Heroes Reborn: The Needs of Many review

This Heroes Reborn review contains spoilers.

Heroes Reborn Episode 4

I was cautiously optimistic about Heroes Reborn, given that I had fond memories of that magical first season, agreed with the move to shorten the episode order, and honest to goodness believed creator Tim Kring could right the wrongs he perpetrated in Heroes’ later seasons. I guess I wasn’t cautious enough.

After four episodes, I’m ready to say that not only has Heroes Reborn reverted to its worst tendencies, it might now even be worse. In four episodes, the story has progressed so little, the new characters are more like cardboard cut-outs than actual people with real emotions, and we keep hearing about “what’s ahead” and how everyone is meant for “big things,” but what’s supposed to keep me engaged in the meantime?

Plus, the terrible Mohinder voice-over is back, the special effects are straight trash, the attempts at humor and relevancy only lead to unintentional laughter, and so far nothing has connected any of the story threads besides the characters all seeing a stupid mysterious cloud that two other characters who we don’t really know keep saying vague, cliché, sci-fi things about. The characters can’t even be bothered to keep track of this incoherent crap. Even Noah Bennett, who keeps breaking into places only to be lead to somewhere else he’ll need to break into, who only keeps receiving random ramblings when he asks questions instead of answers, gets fed up, acting as the audience surrogate when he says, “you’re not making any sense.”

Convoluted mythology, stupid inhuman characters like Joanna, and the promise of something ahead without actually giving anything in the present is what got Heroes in trouble in the first place, and here we are again. Maybe people can’t change. The only character semi interesting is Robbie Kay’s Tommy. Perhaps Tommy being a teenager helps. Only a teenager could make all of this melodrama, dreams of “something greater,” and shallow conversation seem natural because, hey, teenagers kind of do this stuff anyway. Ren and Miko are also a bright spot, only because they’re not so dour and serious.

Tonight, Molly Walker died, Carlos inexplicable turned into Tony Stark and built a mechanized suit, Joes and Father Smoky were captured, Miko made it to America, Luke and his wife part ways (oh thank God), and some suits come for Tommy. It sounds like a lot, but I promise, it isn’t. Sure, a bunch of people talked about the danger ahead, the drama of the past, the great unknown, but nobody actually DID anything. I guess we know a bit more about Erica’s plot, and Noah even tries to equate it with Sylar’s villainy, he even claims it’s bigger, but we both know Erica isn’t even a tenth as interesting as Zachary Quinto’s old fan-favorite. When you have all of these separate stories with so little connecting them, how can you service all of them appropriately? Honestly, why would I watch this show when there are so many other programs in the same genre putting out a product that is far superior? I feel like I wasted an hour watching this. I was checking my watch the entire time waiting for it to be over, it was that bad. 

Heroes Reborn needs to drastically improve because it’s only tarnishing the show’s legacy further, which I really didn’t think was possible, but here we are.