Heroes Reborn has started finally, over 5 years after the original Heroes series ended. The new show is supposed to bring back some old favorite characters, but also bring in a bunch of new ones, and takes place 5 years after the day that Claire revealed her powers to the world. Check out Josh’s episode recap, followed by both Josh’s and Violet’s thoughts on the new series, which takes place in a world where humans are now aware of the Heroes/Evos!
Don’t need the Heroes Reborn episode recap for the season premiere? Click here to jump directly to Violet’s thoughts on the episode!
To see Josh’s thoughts on the Heroes Reborn season premiere, click here to get directly there!
Heroes Reborn Season Premiere Recap
The season premiere of Heroes Reborn begins with Noah Bennet. He is calling his daughter, Claire, and he leaves her a voicemail. He wonders if she is still mad from the last time they saw each other, which apparently was awhile ago. He is walking around some convention for Primatech. He is still in Odessa, Texas. It looks like the Evos (short for “evolved humans,” the term for people with powers) and humans are getting along well, and Noah seems to indicate that Claire might be responsible for that. But this does not last. A sudden darkness comes over Primatech, and a massive explosion follows. We then hear reports from the news saying that the Evos are not trustworthy. We see humans turn on the Evos almost immediately. Meanwhile, Noah gathers himself and searches for Claire. This event took place several years ago, it seems, as we get snippets of the changes that take place between Evos and humans.
The next scenes we see are Evos being chased, fleeing for their life. One runs through a forest making himself invisible while another who has a weight strapped to his arm has to cut his hand off so he can take flight and escape.
Then a time period 7 weeks ago, a mother and child try to flee to Canada as the boy is an Evo. The border patrol is checking for Evos though, so they are forced to flee.
Moving to the present, we see this boy again, who is meeting up with a group of Evos. This boy is named Tommy. This group seems to be a rebel group of Evos trying to figure out how to handle their situation. They can’t seem to decide how to move forward. Tommy ends up leaving the meeting because he gets a call from his mom, which turns out to be a good thing. There is a human infiltrator, named Luke, who decides to confess that he lost his child the day Primatech blew up. But he decides that he doesn’t trust these powers, and winds ups opening fire on the group. Then Joanne, his wife, joins the fight, and begins shooting Evos as well. Luke and Joanne then turn their attention to finding Tommy, who dropped a business card for an ice cream shop. They plan to find him next.
Moving back to Noah, he has turned into a car salesman now. He gets a visit from his new fiancé. Noah is preoccupied with someone watching him outside though, who seems to have some Primatech files.
Later in the evening, Noah realizes he is still being followed. He decides to go outside and investigate. He lures the stalker, named Quentin, into a trap, and takes him. This man apparently is looking for his sister, which we saw in the prequel web series. Quentin says that Primatech still exists, but Noah disagrees. Noah then says that Suresh, who is blamed for causing the explosion, is actually innocent. Quentin thinks that Evos are actually the good guys while the new company, Renautas, is actually the bad guys. Noah and Quentin’s conversation is interrupted though, as Noah’s fiancé called the cops, and Quentin is arrested.
Noah, who can’t seem to sleep, looks through his belongings, and finds a business card for an eye doctor he is not familiar with. He pays a visit to this eye doctor, who doesn’t have him as a patient. After some back and forth, Noah shows this woman the card he has which says, “See more clearly” on the back. This causes the girl to pull a gun. But an old friend shows up. The Haitian. He tells Noah to meet him outside.
The Haitian meets him outside, and hands him some glasses. But turns out the meeting is not a pleasant one. The Haitian tries to garrote Noah. Noah then pulls a gun, and they struggle some. The gun fires, and unfortunately the Haitian is hit. Noah asks why he is trying to kill him. The Haitian said that Noah told him to, if he ever came back, and that Noah needed to forget the past. Trying to get more answers is futile for Noah, as the Haitian dies.
Then moving to another couple characters, we meet Carlos Gutierrez, who is making out with a teacher in a closet. But he is interrupted because he has to give a presentation about being a hero, as he was a war hero. Turns out Tommy goes to this same school, who is getting bullied by another student. Tommy thinks about using his power but decides against it.
