What They Say:
Set years after the events of the original Heroes series, people with powers, now called “Evos” are now known to the entire world. However, their existence has led to conflict with the rest of humanity and resulted in a terror incident at Primatech headquarters. A year after the incident, Noah Bennet finds himself caught up in the mystery behind the truth of the event and an organization called Renatus that may involve the fate of the entire world.
The Review:
Before getting into things I suppose it’s worth mentioning that according to NBC and Tim Kring, the show’s only getting one season. Given the low ratings the original series was known for this doesn’t come as much of a surprise and while the latter claims this was always meant to be the intent, I’m not too sure about that personally. Still it means that these last two episodes are all we’re ever going to get so my expectations are now geared towards getting as tight a resolution as possible. With that said, the odds are looking pretty favorable after this week’s stuff.
Once again the show is slowly weaving all of the major storylines together, but the process makes for a rather busy episode here. As the truth about the flares gets out mass panic ensues and Tommy feels that despite his distrust of Erica her methods still seem like the best option. When he finds out just how few are going to be saved, though, he quickly decides to abandon it. However this just ends up leaving him even more lost as to how to fix things since no matter how many times he peers into the future he can’t see a way out but after having a talk with his mother, she convinces him there’s more than one possible outcome and he decides to find Malina.
Malina continues to seek out Tommy as well, with her and Luke deciding that it might be best to get his attention by causing a public stir. Before they can quite get to that though, Pheobe and Quentin end up making a break for it but after seeing how far gone Phoebe is and being unwilling to kill Luke, Quentin decides to join him and Malina on their quest, putting a cap on his arc though I suspect Phoebe will be back for the finale. With that out of the way, the trio makes their way to Claire’s old high school in Odessa and decide to use the media to send a direct message to Tommy.
What does get pretty good execution, however, is in the material concerning Erica. After Matt appears in front of her threatening the life of Taylor and her unborn child, Erica decides to give into Matt’s demands and gives him the watches he needs to get to the future with his family. As Taylor vents out her frustrations on Erica, we finally learn the truth behind Erica’s hatred of Evos. When she was young, her father fell gravely ill and an Evo doctor offered to heal him in exchange for sex and she soon became pregnant. She decided to raise Taylor on her own but when Taylor got sick as a baby she was forced to call on the doctor again and killed him after he discovered Taylor was his and wanted to take her away. This all eventually caught the attention of Primatech who offers to wipe her memories but instead it’s implied that Erica had Taylor’s memory wiped instead.
It’s pretty good material, and it certainly gives a better understanding of where she’s coming from, though it doesn’t make her genocidal tendencies any more sympathetic. The show ultimately acknowledges that too as, despite Erica’s attempts at reconciliation, Taylor can’t bring herself to start over with her and decides she’d rather die with everyone else than escape to the future with her. Erica doesn’t take this particularly well and despite her usually composed nature, she’s notably torn up by this and that’s pretty likely to affect her when it comes time for the endgame. She’s not the only one who’s family issues end tragically though as Matt’s plans to escape with his family fall south when he gets into a car accident and loses the watches leaving him broken and miserable. While similar to Joanne I wasn’t expecting him to go through any kind of redemption at this point it’s still kind of weird seeing just how low this guy fell compared to where he was in the first series, though at least compared to Joanne’s instant incineration, this feels like a much better ending to his character arc.
Lastly, we have Ren running into Emily and after finding out her connection to Tommy, the two of them go to find him and discover the truth behind Otomo’s message. This leads to the two of them somehow ending up in Evernow, putting them in a position to rescue Tommy, but given he’s pretty heavily guarded it’s unlikely to be an easy rescue. With everything that’s been built up here, it all comes down to the grand finale next week to bring it all home and resolve as much as possible. Hopefully, it can pull it off.
In Summary:
Heroes Reborn’s penultimate episode is an incredibly busy one and throws a lot of material at us. It was great finally getting a backstory on Erica and getting some understanding of her deep hatred of Evos but Joanne’s demise felt a bit too abrupt and it felt like the show could have figured out a much better way of executing it. It’s not enough to completely drag down the rest of the material here, though, and we have a pretty solid set-up for next week’s finale. Exactly what kind of ending we get, though, is anyone’s guess at this point.
Grade: B+
