she doesn’t understand much about her situation, and seems to rely solely on Farah for guidance. What sucks for her is that Farah gets shot and then gives her an envelope that apparently points in the next direction. The hell? Is this a scavenger hunt?
This particular plotline is kind of pissing me off with how secretive it is. The impeding event, a fiery death for humanity, is scary and all but does it constitute all the mystery? Moreover, Malina’s history and capabilities are not clear in the slightest. Does she control the four elements? Telekinesis? We do find out through a brief phone call made by Farah that she is part of the same entity as Casper, the coin-wielding mind-wiper who follows Tommy Clark around.
That portion of the story also features a bunch of a nothing punctuated by a small development. Somewhere in last week’s episode I missed the part where Tommy was arrested as he’s in the process of being register as an Evo at the top this one. A dickhead cop grills him on his true origin/identity and reveals to Tommy that his mother, Anne, is not genetically related to him. Tommy, probably appropriately, has a tough time coping with this and teleports to confront her. A quick line indicates that his real name is possibly “Nathan” which implies that he’s an estranged member of the Petrelli clan, the prime family of focus in the original series. Casper the Penny Man shows up to advise Tommy that he’s meant for something great. No one seems brave enough to name specifics, and in frustration Tommy teleports somewhere else.
It’s a bit of indictor of the episode’s gait when one of the characters simply moped around his house for the entire duration. Luke Collins, sans wife Joanne, returns to his home after the discovery of his powers. He watches some family videos, paws through emotional keepsakes, sells off his business interest, then burns his house down. I guess this bro is going through a tough transition and this is demonstrating that, but the entire set of scenes are an absolute time sink in terms of quality and substance.
The pieces aren’t coming together very elegantly but there is some connective elements between nearly all the stories. The most separated is the California thread which follows the non-powered vigilante El Vengador. Early in the ep Carlos is unable to find his nephew and immediately suspects dirty cop and secret Evo Dearing of having a hand in it. He goes to the police station to directly confront him, but before Dearing can walk out of his swanky office he’s indentified as an Evo via a newly arrived pair of E.P.I.C glasses, the Renautas tech that can detect any powered individual. His partners arrest him and throw him into a van, though I’m still not totally clear who these cops work for. Renautas, right? Why did none of the cops at the station appropriately react to one of their own being tranquilized and dragged out of their station? Oy vey.
In an interesting twist that is barely touched upon, and will likely dissipate by Thursday, El Vengador saves Dearing by using his new tech-based suit to whoop the two other cop’s asses. Seriously, the way this is framed El Vengador might have killed a guy off screen with his rocket punches. Admittedly, the new suit is actually kind of cool. Not wholly original, but a nice change of pace for this franchise.
Heroes Reborn is quickly losing the momentum manufactured by its first two or three hours. Characters are taking way too long to wade through emotional issues, a dangerous sign that things are returning to the melodramatic, anti-climatic tendencies of the past. The pace is a bit rough, particularly in light of the makeup of modern TV where plot is expedited and obvious story beats are either subverted or totally flipped upside down. Also, the show still suffers from logic fails that speak to notoriously weak writing. For example, why is Erica concerned with Renautas’ public image when the world is set be fireballed in the extremely near future? Will branding be important in a post-apocalyptic world? We still have well more than half the series to go and it already feels a little hopeless.
The biggest crime of all: Repeatedly using Hiro as a promotional ploy. He’s been in teasers for every single episode and still has not shown up in any capacity aside from relics and implications. That’s a dirty trick, and in a certain way it proves Heroes Reborn is lacking true substance.