He winds up in a conversation with a girl he has a crush on. She offers him a chance at a job, telling him to come by for an interview for a job. Also what comes up is the coach for the school might have been an Evo, and it looks like he was one of the victims of Luke and Joanne, the Evo hunters. When the girl leaves, Tommy gets a mysterious text message…
Luke and Joanne regroup at a diner, and decide to continue their hunt for Tommy, despite Luke having some reservations about it. Tommy heads to the ice cream shop for his interview, which is pretty easy, and he gets a job. In the lobby, this Luke guy is waiting, and Tommy approaches him, asking what happened at the hideout. Joanne walks up, and brandishes her gun, taking Tommy outside. Tommy’s new gal friend, Emily, is caught up in the mix though, and Tommy ends up using his power on them. Turns out he can teleport people–but doesn’t know where to. Tommy takes off running, and Emily catches up with him. She promises to keep his secret safe, so he doesn’t have to move yet again.
Meanwhile, another more mysterious character who appears to be an Evo with the ability to “buy” thoughts from people for a penny. His name is Casper Abraham, and he is interviewing someone who witnessed part of what happened with the Evos being killed. He uses his power to make this man forget what he saw.
Moving over to Japan, we meet a man who has arrived at an apartment. His name is Ren, and apparently he is an expert gamer for a game called Evernow, which when he beat, revealed a woman’s address as a secret unlock for the game. She doesn’t seem to know why. Suddenly, he realizes that she is “Katana Girl.” She kicks him out, but he returns with “proof.” He shows her a book showing who this girl is and how it is her. She tells him to leave again, but he leaves the book behind for her to read.
Looking through the book left behind, “Katana Girl” finds a katana, with a logo we have seen before–on Hiro’s sword, in the previous Heroes series. She picks up the katana, which then puts her into a CGI world. She is put into a world with samurais, which she has to take down with her new sword.
Back home, Carlos talks with a kid who tells him about Evos disappearing. There is apparently a vigilante Evo who wears a mask, being a hero. In the evening, he winds up boozing it up, apparently unhappy with the direction of his life it would seem. We then see this hero in his town trying to save a woman. He seems to have super strength, and takes on several thugs. But he is shot–by the very girl he was trying to save. He manages to take her out, and flees, but is clearly wounded. Carlos winds up visiting his friend’s garage, and it turns out this friend is the hero “El Mogador” that is known around town. This friend, named Oscar, asks Carlos to put the mask on and take over being the hero.
Jose, a kid that looked up to El Mogador, tells Carlos he is upset that El Mogador did not save Oscar. Carlos walks away, and Jose displays his Evo power–the ability to move through solid objects. The first part of the series ends with a woman saying, “It’s happening faster than we thought, I can’t control it much longer.” Is what she appears to be controlling the Northern Lights, or an eclipse? It is hard to say.
Part two starts with Noah washing the blood from his hands, having flashbacks to the Haitian. Noah then decides to bail Quentin out, and figure out what Quentin knows. Noah seems to come to the realization that Claire is probably dead. Noah decides that the next best course of action is to find Molly, the Evo that can locate anyone. She is another person from the previous series. Noah and Quentin head into Primatech, and look for some leads to help them out. The building is completely destroyed, but Noah seems to want to get to Level 5. Noah looks for some files to look for Molly/Renautas. One interesting thing they find in the files is that Claire was not at the summit. Noah then confronts Quentin, asking why he is so interested in what is going on, and Quentin reveals he is trying to find his sister.
Meanwhile, Tommy and Emily discuss Tommy’s ability, and trying to figure out where the stuff goes that he teleports. Apparently Tommy was captured at some point though, and experimented on. Emily asks Tommy to try to make a flower disappear. Not a good decision though, as her boyfriend sees him do it, who happens to be the bully that gave Tommy a hard time before. This guy wastes no time confronting Tommy when he is alone. This guy offers to keep his secret, but he has to make the kid’s stepfather disappear. Tommy won’t do it, even though this kid is bullied by his stepfather. Tommy makes a run for it, and watching him the entire time is this Casper character.
Casper then pays the stepfather a visit, and when Tommy talks with his bully again, whose name is Brad, he is very happy, because apparently he thinks Tommy did what he was supposed to do, as the stepfather is gone.
