I remember it was like yesterday. The fall of 2006, when I was a wee lass of 32. I was living on the beach, South Shore of Boston, and every Monday, I would come home from my hip hop dance class, heat up a hot dog, turn on the TiVo (bloop bloop), and watch me some Heroes.
Heroes wasn’t the kind of show I would have normally watched, but I was LOST obsessed and therefore much more willing to give something a little fantastical a try.
And the show that said “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” had me hooked from the start. It had suspense; it had a bad guy who actually bad (SYLAR STOLE BRAINS!); and it had a music score that gave me goosebumps every week.
But then, once the second season started, it went off the rails. The whys have been covered ad nauseum, but between the writers’ strike, too many characters, and the girl who cried tears of black HP ink, I removed Heroes from my watch list. Sad bloop bloop.
Flash forward to the summer of 2015. I, perusing the world wide web and I randomly ran across the trailer for Heroes Reborn. HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS IS HAPPENING? The trailer gave me chills and smiles and “Hey! That’s Hiro!” I was excited for this show, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Beth perfectly mirrored my feelings last week. Please, NBC. Don’t screw this up.
Adding to my nervousness, NBC didn’t send out early screeners. Conventional wisdom says that if a show is awesome, you want everyone to see it and talk about how awesome it is. But this is NBC and they still have Brian Williams on the payroll, so maybe conventional wisdom ain’t their bag.
Heroes Reborn. How the heck was it?
Let me put it in terms TN readers will understand.
Outlander: If you can get past the first 200 pages, you will be hooked for life.
Heroes Reborn: If you can get past the first 12 minutes, you might not be hooked for life, but you will certainly be drawn in and entertained.
Those first 12 minutes of the two-hour Brave New World/Odessa premiere fill the viewer in on what’s happened since we last saw our Heroes. Noah Bennett, aka Horn Rimmed Glasses, misses his daughter Claire the Cheerleader. He has helped organize a Unity Summit for both the Evos (evolved humans) and all of the regular folks with no supernatural powers, aka Lame-os. This Summit looks like a county fair, the kind they set up in the mall parking lot, but instead of the Scrambler and carnies with no dental insurance, this festival has pretty people like Luke (Zachary Levi) and flying balloon children and Westboro Baptist Church protesters.
Then BOOM. Explosion. It all blows up. The only person that appears to have survived is HRG, and he walks away from the wreckage, as we get a voice-over of real-life American politicians condemning this awful terrorist attack. And all I could think was, I really hate that I know what Mitch McConnell’s voice sounds like.
Everyone wants the Evos dead. They are once again the bogeyman. We then get a montage of various Evos being hunted down around the world. There is no safe place except for…Canada. God forbid there is an Evo who turns maple syrup into grape jelly because then the Evos will have nowhere to run.
Thankfully, there is EA, Evos Anonymous, and they meet in secret to worry and complain and argue. A diverse group of Evos sit around in a circle, talking about revolution and resistance. Luke is there (he lived!), and the Evos think he is one of them. “Hi, my name is Luke.” “Hi Luke.” He tells them he and his wife had brought their son, Dennis, to the Summit in Odessa and Dennis did not make it out alive. The wife bursts into the meeting, and Team Dennis starts shooting everyone. All the Evos in the prayer circle are dead. The imagery was so shockingly reminiscent of the Charleston shootings, maybe I get why NBC didn’t release early screeners. It’s unsettling.
I almost turned off the TV, not because of that scene exactly but because everything in those first 12 minutes felt hurried and rushed. I get it, Heroes Reborn. You are trying to catch me up. Like real fast. Explain where you been. But it wasn’t satisfying. It felt forced, and there weren’t any stakes for me as a viewer. Like Bonnie Tyler says, I need a hero. I need a hero to pull for.
But wait…
Not so fast with the remote, Miss Amy.
I kept watching, and then it happened. Heroes Reborn started to become more like the original show I had loved. What made Heroes so good was the Heroes themselves. I needed that methodical reveal that showed our superheroes scared and conflicted, frightened to discover that they had special powers, desperate to conceal them.
Heroes Reborn started to give me Heroes to care about. The pacing started to work. Some moments made me smile. Some moments made me say, “Get OUT!” And that creepy/haunting horn music? Yup, there it is. Is that a goosebump I see?
Who are these new Heroes scattered around the globe? In Carbondale, Illinois, we have nerdy teenage Tommy whose power is disappearing people and pining for a classmate who works at the local ice cream parlor. Out in Los Angeles, we have Carlos, the horny war veteran who doesn’t seem to have any superpowers save downing rum and cokes while being able to diagnose car transmission problems with only his ears. But his LA neighborhood has a hero, the Mexican wrestler-cum-vigilante El Vengador, who fights crime while running an underground railroad for Evos. But when El Vengador is shot down in an ambush, Carlos feels compelled to take up the wrestler mask with a little prodding from the local priest who also happens to be the Smoke Monster from LOST.
Across the Pacific in Tokyo, we have the adorable and lonely Miko, whose reveal made me light up. Her absentee father is a video game developer, and when she unsheathes his hidden sword, Miko is transported into his video game where she kicks ass and slices dudes in half on her quest to save her father. I LIKE these Heroes.
Heroes Reborn leaves us with plenty of questions. Why does Miko’s father need saving? Is Carlos more than ordinary? Are those trust-fund Evos trying to protect Molly Walker or are they using her for something terrible? Is HRG’s sidekick Quentin really a bumbler or is he going to be a hero in his own right? Where is the oft-mentioned but never shown Mohinder Suresh?
Heroes Reborn has obvious bad guys and evil corporations, but it brings enough mystery and complexity to keep me interested. Yes, Luke is a murderous Evo hunter, but the constant killing and his addled wife seem to be wearing on him. Revenge isn’t tasting all that sweet to Luke. Then we have that other guy with glasses, the one carrying a briefcase full of pennies. He can erase memories (“Penny for your thoughts?”) and he appears to be protecting Tommy. And at the center of it all is HRG. If he is good, then why did he ask the Haitian to kill him? Who erased his memory? What happened before he started selling Cadillacs and getting engaged to Jessica Chastain?
I’m glad I hung in there, sticking it out past those first 12 minutes. I want to see more character reveals (both old and new), and “this season on Heroes Reborn” makes me believe I will be rewarded. I’ll wait for Hiro. I’ll wait for Matt Parkman. I’ll wait for Mohinder’s cheekbones. But let’s be real. I’ll be coming back for Miko, and I’ll stay for Carlos. Cuz he foin.
So what did y’all think? Did Heroes Reborn live up to your hopes? Will you keep watching? Who is your favorite new Hero? You can’t say Carlos. He’s mine.
