Heroes Reborn 1.13 “Project Reborn”

Done!

No, not just Heroes Reborn. Me. I’m done. Finished. Full stop. Think of a guy emphatically throwing his hands in up into the air. That’s my spirit animal right now.

About eight or so years ago I first started on this path after becoming inundated by anecdotal and critical praise for a show inspired heavily by one of my favorite pastimes, comic books. I watched in earnest and stay patient through the good though laborious Volume One, and remained loyal and hopeful through the subsequent seasons. The show always had an underlying potential, a fecund formula that mixes super powers, time travel, philosophy and emotion in captivating and dynamic ways. That’s why it’s such a shame Tim Kring and his crew can’t get their shit together.

I always viewed the chief fallacy of Heroes to be its apparent abstinence toward physical confrontation or action pieces. While that is definitely more the forte of Hollywood it was extremely unsatisfying to watch dozens of episodes where the characters found outlandish ways not to use their “abilities.” The prime example to me has to be the first finale which promised us a fiery bomb via a huge confrontation in New York City but all that really happened was one dude got stabbed by a teleporting samurai.

What’s crazy is that Heroes Reborn reversed this trend and totally flubbed it by overcompensating. That’s evident in the two giant friggin’ walls of flaming death streaming toward Earth, or the creation of Katana Girl, whose digital escapades, and “rivalry” with Harris, were fueled only by kinetic confrontation. The series fixed its major flaw, but in an extremely superficial and hollow way.

That’s basically where we are to the start the finale, two infernos of staggering disappointment barreling toward the planet. A lot of corporal danger but no real connection to the characters aside from not wanting to watch them roast.

The episode begins with Carlos, Jose and Micah bringing the injured Farah to an abandoned Odessa hospital and…that’s about it. No joke, we see them again in another scene helping some other hurt people and then in the epilogue gearing up to fight crime (sans Micah). The hell? If you really think about it the entire point of the group’s storyline was to have Farah get shot on two separate occasions to save Malina. Is there any way I can write my cable company demanding a refund for wasting my time? Who is to be held accountable for this?!

The rest of the episode concentrates on the main mission of late — bringing together the twins. As we saw last week Tommy is now trapped in the Eternal Fortress, a prison in digital space made specifically for time travelers. The sinister Erica Kravid uses him to finally transport her city of handpicked survivors to the future and among this group are Emily and Ren. Those two snoop through city of Gateway until they find Otomo and the real life Miko. Otomo tasks “Reckless Ren” with entering the Eternal Fortress to save Tommy so he can do the savior thing.

Concurrently, the team of Malina, Luke and Quentin arrive in Gateway but only after everyone has transported 8000 years forward. Hellfire is beginning to reign down on North America and in an act of sacrifice Luke hurls himself toward the first solar flare and dissipates it. Despite horrible CGI the scene mostly works because it gives credence to a character that was savagely undercooked. Zachary Levi did yeoman’s work in making the most out of the scenes he was given. I’m going to mostly ignore how the hell this bro absorbed (or whatever) a fireball the size of a state; we got other crap to worry about.

From there Malina realizes she can’t wait for Tommy and must take action. For some reason Quentin convinces her to climb the Gateway clock tower but this proves to be a bad idea when his sister, The Shadow, decides to “smoke hug” Malina for some reason. At the top of the tower Quentin shoots his sister (because he forgets that older brothers are allowed to punch their sisters when they’re being whiny and stupid) and she falls to her death. What about a class action lawsuit against the creators of Heroes? Would that work?

Malina then just decides to start blasting the second solar flare with her powers which still have not been defined in any capacity in thirteen goddamn episodes. She’s struggling, and it’s apparent she can’t do it alone.

