There is a weight to bringing back something as opposed to creating something new. But a show that met its natural death just five years ago, after a perfectly respectable four seasons?
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There are a bunch of faces we’re seeing for the first time that are quite welcome.
When does it premiere?
The new series premieres tonight, September 24, at 8 p.m. on NBC.
How is this different from the original?
Heroes Reborn’s two-hour premiere airs Thursday at 8/7c on NBC. A flawless example of this is found in Luke and Joanne, two seemingly normal people who have sworn revenge against those with powers, blaming them for the explosion a year prior, which so happened to take their son’s life. As in the original series, they’re all fated to come together to – everyone together now – save the world.
“Heroes Reborn” is admirably ambitious, and that alone justifies asking the audience to do a little work to see if it will pay off or not.
Do you avoid getting horn-rimmed glasses when you go to the optometrist? After Claire Bennet outed herself to the world as someone with powers, just as her father had warned, the world did not accept these people, and they are now hunted and persecuted and exploited. If you watched the first time, you’ll see that the story is unique but the way we’re telling it will feel familiar and, I hope, comfortable in a way.
How does the story continue?
Sometime after the end of the original Heroes, Noah’s former employer Primatech hosted a convention dedicated to peace between humans and Evos in Odessa, Texas. So if you can imagine what Chuck was like, then you can infer what the opposite of that would be.
As before, it’s a trippy meditation on unsuspecting individuals who, to their delight or dismay, have been vaulted to extraordinary levels of ability.
The implications of Claire demonstrating her ability on live TV set an obvious template for Heroes Reborn: heroes adapting to a world where the general public is aware of their existence, which actually sounds like an interesting and logical follow up to the series rather than just a cash grab. Mohinder (Sendhil Ramamurthy) is on the run from the law, presumably framed for something he didn’t do.
God, Mohinder. What does one do when Zachary Quinto doesn’t want to come back and Primatech is out of the picture?
Did you guys keep in touch a lot, of the cast? And there’s the promise of many returning favorites, from Hiro to the telepathic Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg) to the clairvoyant Angela Petrelli (Cristine Rose).
Who are the new characters?
The first evo on the couple’s hitlist is Tommy Clarke (Robbie Kay), a teenager who has the ability to make people and objects disappear, even though he has no idea where he’s sending them. “Ryan Guzman plays Carlos, a war veteran who is having trouble returning home when he is offered a chance to become a luchador vigilante known as El Vengador“.
That’s kind of a weird/dumb power. Is it as good? But I know that had these suggestions been taken by the original show, it would have cut by at least 40 percent the number of times I screamed “KRIINNNNGG!” to the heavens as a crude, futile prayer to have the time I wasted on Heroes returned to me by a forgiving god. They are not the only people who get shout-outs from the past, and I’m sure there will be others.
The narrative is already burdened with the leaden mythology that made Heroes such an incomprehensible slog in later seasons.
It started to feel less like a plan and more like the creators were playing plot-point roulette.
And because Hiro is going to show up at some point during the season. “We thought we could have some fun with the “powers” that he has in his videos, as that is a core part of Heroes”. That’s a big difference, but the good news about that in this case is that lightning really struck twice in that they are both really unbelievable groups of people.
Is there nothing to love here? “Knowing that there was still a big fan base out there, combined with some nostalgia about the original series and the advances in being able to understand the viewing metrics all led to the creation of this new series”.
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Heroes arrived on the scene in a different phase of TV culture, and superhero fandom in particular, at a time when its cinematic predecessors skyrocketed in popularity, but lacked the universe-defining vision of the Marvel-verse, or deep allegory etched out by The Dark Knight. But I suspect that the convoluted storytelling is what turned casual fans off and that’s in abundance here. “We tried to emulate what we’re doing on the show, where people with special powers are separated…by doing the same thing between the new and the old cast”.
