’24: Legacy’ debuted after the Super Bowl but is this new series minus Kiefer Sutherland worth watching?
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
When ’24: Legacy’ was first announced, it sounded like a rather ambitious plan from FOX to reboot the long running series without star Kiefer Sutherland.
While ’24’ had a ton of moving parts and cast members that decorated the nine seasons on the air, Sutherland was the one constant as the ultimate terrorist ass kicker Jack Bauer. Of course the plots on ’24’ seemed to get a little more ludicrous with each season, but that’s no different than watching street racers turn into international spies in a billion dollar franchise like ‘Fast and the Furious’.
Over time, the audience just expects more so Jack constantly ran into bigger and bigger problems, yet by the time the day was finished he always found a way to save the day.
The new series that debuted on Super Bowl Sunday replaced Sutherland with Corey Hawkins, an actor best known for his portrayal as Dr. Dre in ‘Straight Outta Compton’ as well as a short stint on ‘The Walking Dead’. This time he’s leading the cast as ex-Ranger Eric Carter, who has returned home after completing a huge mission to assassinate a major terrorist and now his job mostly involves security as he chauffeurs around rich folks who need a hired gun to feel safe.
Hawkins does his best to replace Sutherland but those are mighty big shoes to fill through just one episode, but the producers behind ’24’ did an admirable job of changing course in a major way rather than going with some sort of carbon copy Bauer clone.
The supporting cast that has been hired to help Hawkins through ’24: Legacy’ is outstanding.
Jimmy Smits can do no wrong and adding Miranda Otto fresh off a stint on another save-the-day-from-evil-terrorists series ‘Homeland’ along with Teddy Sears, who was a menacing villain on ‘The Flash’ last season, ’24: Legacy’ certainly has enough acting chops to pull off the reboot.
The downside of this first hour was the standard tropes that seemed to plague ’24’ after the first few seasons with the same tired plots rolled out over and over again. There’s a terrorist plot. Someone leaked some information from inside CTU. No one can be trusted. And there’s a magical MacGuffin that the bad guys are trying to find that contains their secret plans.
All those boxes were ticked for the ’24: Legacy’ debut that doesn’t mean this isn’t still a watchable hour of television.
Ultimately, ’24’ was always about an action packed show with plenty of twists and turns and inevitably somebody turning traitor who you didn’t quite suspect. The taut suspense keeps you hanging on past each ticking clock and you already know that the first plot that was revealed in the debut episode isn’t going to be anywhere close to what the bad guys actually have planned.
Sure, it’s somewhat predictable but that didn’t stop ’24’ from being an enjoyable show for nine seasons but will the series still hold up without Jack Bauer? Let’s recap the first episode of ’24: Legacy’ and see where we go from here…
On the Hunt
First let’s meet our cast of characters starting with Eric Carter, a former Army Ranger who helped lead a mission to kill a terrorist leader named Ben-Khalid, but now he’s returned home and living under an assumed name with his wife Nicole in suburban Washington D.C. Why he was placed in D.C. instead of a more desolate location is a question for another day but regardless Eric is now working as high-priced security while still clearly longing to be back on the battlefield.
Rebecca Ingram is his former commanding officer at CTU, who helped lead the raid on Khalid’s compound, but her role is just about to expire as she plans to join her husband Senator John Donovan on the campaign trail as he makes a run at the presidency. Keith Mullins is the new head of CTU, who is about to take over as Rebecca’s days in charge dwindle to an end.
Then there’s several fringe characters including a couple of analysts, who don’t quite hold up to Chloe O’Brien but we do find out that the latest hire is the cousin of Edgar Stiles — a fan favorite from the original ’24’ who expired back in season 5.
As Eric is just starting to settle into his new life at home with his wife Nicole, he gets a distress call from Ben Grimes, a member of his special forces unit, who informs him that everyone on their team is dead minus the two of them. Khalid’s forces have found out their new identities and tracked them down while killing every member of the team and their families.