The backbone to the finale, and the season, is the Tommy’s realization and acceptance of his heroic fate. The idea of Evernow has served as both a boon and burden to the show, and this episode continues that by giving us some messy “action” scenes with Katana Girl and Ren but then using the same setting to make Tommy’s story sparkle. He receives a kind of spiritual awakening in terms of his journey and duty while locked in the Eternal Fortress. By revisiting keys moments of his life he pieces together the solution, and thanks to one pivotal scene (which was cleverly alluded to in the first couple episodes) we discover just exactly how the twins are supposed to save the world.

But first is a sequence of time hops that try to get a little too cute. Thanks to Ren Tommy escapes from Evernow and confronts the seemingly victorious Erica. She points out that if he goes back to change things he’ll erase the future Gatewayians from existence. I have no idea how that makes sense but Tommy responds by stopping time, splitting himself in two (OK?), moving everyone around, then traveling back to the present to help his sister. When he gets to the scene he finds that simply making physical contact with Malina activates their deus ex machina powers but also harms the siblings. Through another series of time skips Tommy pieces together the solution: in order for the power to properly work a “conduit” must be between he and his sister, and this middleman will not survive the experience.

Our young hero then grabs his grandfather, Noah, from the point in which he disappeared a few episodes back and explains the situation. HRG, without his defining face-framers, understands his role and accepts it.

Under the swirling plume of hot death Noah, Tommy and Malina shoot a blue aura up into the sky that encases the planet and shields our lovely ball of sopping dirt from solar flare. Everything goes white for a second and when the twins awaken they find HRG within moments of death. He tells them he’s proud and then one of the strongest pieces of the franchise passes away in a dignified manner, which is a hell of a feat considering this show is terrible at closure.

Here’s an example: The day is saved, but at a great cost. Plenty of characters died. Yet the onus of blame is hard to place because the antagonist, or antagonist framework, was an weird animal. The Man vs. Nature setup, a cataclysm caused by happenstance, was the main driver for everything, and that kind of saps the culpability from Erica Kravid. I’ll admit there are pangs of ingenuity in the split story arcs. The first half focused on the terroristic June 13th event which was slowly revealed to be a ploy by Kravid in response to the incoming H.E.L.E, the concentration of the latter portion. However the show’s choice to make the main villainess the manifestation of passive-aggressiveness drains the narrative’s potency.

Technical flaws are a huge part of series and its legacy. It’s always struggled with time-travel and much like the action problem it tried to solve it via overkill. Despite massively shunning most of the original cast the miniseries utilized it’s continuity in some fun and fresh ways. Still, if Heroes could boast anything it was that it had a decent batch of energizing characters like Hiro, Peter, Claire, Sylar, Nathan and HRG…and this series just simply did not have that kind of cast. A few of the new ones, Luke, Quentin, Tommy, etc, had a morsel of charm but their respective highlight reels are short.

When dealing with a large cast it’s important that dialogue be fiercely effective in short bits and this show never excelled in that regard. Cliché lines and reactive platitudes were too commonplace and gave the series no edge whatsoever. I can’t tell you how many times my attention waned over the course of the season, eyes straying to another screen or quickly flicking the channel over to a sports game. That doesn’t happen when a show is good.

But it’s over right? They killed off the lead in a heroic manner and all threats are thwarted. NAW DAWG. The epilogue of the finale, as spoken by an imprisoned Quentin, examines the everyman motif, reminding us how regular people are capable of extraordinary things. Evos will remain a divisive issue in the world but things are on the mend. All is well…

Until some shady dude leaves a pair of Tarot cards for Tommy and Malina. Lucky for us Angela Petrelli (somehow de-aged…WTF!) is around to explain to Malina that her (previously unseen) father has returned to collect his offspring. End Volume One.

Nope. Fuck you. Done.

Heroes Reborn was the last chance. I thought maybe with the multi-year hiatus the show could effectively retool and finally fulfill its destiny, but alas, it has failed on multiple plateaus. End this nightmare. I have no idea how this shoddy of a franchise somehow continues to persist, not only on television but in video games, car ads, web series and comic tie-ins. Let’s put the show to rest. Thanks for your contribution Heroes but the world has better ways to destroy itself.