This week, our Heroes Reborn fall finale — not to be confused with the actual finale, which isn’t until January — is brought to you by the American automotive industry. Those are the signals I’m getting, anyway. What with Kiki Sukezane (Miko Otomo/Katana Girl) and Greg Grunberg (Matt Parkman) anchoring Shell commercials and now Judith Shekoni (Joanne Collins) starring in her own evo-themed Cadillac spot, not to mention the fact that on the show itself no one can seem to get over Luke’s “cool” rental car, the most suburban Ford sedan on earth, the line between product placement and “this is a limited series, but don’t think we won’t milk it for every penny” has all but vanished. If this is how it has to be, the least they could do is let me know where I can buy just about every single piece of decor Erica Kravid owns. (The white-and-rainbow-prism thing is way too Apartment Therapy for a woman obsessed with killing all humankind.)
Tommy-Nathan wakes up in Erica’s immaculate house with a giant hole in the back of his neck. Erica later admits it’s because she attempted and failed to steal his powers with her Matrix machine, but for now she gives him a lot of B.S. about how (a) the apocalypse is inevitable (haven’t we been through this the-future-is-not-set thing a million times?); and (b) her future world is the “world” he’s meant to save. She needs his powers after Hiro’s escape, and actually sort of convinces him, enough to at least get him to take her, Quentin, and Phoebe to the future so he can fully experience her Elysium-Except-the-Poors-are-Dead. It boasts lots of greenhouse plants and solar panels — pretty nice place, if you can get around the built-by-an-evil-corporation-for-a-select-few thing.
Tommy-Nathan agrees to help Erica but only on the condition that he can bring as many people as he wants to her future colony. This agreement will be moot soon, of course, but it’s funny to imagine him shepherding entire continents of people through space and time, just to spite this inexplicably hateful woman.
Oh, and Phoebe is still throwing her goth angst at Quentin, as would anyone whose power is a literal black hole. Remember that one time Erica tried to make “The Shadow” happen?
Katana Girl wakes up on the outskirts of Gateway, and she’s super confused, so she goes with her instincts and kicks every man she meets unconscious until she finds something she recognizes: her “dad” Hachiro Otomo — and her “real” body, comatose and hooked up to another of Erica’s Matrix machines. The original Miko didn’t die; she was only maimed, or seriously injured, and kept alive by Renautas on the condition that her father work for them.
Otomo takes credit for sending Ren to Katana Girl (he also sends a cosplay version of himself back to tell 2015 Ren to get to the future to help out), and tells her her new mission is to find the future “Master of Space and Time,” which this time means Tommy-Nathan and not Hiro. As Tommy sends Phoebe and Quentin back to the present, on Erica’s orders, to collect Harris and Malina, she drops in from the ceiling, where she’s been crouching like a huge, anime bat. All she has to do is mention that her mission is to “free” him, and, as though the Erica spell had evaporated (either that or he dropped the charade completely), he immediately believes her and they zap back to 2015 together, leaving Erica in the future with a sour look on her face. Couldn’t we just … leave her there?
Also, I love that we’re casually throwing around the word “construct” to describe these fake hologram people, with a straight face no less. Because, like, aren’t we all just constructs, mannnnn?
I’m with Noah on the “should we bring Luke along” thing. Because look, these main characters have a world to save. Other people to find. Places to take this V.I.G. (Very Important Granddaughter) that have nothing to do with you, random dude who says he’s an evo and knows where Tommy is, only because he has slaughtered many of his own kind??? Yet for some reason, Luke Collins has now filled the irritatingly earnest shoes of Peter Petrelli this time around, which means it’s okay for him to shove his way into other people’s lives. “It’s my destiny” is not an acceptable reason to follow people who have told you to go away, and yet, it becomes a good thing that he continued to stalk these people; otherwise Malina would have a racist’s birdshot embedded in her skull right now.
That’s because he protects Malina from a gang of humans all parked on the road like in that horrible M. Night Shayamalan movie The Happening, after she uses her electromagnetic-y power to stop a huge storm, which is a harbinger of the pole-switching that’s about to occur, from killing them. While I believe many people have no problem disregarding logic in favor of hatred, I find it hard to believe that these people would watch an evo save them and translate that as evo = bad = must have caused natural disaster to begin with. Then again …
At Sunstone Manor, director Matt is busy rounding up all his evo zombies for transport to Renautas, where they are to be teleported to the future via that machine. In the most hackneyed, cliché, and frankly unlikely torture scene ever, Matt gets Malina’s location and plans out of Farah after forcing her and Carlos to relive their Afghanistan nightmare and threatening to shoot him in the head right in front of her (jeez, Matt). Surprise, they’re in love! (But we knew that from the hotel room.) When Carlos FINALLY uses his combat training to escape an unceremonious post-torture execution, he FINALLY pulls his weight and rescues/arms Farah before she can be fitted with her own neck plug, first waking her with a slap and then a kiss. “The slap did the trick” was a very cute line — I gotta say, this is possibly the most attractive couple the franchise has ever seen.
Meanwhile, Taylor infiltrates the manor with her shapeshifter Truther friend posing as a super-unconvincing Erica to extricate Micah; it works on the bewildered guards, but certainly not Matt — because he’s, you know, a telepath. So Taylor tases him. Harris walks in a bit later to find two Matts and shoots the shapeshifter, one without hesitation. It was a lucky guess, he tells a freaked-out Matt casually, making it clear (in both words and thoughts) that, to Erica and Renautas, the director ain’t shit. This of course freaks out our most cowardly friend, who goes immediately to a zombified Micah in his Minority Report-y glass cage and forces him to make sure his family’s names are still on Erica’s secret Gateway list — they are, for now.
Taylor runs into Carlos and Farah and the three join forces and link up with the other Truthers outside … only to run into about two hundred Harris clones in a ring around the grounds. And they’re closing the perimeter.
See you in January!
Remaining Questions
- Wait, if Phoebe has powers, why doesn’t her brother? Was someone adopted, or is Quentin a surprise evo time bomb?
- Not a question so much as an observation: In the car, Noah tells Malina that Erica “likes humanity more than she likes human beings.” I get what he’s saying, but doesn’t she also hate humanity (a mass of 7 billion people) and like individuals (only her useful friends and evos)? Woman just hates everything, TBH.
- What is Harris’s deal? Like his boss, his motives for being an evil henchmen (or 70) remain a mystery. (Although just one line from him about cutting off his own fingers so many times he doesn’t feel anything, à la Claire Bennet’s horrible post-Sylar rape allegory in season 3 of the original series, could fix this.) Also: HOW MUCH OF THIS GUY’S BODY HAD TO BE CUT OFF TO CREATE THIS ARMY?
- So poor Micah’s power is basically just “really good hacker” now?
