HEROES REBORN has gone Back to the Future of the Past… of the Past’s Future

Episode 7-8 “June 13th Parts 1 and 2”

Ah, the two-parter episode. A staple of the Doctor Who franchise, an often adhered-to standard for big season finales, and in the case of Heroes Reborn a series of excuses to fill in and dig plotholes. It’s not as if the trip hasn’t been bumpy enough, they’ve got to go and complicate things by adding time travel and altered timelines to the mix. Heroes is not a franchise that is a stranger to the use of time travel — one of its most popular characters was a time traveler whose adventures constantly brought him to the future and the past. So this should be a breeze for these writers, right? They ought to be able to knock it out of the park. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s Heroes Reborn, of course they’re going to screw it up.

“June 13th Parts 1 and 2” chronicle Noah Bennett and Hiro Nakamura’s trip a year ago to the day of the disastrous summit in Odessa, Texas. It also shows how many of the key players got to where they are at the beginning of the story, and attempts to answer some of the nagging questions the show has raised over the course of its previous six episodes. To its credit it succeeds in answering many unanswered questions, but few of them would qualify as satisfying. This show has been dragged down by its insistence on keeping the characters’ lives and back stories a secret for the audience, mostly for the sake of a shocking reveal, and this is the moment. Let’s see how they try to pick it up.

Noah and Hiro arrive at the summit and begin looking for the bombs that will destroy the Primatech facility. Meanwhile we get some appearances by returning cast members. Mohinder Suresh is meeting with Angela Petrelli. She tells him that she’s had a vision of the big solar flare that’s going to wipe out all life on earth: a Human Extinction Level Event (HELE), and that she told Erica about it, and now she’s discovered that Erica is basically a baddie. Mohinder doesn’t buy it and proceeds to go to the summit anyway. Angela then gets a call from St. Jude’s Hospital. Claire has had a heart attack and is in emergency care.

Angela goes to the summit and runs into Noah and Hiro, and, unaware of their time travel situation, tells them about Claire. She and Noah hurry off to the hospital while Hiro says he’ll stop the bombs.

 

Hiro goes down to the facility underground parking garage, where Mohinder has been taken hostage by Harris. Hiro rescues Mohinder, but inadvertently creates more Harris clones by cutting them up. Also, apparently Harris can not only regenerate a new body from a single limb, he can also regenerate clothing and inanimate material; each new Harris clone has a bomb strapped to his chest. Mohinder and Hiro separate. Hiro repeatedly jumps through time but can’t seem to find a way to save the facility from blowing up. He instead decides to let it blow up and zaps himself over to the hospital.

Noah and Angela arrive at the hospital too late. Claire has for some reason already died, but — and here’s the big reveal — she’s given birth to twins: a boy and a girl. Can anyone see where this is going yet? I thought you would, because you’re smart people. Why aren’t you writing for this show?

Hiro shows up as they’re looking at the babies (oddly large babies for newborns, but whatever), and Angela figures out that these two men are from the future. She scolds them and then announces that she believes Claire’s babies are the key to saving the world from the HELE, and that Erica is trying to kill them. Knowing that Erica believes there is only one baby, they all decide to split them up and hide them in the one place Erica can’t find them: the past, far enough back that a year from now, when the HELE occurs, the babies will have matured enough to have had their powers manifested and mastered. Seems sort of arbitrary, as we know that EVOs can manifest their powers since infanthood: see Matt Parkman’s baby in season 3.

And just before Hiro jumps into the past with Angela and the babies they decide to name them: Malina and Nathan (aka Tommy). Dun dun dun! Congratulations, if you had more than two functioning brain cells you guessed this outcome the second you heard the word babies.

However, it turns out little Nathan/Tommy’s powers have already manifested: he can take other people’s powers like his great-grandfather Arthur Petrelli, and when Hiro jumps to the year 1999 the little baby takes his power, as evidenced by Hiro suddenly being unable to teleport, meaning he’s stuck in the past. Angela leaves Hiro with little Nathan and goes off with Malina.

Noah is now alone in the hospital. Amid all the insanity of the facility exploding and people being rushed to the hospital he spots Erica and attempts to kill her right there in the hospital, regardless of what consequences it might have on the future timeline. He is stopped when his past self notices him and stops him from killing Erica, merely wounding her in the leg. Both Noahs hide to avoid security, and Erica is pulled into a stairwell by Quentin, who was at the hospital looking for sister Phoebe. He makes her promise to let him see Phoebe or he’ll let her bleed to death. She agrees.

The Noahs bring in the fat man in the hat — oh, we finally have a name for this guy: Casper — and “everglowing light of my soul” Molly Walker, and the situation is explained. Everyone agrees to go along with the plan, past Noah saying he’ll get René the Haitian to wipe his memory, which the other Noah discourages in favor of having Casper do it with his “penny for your thoughts” trick. Future Noah and Molly go off together to find where Hiro is now, since he never returned from the past. Shortly after they leave, Harris arrives and kidnaps Noah.

