In the latest Heroes Reborn recap, a previous story is rehashed as Molly Walker becomes the center of attention again while Noah continues to look for answers….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It’s safe to say at this point in comic book history that a lot of stories have been done and rehashed multiple times over multiple characters across several different labels. The idea of pitting good versus evil usually only has one ultimate outcome, but the creativity of how you get there is one of the real joys of a great comic book or comic book based TV show/movie.
Following a lackluster exit from TV four years ago, Heroes Reborn started back up a week ago with a two-hour premiere that felt extremely familiar for anyone who has ever read an X-Men comic book. The people with abilities have been discovered, a disaster happened and now all of humanity is turning against the mutants or in this case ‘Evo’s’ (I’ll never enjoy that name).
It’s not groundbreaking at all that Heroes Reborn chose to go that route, but this week as the plot got a little deeper in episode two, the new show actually rehashed a similar storyline from season one with an adrenaline boost for 2015.
It wouldn’t be a disappointing development if Heroes hadn’t already done this previously and actually made a better version than the remake we’re getting now! It’s not as if they took a previously flawed idea, reshaped it and repackaged it into something better and then rolled it back out again for the new series.
Instead, Molly Walker is still the most important evo in the world because she can find any evo in the world and evil masterminds want to steal that ability —and this time they are making an app out of it! While it’s not exactly the same as Molly being held by ‘the company’ to help track down Sylar, the story this season (at least so far) feels strangely familiar and not necessarily in a good way.
With that said let’s recap the latest Heroes Reborn titled ‘Under the Mask’:
LUKE AND JOANNE
Following a killing spree that’s lasted for the past year after their son died in the tragic events of June 13, Luke and Joanne are cruising across Texas in a stolen car after a massacre at the Renautas base in Odessa. The husband and wife duo were able to steal Noah Bennet’s files and now have names and addresses on dozens of evo’s across the world and Joanne is plotting which one should be next.
Unfortunately, Luke is busy furrowing his brow and seeming hesitant to kill anybody else at this point. They aren’t even bothering to cover their tracks anymore so it really is just becoming a thrill kill adventure. Just when it looks like Luke is ready to give up on this killing quest, he starts sparking some powers of his own that includes generating enough heat to spark out the engine in their car and cook a steak in seconds when they stop at a diner for food.
Finally later that day at a motel, Luke stands in the sun and his body goes nuclear as the rays shine down on him and he begins generating just as much heat in exchange. Looks like Joanne will be hunting her husband before too much longer.
TOMMY
Tommy is finally the popular kid at school after he helped the resident super jock get rid of his asshole stepdad (he didn’t actually do it but he’s getting the credit nonetheless) and all he wants to do is party with his new friends, but his mother doesn’t want him leaving the house out of fear that someone will discover him and the powers he possesses. Tommy believes their luck has finally changed because some unknown person has been texting him warnings to help him avoid the people most likely to hurt him for his powers.
Mom is now unhappy and paranoid, but after being cooped up for who knows how long, Tommy finally shines his mom on and escapes using his powers so he can go to a house party where his crush Emily will be as well.
Following a few cups of keg tapped beer, Tommy is bummed when Emily says she’s leaving so he offers to walk her home. Outside the house party, Tommy’s mother has arrives and spots the strange penny turning guardian angel who has been keeping an eye on her son (his name is Casper Alexander just FYI) and she erupts when he says that watching Tommy is what he promised to do. Clearly, mom isn’t happy about that so she knows a lot more than she’s letting on.
When Tommy walks out of the party with Emily, his mother grabs him and tells him to get in the car because they are leaving. Tommy is just slightly embarrassed but he goes with his mother and just when it looks like they are about to have a rather loud fight or possibly leave town again, an SUV runs through a light and smashes into their car.
Tommy and his mom are banged up and maybe unconscious but was the driver who hit them there on purpose or was it actually an accident?
CARLOS
After his brother died a week ago, Carlos has continued his mission to help evo’s in trouble get out of the country but it turns out that a dirty cop turned on Oscar and eventually got him killed.
So now Carlos is not only trying to carry on his brother’s underground railroad out of the United States, but he’s also looking for the person responsible for betraying his brother and getting him killed.
Carlos is able to track down the cops responsible while they are torturing another evo for information. The evo is able to save herself after the cops get pissed off enough to chuck her out a window and she flies away. Bad news for her — the cops planted a tracker on her to lead back to her other evo friends. Carlos tries to get a closer look, but makes a noise that puts the cops on his trail. If not for the priest who was helping his brother while also actually being an evo himself, Carlos would be caught or dead or both.
