So how does Tommy/Nathan Petrelli/Bennet/Nakamura/Clark’s power work?
[dropcap size=small]F[/dropcap]irst things first, I’m not here to sh*t on Heroes Reborn. I’m trying my hardest to go into each episode with an open mind, and I would go so far as to say I have enjoyed most of them.
Having said that, it wouldn’t be Heroes if it made any sort of sense at all, so ahead of the latest episode (which I won’t get to see until Friday because I’m British and we don’t get nice things), let’s take a look at the top 10 examples of that.
10) Why should we care about Luke?
Look, Zachary Levi is great, but Luke and Joanne (Judith Shekoni) are not good people just because they lost their son. We’re supposed to understand why they murdered all the guys they murdered, but in ‘June 13th: Part 2’, Joanne (who, despite one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen from Shekoni, isn’t the problem here, because the show is allowing us to dislike her) kills an entirely innocent evo, and she loves it, but still, Luke covers for her. Malina taking him on some journey of self-discovery isn’t going to change what happened.
9) That’s it for Miko?
Ever since we found out that Miko was an avatar, created to free Hiro from Evernow, we all wondered what would happen to her once she completed her mission. In ‘Game Over’, our questions were answered by Ren, who said she would likely cease to exist, but she goes through with her mission anyway.
Now, this means one of two things. Miko is gone for good, and we’ve lost one of the only characters that kept the show interesting early in the season, or she’ll come back, which is Heroes once again failing to live up to its promises – reviving dead characters (remember Ali Larter?) to the point that the show becomes predictable and you don’t have to care about the characters. It’s a lose-lose, and a strange decision for the showrunners to have run with.
8) Why didn’t Noah question Quentin in the new future?
When Quentin died, but was revived following Noah’s trip into the past, surely Noah must have known that he’d changed some things? So why did he proceed to tell Quentin literally everything that happened in the past without asking him about himself and which side he was on in the new timeline? Heroes isn’t known for its consistency, but Noah is a veteran, and not one to make such simple mistakes.
7) Why would Harris ever work with Erica?
It’s clear by now that Erica is dead set on wiping out all evos, so Harris (you know, the evo) must know that she’s not going to spare him when the time comes. Working with her might buy him some more time, but wouldn’t it be better to fight alongside the evos and see if you can’t prevent the whole mass murder thing from happening?
6) Why didn’t HRG save Molly?
In the past, Noah asked the Penny Man to wipe his memory, knowing it would save the Haitian in the future, so why didn’t he take steps to save future Molly Walker’s life? He spent his time in the past with more than one time and space manipulator. Surely one of them could have taken her to a safe place, away from Erica? He could at least have warned her.
5) Why is Carlos even there?
We’re only eight episodes in to Reborn, and I can already tell you that Carlos will have little to no contribution to the finale. I like the idea of a hero without abilities, a Mexican Batman if you will, but if Batman were this boring I’d root for the Joker. Every Carlos scene kills the pace of the episode stone dead, and creator Tim Kring has a serious job turning this around in time for the finale, which begs the question…
4) Did Tim Kring never go back and watch Heroes?
Heroes always had the same problem. Not enough characters had interesting plotlines at the same time. Every great moment was followed by an arc that no one cared for (see: Peter in Ireland. Nathan finding God. Hiro losing his powers. Matt and the whole thing that happened with the turtle. Any scene that Ali Larter was in.)
If you’re going to reboot the show, you don’t do it with characters like Carlos. It just goes to show how little attention Kring paid to his own show. He does still have time to turn it around (or, ‘do a season one’), and bring everyone together in a fresh and unpredictable sort of way, but I’m starting to think season one was a one-off.
3) Where the hell is everyone?!
So here’s where we’re at: Claire is dead, evos are being wiped out, Angela is predicting the end of the world. Where is Peter Petrelli in all of this? If we ever knew Peter, we’d know that he would do anything to stop each of those things from happening. He isn’t dead because Angela named Claire’s baby Nathan after ‘the son she lost’. So she hasn’t lost Peter.
The last we saw of him, he and Sylar were saving the world having become best buds in a Matt Parkman nightmare. Maybe the two of them settled down and retired. Or maybe neither actor could return (although I haven’t seen much of Milo Ventimiglia recently). Both explanations are fine, but I still don’t understand why no one has mentioned them. The two of them are far better equipped to prevent the end of the world than Nathan and Malina. Why would nobody have asked about them? Without Peter and Sylar, Heroes would never have been a thing. They deserve at least a mention.
And what about Ando? Was he present at the June 13th bombing? Or is he still out there, presumably being hunted himself? Either way, why wouldn’t Hiro regard it as his mission to save his best friend/sidekick?
2) Nathan’s power
Heroes has always been pretty vague on how its characters’ powers work, but Nathan/Tommy’s takes the cake. ‘He’s a Petrelli,’ Angela explains, which explains nothing.
So Nathan absorbs powers, but only one at a time. Does he steal the powers of the evos he comes across, but can only draw from one, like Arthur? Or does he only have one power at a time, depending on who he absorbed his latest power from, like Peter?
If it’s the first one, he should have taken the Penny Man’s ability after he wiped Nathan’s memory, or Luke’s when the two met in the pilot, or his twin sister’s while they were born (and if that’s the case, why is Malina important if Nathan can do what she can do?), but we’ve seen no evidence that Nathan can harness any of those powers. Sure, he doesn’t know what he can do, but you would think that at least one of those powers might have come out in a fit of emotion by now?
But then, if he has Peter’s power, Claire, Hiro etc. would have kept their abilities. So does he take their abilities from them until he steals the next? Well no, because Hiro never gets his power back, and Claire’s power would have come back, and she’d be alive. I… I got nothing.
1) Claire’s death
There were two things that happened on June 13th that could have killed Claire; Phoebe’s sort of eclipse, and Nathan’s birth. Now, whatever Phoebe did might have killed her, but her ability would have come back and she’d have come back to life (that happened in Heroes), so basically Nathan killed his mum by taking her power. But as I said before, he doesn’t take Malina’s.
So we’re back to this: what the f*ck is Nathan’s power?
The fact that Malina still has her ability, but Claire and Hiro lost theirs shows how little attention the writers are paying that question.
OK. Let’s say that Nathan took Claire’s ability. She went into cardiac arrest literally the second she lost her powers? She lost her powers before and didn’t die. At least straight away.
I actually don’t hate what they’ve done with Claire. ‘Save the cheerleader’s kids, save the world’. It’s unoriginal, cheesy, whatever you want to call it, but I like the nod to season one. I just wish it made some GOD DAMN SENSE.
Catch Heroes Reborn Thursday nights on NBC.
