I recently finished watching Heroes Reborn, and afterwards read a few reviews and articles on it. They seemed undeservedly harsh, so I thought I’d write up a few of my own thoughts on the show.
Here’s a short spoiler-free review for anyone who’s not seen the show yet, and is wondering if it’s for them or not.
Heads-Up Review (Spoiler Free)
Heroes Reborn is set in the Heroes universe a few years after the end of the last series of Heroes. However the only character who is as prominent in Reborn as in the original is Noah Bennett. Some other well-loved characters from the original series do also feature in Reborn, but they have significant screen-time for only a few episodes at most, and some only have small cameos. I won’t tell you who appears, as seeing some of my old favorites turning up unexpectedly was one of the most delightful things about the show.
I found Heroes Reborn a little hard to get into at the beginning, though that could just be me, as I have often had the same problem with other shows. There are a lot of characters to take in, and it wasn’t that easy to remember who people were, to figure out why they were doing what they were doing, understand who was working with whom etc etc. To be honest, between being confused about what was going on and being disappointed by the lack of familiar characters, I nearly gave up on the show early on. But I persisted with it, and I’m glad I did.
After a while things came together, the main plotline kicked in, and the show started to make sense. Also we started seeing some of the old faces, and so I was reassured that this was not going to be an all-new cast and story, completely disconnected from what had gone before.
The series reached its peak in mid-season, especially the two-parter called “June the 13th”. The plot developments were superb, and some of the strongest I can remember in any sci-fi show. A whole series of those “Oh wow! Of course!” moments when a lot of mystifying threads suddenly make total, surprising sense. And with plenty of emotional punch too.
The latter part of the series was a bit more routine, but no worse than any other “save the world from disaster” climaxes that are so common in shows like The Flash.
Overall, I’d say Heroes Reborn is one of the best seasons of Heroes, and certainly on a par with many well-liked contemporary shows. If you loved Heroes Season 1, you’ll probably get a kick out of Heroes Reborn. You might need a bit of patience with the early parts though.
Thinking Play 