Later that night, Carlos tracks down the evo the cops were torturing and he tells her and her friends to get out of town immediately. They escape, but the cop tracking them shows up just in time for Carlos to try and get his revenge. Much to his chagrin, Carlos finds out he’s facing a super powered evo with a whole lot of strength and instead of avenging his brother’s death, he gets his ass handed do him by the dirty cop.
MIKO
Miko’s valiant effort to save her father is thwarted after she battles a bunch of security guards, but is ultimately subdued by a man named Harris, who works for Renautus. He takes her to a secure room upstairs and tells her that the sword she’s wielding doesn’t belong to her — it belongs to Hiro Nakamura!
Harris hands off the sword to Renautus CEO Erica Kravid before he begins interrogating Miko for information. He informs his prisoner that her father is a super powered evo and there’s more to his story than just being a video game maker from Japan. Harris is about to torture Miko for some quid pro quo information, but her video game buddy Ren is able to get past security and break into the room to save her in time.
In the battle to escape, one of the knives that was about to be used on Miko ends up chopping off one of Harris’ arms instead. Miko and Ren make their getaway, but a moment later Harris gets up from the ground — his arm regenerated and another full sized Harris has popped up from the severed piece of arm that was chopped off. It seems Harris can not only regenerate but he’s able to clone himself over and over again as well.
MALINA
There’s a new character introduced this week named Malina, who is marching across the Arctic circle with her mentor, who happens to be invisible. She’s apparently on a mission to control the strange Aurora Borealis type lights that are streaming across the sky currently. Much like the phenomenon of the eclipse that was never really explained in the original series, there’s no clue right now what these lights do or why it’s so important that she control them but time is running out because as Malina and her invisible partner are trudging across the snow, Harris from Renautas shows up on the hunt for a very special evo…meaning her!
NOAH, QUENTIN AND MOLLY
Finally we come to the main story for the show this week, which included a trip from Texas to Colorado that took less time than a commercial break!
Following an ill fated trip to Renautas in Texas, Noah and Quentin are driving out of town when it’s very clear that the conspiracy theorist with a heart of gold isn’t going to make it very much further after getting shot in the arm by Luke and Joanne.
Noah agrees to take him to the hospital, but when he arrives he runs into a doctor who recognizes him and says it’s been a while since they’ve seen each other. Noah has no member of the doctor, which means this is part of the memory he had wiped out a year ago after the events in Odessa and the death of his daughter Claire.
A moment later Noah hears the doctor calling for security and after escaping and kidnapping one of the guards, he finds out that last year at this same time he apparently attacked one of the security officers at the hospital and that’s why the doctor freaked out when he showed back up again. Noah insists on looking at the security tapes from a year ago and he sees his movements around the hospital before ultimately ending up in the morgue where he says goodbye to his daughter Claire, who is laid out on a slab with a sheet covering her face.
Noah doesn’t remember any of this much less how Claire would have died considering her regenerative ability, but times wasting because security is on the job and they need to get out of the hospital. To make matters worse, the security tapes are jumping back and forth between several minutes and seconds and there’s only one person he knows who can manipulate time and space — Hiro Nakamura!
Next stop is Colorado where they plan to look for Molly Walker at the Renautas headquarters to save her and hopefully get some answers about that day in Odessa a year ago.
Meanwhile, Molly is on a plane back to Renautas after getting kidnapped by a boyfriend/girlfriend couple while she was trying to grift some money out of them to stay off the radar. Little did she know that they were targeting her the entire time and now she’s on her way back to the Renautas headquarters where they will do any number of bad things to her while also harnessing her powers.
Just when it looks like Molly is about to undergo some pretty awful torture, Noah and Quentin show up to save the day! The only problem is Molly freaks when she sees Noah (maybe because this time four years ago she was only 10 and now she’s like 22) and says she isn’t going anywhere with him.
She runs away only to get captured by Harris (clone) and Erica, who plugs Molly into a chair Matrix style and walks out to a stage where she’s about to give a presentation. It seems Molly is the key to unleashing a new application Renautas has developed called ‘Epic’ and it will track and show any evo living anywhere across the world. In addition to the computerized map showing evo locations and powers, Renautas has also developed some glasses that look like something out of They Live that shows any evo just by looking over a crowd of people.
It looks like Renautas is tapping into everyone’s fear of evo’s and using Molly Walker to track down people with powers.
Tune in for the next episode of Heroes Reborn on Thursday night at 8pm ET on NBC.
