Heroes Reborn: A Brave New World

Heroes Reborn continues, not reboots, down the same road as Heroes.

I was a huge fan of Heroes. The first season seemed to do everything right. The story was solid, the acting was good, and every episode left us wanting more. Then something happened on the way to season two, it started going down hill quick.

Molly
Don’t get too excited, guys. This is Clint Eastwood’s daughter.

There were plenty of reasons why Heroes went from a top hit (Maybe not the groundbreaking series NBC has been promoting it as for the past few weeks) to cancelled in four seasons.

Some critics cite the writer’s strike as the reason season two was not as good as the first season. Others will say it was because writers from the first season left the series taking with them the quality writing viewers loved to see. I would add to that list: Bringing Sylar back from the dead, using Hiro too many times to fix bad writing problems, giving everyone and anyone who wanted them special powers, taking powers away from the main cast and then giving them back, and not ending the Primatech conspiracy earlier in the series. There may be other reasons, but what you need to remember is the series flamed out  and it was cancelled.

Zachary Levi plays Luke in Heroes Reborn.
He’s not working at a Best Buy parody store anymore.

Years later, someone at NBC thought it would be a good idea to restart the series. With the success of Arrow, The Flash, Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., a new Supergirl series starting on CBS, and Legends of Tomorrow debuting next year on CW, the timing may have been right to bring the series back to NBC.

This time, it’s called Heroes Reborn. It’s a continuation (Thank God, because I couldn’t handle another reboot!) of the first series.

The pilot episode seemed like we were back in familiar territory. Familiar territory being season one. There’s  a conspiracy of some kind. We may not be sure what it is, but it involves the events of the June 13th bombing in Odessa, Texas. There’s a couple  hunting down and killing Evos (Why? Because “mutant” was already copyrighted by another huge corporation) and there’s a family of Evos. We may not have Hiro and Ando (yet?), but we were introduced to Miko and Ren. Miko, like Hiro (Who I’m willing to bet is her father) is on a mission to save her father. We even learn there are Evos hunting down other Evos for an as of yet unknown someone or someones. See, a lot like Heroes.

vtp
Maybe you remember Pruitt Taylor Vince from The Walking Dead. Let’s hope he survives this series.

All and all, the pilot episode was pretty darn good. Zachary Levi (Chuck) excelled at playing the bad guy. Although it’s just the pilot the few new characters introduced seemed interesting enough. The multiple storylines didn’t trip over each other which is a good thing this early in the series. We know from the previous series these storylines are going to connect at some point in time.

However, it’s still too familiar. A lot of critics are going to subtract points because they will claim we have seen it before. True, we have seen it before. We’ve also seen a lot of superhero movies that are the same, but we keep watching those time and time again. Why? They’re fun, turn-off-the-brain entertainment.

NBC will have a hit on their hands if  Heroes Reborn avoids the problems of its predecessor. If it does avoid those problems we will still have something familiar and fun, but something viewers will have to leave their brains on to watch. That’s never a bad thing.

HEROES -- "How to Stop an Exploding Man" Episode 123 -- Pictured: (l-r) Zachary Quinto as Sylar, Milo Ventimiglia as Peter Petrelli -- NBC Photo: Trae Patton
“Wha? I’m not in the new series?”