Harris takes Noah into a basement and brings in an interrogator to find out what Noah knows: Matt Parkman, another returning cast member from the previous run of the show. For those who do not remember, Matt was a police officer who could read minds; he was a kind person who cared about others and often went to great lengths to ensure the safety of those who he felt were under his protection, regardless of whether he was strong enough to overcome the obstacles in front of him. Now he’s turned heel and is now working for Erica. Just before Matt can obtain the information Harris wants, Casper manages to wipe Noah’s memories of the entire day, leaving nothing for Matt to find.

Future Noah and Molly are en route to the location of Hiro’s powers. Ah, a lonely Sunday drive with lovely lovely Molly; he’s a lucky man. Molly remarks on the situation with Erica, and how someone needs to put a bullet in her head. There is something very chilling about an Eastwood singling you out for death; when Clint’s daughter says you need to die, chances are you’re gonna die.

They arrive at a little house and who should answer the door but Old Man Hiro, now looking gray, and with long shaggy hair. Apparently getting old means never cutting your hair, and in fifteen years a thirty-year-old man can transform into a sixty year old man. Amazing. Inside Noah is introduced to his grandson, Nathan, who is the boy we’ve come to know as Tommy. Hiro has raised Nathan with the knowledge of how to master his power and that he is destined to save the world someday, and Nathan is gung-ho about this whole thing. A Harris clone arrives to try and take them all out, but Nathan and Noah quickly dispatch him.

Noah and Nathan teleport to meet up with Angela, who has raised Malina on her own in a fancy villa. She won’t allow Nathan and Malina to meet, for some reason. She takes a picture of Nathan (the one which Farah will eventually give to Malina) and sends them off on their way.

They arrive back at the house and a bunch of Harris clones are approaching in SUVs. Nathan teleports everyone to where they need to be to start off the show: Noah is sent Back to the Future (great Scott!), Molly off somewhere to go on the run, and Casper, Nathan’s mum, and Nathan himself off somewhere to get away from Harris. But Hiro stays behind to die fighting the clones.

Nathan wants to go back and save Hiro, but his adopted mother doesn’t want him to, so she has Casper wipe Nathan’s memory so he remembers nothing except who his mom is.

Noah arrives back in his own time, and it turns out that Quentin is alive again. Noah tells him what happened, and about the twins. When his back is turned, Quentin gets on the phone, calling Erica, and telling her what Noah told him. It turns out he’s now a bad guy.

 

So, that’s what we learned in the two parter: “June 13th”. What worked?

For starters, Nathan was awesome. It was such a relief to see this a likable character acting with conviction and clarity of purpose, something this show has failed to produce up until this point. Even if it is out of someone else’s plan for him, Nathan seemed really into the idea of saving the world, like he understood how important all the sacrifices of the past were, and how they were all counting on him.

As usual, Francesca Eastwood turned in a good performance. While ultimately under-utilized by the script, she did manage to make the most of her scenes, and she remains the only member of this ensemble who has managed to elevate the material she’s given to anything remotely compelling. She embodies the expression, “There are no small parts, only small actors”… not that she is actually short, she actually seems to be of average height, but the adage still stands.

The cameos from returning cast members were nice, and made this feel like it was finally connecting in continuity to the rest of the series runs. All returning cast members did a decent job.

With that out of the way, let’s see what they did wrong.

One of the biggest plot points is Nathan’s ability to take other people’s powers. Now, while it has been established that infants can manifest powers, the fact that it is now a reason for the baby to be kept separate from other EVOs is, frankly, moronic, as we’ve seen him touch several people with powers before and nothing has happened to them. In this episode alone we see him touch at least three EVOs without ripping their powers away. So why couldn’t he see his twin sister Malina? Why wouldn’t Angela let it happen?

It’s outlined that Nathan took Claire’s powers, thus she died in childbirth because she could no longer regenerate. Considering we’ve yet to see Nathan regenerate — in fact we’ve seen him with significant scars in the show before now — this seems contradictory. I’m guessing it was just to explain why Claire didn’t actually appear in the show, which is equally confusing, as there was a character whose ability it was to nullify powers: Phoebe. I had thought, going into this episode, that when Phoebe casts a large shadow over the facility it would also be the thing that got Claire killed for good, like maybe she was killed by one of the bombs when her powers were nixed and it completely destroyed her, Dr. Manhattan style.

Also, the fact that Nathan can teleport because he took the power from Hiro makes little sense, as the special effect and execution of the ability is completely different between the two. With Hiro it was always just a simple jump cut: now he’s there, now he’s not, and he only had to close his eyes and focus in order to make it happen. With Nathan it requires him touching the object with his hand, even if it’s himself. And the effect always looked like the subject was being sucked into a portal that he would create in his palm.

Speaking of odd powers, Harris’ ability to grow clothes and bombs is ridiculous. It’s an interesting idea that any cell of him can re-grow another person, but regrowing a fully functional explosive device is silly even by the standards of this show. Speaking of Harris, his fights scenes with Hiro were horrible. They looked sloppy and Masi Oka did not bring any energy to them. And that’s a shame, because he was trained in swordsmanship by George freaking Takei in season one!