Ben was able to slip away because he’s living on the streets now but he warns Eric that Khalid’s people are coming for him and quick. Eric tries to play it off as a bad joke because Ben has been struggling in a bad way since returning home from war, but when he sends out a distress call to the rest of his team and no one answers, he starts to become concerned.
A few moments later, Eric sees a group of men approaching his house and he puts Nicole in the attic while he awaits their arrival. After the storm the house and take Eric prisoner, they begin asking him about a strong box that was taken from Khalid’s hideout when they completed the raid that killed him. Of course, Eric has no idea what they are talking about, but they threaten to kill him nonetheless.
Thankfully, Nicole provides a distraction that allows Eric time to get free before he gets the drop on the terrorists and kills them. Eric quickly scoops up his wife, his supply pack (classic Jack Bauer except instead of a messenger bag, he carries a backpack) and they make a run for it.
Who Can You Trust?
Eric stashes Nicole with his estranged brother Isaac, who used to date her before she eventually left him for his younger sibling. Those tensions aside, Isaac is a drug dealer and gang leader in D.C. and he has the means to protect Nicole from anyone who might come hunting for her. Isaac agrees to keep her, which puts Eric’s mind at ease as he goes on the hunt for Ben and the mysterious strong box.
The situation forces Eric to call on Rebecca to help him track Ben as well as inform her about the plot to kill his entire team.
Rebecca has been knee deep in campaign functions and her role at CTU is about to come to an end, but when Eric calls she snaps back into action by providing him surveillance and intel on locating Ben, who it turns out does have the strong box that everybody has been trying to find.
According to Eric, only three people knew the names and locations of his team after they relocated back to the U.S. and that was the head of CTU, the head of the CIA and the head of the FBI. Rebecca is concerned because new CTU leader Keith Mullins would have been able to get at that information and he’s the only person that they can’t quite trust at this point in time.
So Rebecca runs a secret operation with her favorite computer analyst Andy, who helps track down Ben to forward the information to Eric.
High School Sleeper Cell
A secondary story that starts to develop in the opening hour revolves around a high school student named Drew, who is concerned about his ex-girlfriend Amira after she starts exchanging text messages with a mysterious person about unleashing some sort of terrorist plot. It seems Amira moved to the U.S. from Chechnya and Drew is worried that she’s actually going to commit a terrorist act.
The big twist is that Drew tells all of this to his science teacher, who is secretly the contact that’s been texting with Amira about this terrorist plot. To make things even weirder, the science teacher and Amira end up kissing after vowing to silence Drew to make sure their nefarious plans aren’t discovered.
What’s in the Box?!?
With Rebecca’s help, Eric tracks down Ben and recovers the strong box for him. Ben stole the box because it had jewelry and money and a few other trinkets inside, but of course Eric finds that there’s a secret compartment with a USB drive inside that contains plans for a major terrorist strike by several sleeper cells currently operating in the United States.
Before Eric can transmit the information, Khalid’s men show up to apprehend them and they are forced to run again. Eric is able to get the drop on them — literally with a gigantic pipe that he releases at a construction site that rolls over one of the gunmen — before killing the other two.
Unfortunately in the mayhem, Ben took the USB drive and escaped while Eric was fighting for his life.
Back at CTU, Keith Mullins’ new analyst hire Miranda discovers that Rebecca has been logged into their system to run surveillance, which is a big red flag. Andy tries to warn her, but she insists on staying in the system until Eric catches Ben. When Mullins confronts her, Rebecca has no other choice but to knock him out with a taser and leave him on the ground until the operation is finished.
Oh and she has to cancel on her husband’s fundraiser as well!
Meanwhile, Eric gets a call from Ben, who tells him that he’s going to use this USB drive to get payment for the life he lost after coming back broken from the war. He’s going to sell this information to the highest bidder but whether that’s the United States or Khalid’s group remains to be seen.
And with that, we’re off and running on ’24: Legacy’. The second episode will air at it’s normal time at 8pm ET on Monday night on FOX.