At work, Emily and Tommy figure out where things go–it’s where ever he thinks about.
Meanwhile, our villains, Luke and Joanne have been teleported to some sort of bedroom, but it is no ordinary bedroom. It has no doors or windows. They eventually find a way out, and it looks like they are in Primatech. They run into a bunch of Primatech employees, and decide to shoot their way out. Now, Noah hears their gun fire, and heads in the direction of the gunfire to investigate. He finds the dead, but Joanne and Luke have already escaped. Noah finds a dying man, who says that Molly is the key to something happening the next day. But the man dies before Noah can get much information. But Joanne and Luke made off with Noah’s car and a lot of files on Evos that they can hunt down. Noah finds Quentin injured. Noah tells Quentin that they have to find Molly before it is too late.
Back in Japan, Ren comes back to visit again, and finds Katana Girl in the game. Apparently within the game, Katana Girl is looking for her father. She fights more samurais, and finds her father being taken. Ren heads into the game himself with the battlecry, “Leroyyyyyy Jenkinsssssss!” which if you have played World of Warcraft, you are familiar with it.
Katana Girl saves her father, but it seems to be a trap, and her father is taken and she is knocked out, which takes her out of the game. She heads back in to the game, and asks Ren to guide her to the tower her father is being held in. She gets to the tower in game, then leaves the game, and winds up fighting the security guards inside.
Back with Jose, the kid who can move through solid objects, he is mourning the loss of Oscar with Carlos. Carlos reviews the criminal chart that Oscar had organized. Seems like he might be taking up the mask. Then he does. He confronts a dirty cop, demanding information. Carlos pays a visit to a priest, who reveals Oscar was helping Evos escape to Canada, and that there are people in the police who were trying to stop him. The priest then asks Carlos for help getting two Evos to safety. Carlos wants to know why this priest is interested in helping, and turns out the priest is an Evo as well.
Some new characters join the story, a woman, and a man, and they are in a casino. The man seems to have the ability to move objects telekinetically, and is doing pretty well at craps. They head up to their hotel room, and she calls him out and arms herself with a knife. She throws it at him, and he uses his power to stop it. She tries to blackmail him by revealing he is an Evo, and demands his money. He doesn’t seem interested, and they get into a fight. But a man knocks him out, and a girl ushers her out of the way to get her out of trouble–so she says. The girl who was trying to steal some money is named Zoe. The girl, named Taylor, that saved her is offering to help her disappear.
Turns out this Taylor girl is not a very good friend. She handcuffs her to a chair, and the man who she tried to hustle makes a phone call — revealing he has Molly Walker.
Josh’s Thoughts: Heroes Reborn, Season Premiere:
So this was a long premiere! It was actually two episodes, so 2 hours with commercials. There was a lot of interesting stuff going on this episode, and I was left with a lot of questions. One shocking and disappointing moment for me was when the Haitian attacked Noah, but eventually was killed himself. I really liked that character, so I was disappointed that he will not be with the show. I was hoping old characters would come back, and rejoin this new story, and while at San Diego Comic-Con it seemed that would be the case, so far we have only seen Noah Bennett, the Haitian, and Molly (although Molly is a different actor). We know that Parkman, Suresh and Hiro will be back, and I look forward to their return, and hope that they have a bigger part than just dying in the episode they are in. (I should note we heard Suresh narrate some parts of the episodes, but we did not actually see his character). Another interesting thing is characters from Heroes were mentioned–Claire Bennett is mentioned a lot, but seems to be dead, although no one seems to know who or what killed her. Suresh is mentioned as a terrorist who caused the explosion at Primatech, which in turn caused Evos and Humans to turn on each other (It is worth noting that Quentin thinks Suresh was framed).
As for the new characters, I am liking Tommy so far. He has an interesting power, and seems to be that struggling Evo that is trying to figure out how to hide his powers. Carlos is another interesting character. I am curious to know if this mask holds powers, or if Oscar had power, and just happened to wear a mask. If the mask doesn’t have power, Carlos is in trouble, as Oscar did seem to have powers, and he was eventually taken down.