Hiro’s choice to stay behind as his adoptive family teleported out of there was tacked on, and a sloppy way to get rid of Hiro’s character. Yes, he’d served his purpose, but he could have still stuck around to add a little heart to the show and given the audience someone to hold out hope for that the heroes would save in the end. And, yes, I understand that Hiro was absent from the story up until now, but this was supposed to answer why he was, and his staying behind to fight Harris is a waste of time. The family is teleporting away, so they’re in no danger. Hiro has no chance of winning the fight, since the last time he tried he only managed to create more clones, and let them get away with what they were doing. It’s supposed to seem heroic, like he’s finally getting a chance to finish what he started before jumping into the past. Except he’s not finishing it. They’re all clones, so even if he beats them all there will still be even more to come, and this time he won’t be there to protect his new family. Will Hiro ever show up again? It’s possible, since he’s never actually seen being killed by Harris, but I think it’s safe to say that that was probably the last we’ll see of Hiro Nakamura.

As far as the other returning characters are concerned, most of them felt wasted. Mohinder presented an interesting case study, discovering the underlying intentions of Renautus, but it lasts all of a few minutes, and the next moment he’s kidnapped and then dead. So bringing him back served little more than unrewarding fan service.

Speaking of unrewarding fan service, how about that Matt Parkman scene? Talk about a 180 for this character. To be fair (not kind, but fair), Matt Parkman almost never had a decent storyline outside of season one, but at least give him a storyline, period. Don’t just have him come in, accomplish nothing, and then let the people he’s interrogating get away. Could they seriously not get Greg Grunberg in for more than one day to be involved with the rebooted show? Maybe he was needed for reshoots of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Yeah, seriously, he’s playing a character called Gorwyn in the upcoming Star Wars movie.

Angela? Well, Angela’s always been a problem character. This show has had two characters who could tell the future; Angela was one, and her visions often were a quick way of moving pieces around to further the narrative, the hand of the writer in disguise as destiny calling. It was rarely compelling and always had to be taken with a grain of salt. The other was Isaac Mendez, and even though he was killed in season one his presence continues to be felt up to this very episode. Case in point: as Hiro bids goodbye to Nathan and company he hands his adoptive son a copy of the comic book that got him started on his journey in the first place, Isaac’s first issue of 9th Wonders. Isaac was an interesting character whose prophecies affected him very deeply, and he sought solutions to right the catastrophes he foresaw, determined to erase the events he’d seen happen. Guess which one worked better between these two options.

Quentin’s turn to the dark side is also something that I could have done without. I expressed in my last recap how I felt that his death prior to Noah going back in time felt like a waste, as the writers had given the character nothing to do. Well, I can only assume that by the time they were writing this episode they’d realized that every thing, that Quentin’s death was pointless, and that they’d kept this character around and forgotten to give him a function apart from dorky punching bag who is less cool than Noah. So their solution was to make him a bad guy. It doesn’t really work, as being a bad guy doesn’t automatically make him interesting, a fact that this show cannot seem to get through its writers’ heads; and it removes his previous function as audience surrogate.

Apparently Noah trying to kill Erica led to Quentin being reunited with Phoebe, and she convinced him to join the bad guys. This then raises the question (and I remind you that the whole point of these two episodes was to answer questions, not raise them), how did the events of the previous episodes play out? Why did Quentin team up with Noah if he’d already found his sister? Was the whole thing a ploy from Erica from the start? Why would she do that? She already should have been told that Matt Parkman couldn’t find anything in Matt’s memory. They must have picked up that Casper had something to do with it, as he’d worked for Erica before, given the nature of his power, and now is also missing despite not being counted among the dead.

Just how did Noah and Quentin’s escapades play out with the altered timeline? What other things are different now? Since Noah didn’t go to René to wipe his memory, does that mean that René is still alive? Will he show up for the final act? Did Nathan still get locked up at Primatech by Noah as a child? Where is Phoebe now? Is she still dark and gothy? Why did she get all evily when attacking Malina and Farah like she enjoyed trying to kill them? And then there are the questions that have yet to be resolved regarding the other main characters from the previous run we still have not accounted for: Sylar, Peter, and Ando.

And finally, how disappointing was it that Nathan getting his mind wiped reduced him to the whiny, speaky, little Tommy? Why, I ask the open air, did Casper say yes to wiping Nathan’s mind? Why did he have to take so many memories? Why not just one day, or a few hours? If you still wanted Nathan to save the world, and be ready when the time comes, wouldn’t it make it easier for him to actually know what is going on? Because now they have to explain it all to him, and tell him that they arbitrarily wiped all experiences of his adoptive father, who loved him dearly enough to die for him, and leave him stranded without a past.

Two episodes, it took them two episodes to get so much wrong, and I’m just exhausted at this point. They still have not explained what Malina’s powers are, they haven’t explored the extent of Nathan’s power, they’ve dug a dozen new plotholes, and we still have to get back to obnoxious plotlines concerning Carlos and Taylor, who we were fortunate enough to have a break from this time. But now it’s back to business as usual, and we can get back to burying our heads in our hands. Nice to see some things never change.