As for the villains, Luke and Joanne, they seem to be pretty ticked their son was killed, so I understand their want to kill Evos–to an extent–but what I am not clear on is how they got the skills to. From what we have seen so far, they seemed like a normal family before the event that destroyed Primatech. Were they soldiers of some sort before? Did they just happen to decide to shoot them and happened to get luckily enough to live this long? I would have thought some Evo with a decent power would have been able to take the two of them down pretty easily. I want to know more about these two’s past.
I am curious about the cryptic message that the blond girl was referencing, about something happening faster than she thought. I am sure this will be explained in later episodes though.
In Japan, with Ren and “Katana Girl,” I wasn’t too thrilled with this storyline. The video game CGI was worse than most modern video games, which really took me out of the show. The fake feeling that the graphics had made me feel like the show was from the early 2000s.
As for Molly, it seems like she is no longer the innocent, good hearted little girl she used to be. Now she is out for swindling people out of money, or revealing their powers if they cross her. It looks like her plan has back fired though, and she is going to have to hope that Noah and Quentin can get to her before the others do.
Overall, I thought it was a pretty strong intro to the new series. I do think that there are too many storylines going on, especially for a season of only 13 episodes, but hopefully things start coming together, and it feels less disjointed as the season progresses.
Violet’s Thoughts on the Season Premiere of Heroes Reborn:
When I first heard about Heroes returning in the form of Heroes Reborn, I was a little excited, though skeptical, especially thinking back to that horrible fourth season that centered on a circus/carnival. Then upon attending the Heroes Reborn panel at San Diego Comic-Con, it turned out I was more excited than I realized, especially seeing the faces of familiar characters again. Before the panel, I had heard that Noah Bennet, Matt Parkman, and Hiro would be returning. So it was a nice surprise to see the Haitian in attendance, and to see Mohinder and Micah in the clips! Then we watched the Dark Matter prequel, which was actually quite good, and got me looking forward to Heroes Reborn even more.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t really all that thrilled by the season premiere. First of all, the Haitian gets killed right off the bat, and by Noah, no less, so that was disheartening. I guess they wanted to get rid of a way for powers to be impeded, and as for taking memories, well they seem to have a new character that can do that. So the only returning familiar face that lasts throughout these episodes is Noah, who has taken on a new identity. As for returning character, yes there’s Molly Walker, who is revealed to be the true identity of the girl we thought was named Zoe the whole episode. It’s a big shocker because we remember Molly being a little girl. It seems a bit of a stretch because when Molly was on the show, she was like what, 10 tops? So that would make her like 19 at the most. I guess this girl could pass as 19, though she seems a bit older. Ah well. It would have been nice to have the same actress, but I guess they figure that such a long time has passed that it didn’t matter and that we wouldn’t notice the change.
The story I found myself most invested in was Tommy’s story, probably followed by Noah’s storyline. I think that watching the Dark Matters prequel helped me become more interested in Noah and Quentin’s storyline. Other than that, I was mostly bored by the “El Mogador” storyline (I mean, obviously “El Mogador” was going to turn out to be either the brother or the friend that owned the garage, and in this case, it turns out to be both), and the Katana Girl storyline was alright, but those computer graphics were pretty bad. I feel like they’re re-using a lot of the same powers that were used in the original, such as turning things into gold, or being able to go through walls, and yes, as I already mentioned, being able to take memories. I suppose there are only so many powers you can come up with, though. So that’s one thing the Katana Girl storyline has going for it, is that it’s a unique power that didn’t show up in the previous series. Also, is it a coincidence that the Japanese guy’s name is “Ren,” while the company to look out for this time around is “Renautus”? Hmmm…
In any case, I’m looking forward to seeing the return of more familiar faces, and seeing how everything will start fitting together, if at all. They did tease some sort of impending doom coming, so I am curious to see exactly what that is. Hopefully the next episode will get me more excited about Heroes Reborn, because I’m mostly “meh” right now.
Scenes from Heroes Reborn, Season 1 Episode 3:Under the Mask
Here are scenes from the Season 1 Episode 3 of Heroes Reborn, titled Under the Mask:
I skipped the recap because I haven’t watched it yet. But from your reviews I’m still a little skeptical about Heroes Reborn. Hmm, we’ll see…