And now we go back… to the future!
Spoilers for Heroes Reborn’s ninth episode, “Sundae, Bloody Sunday,” are contained in this article.
Did you think Heroes Reborn had no more tricks left up its sleeve? Did you think it would go quietly into the final five episodes of the season, bringing everything to a tidy conclusion under the clocktower? If you were lulled into a false sense of ease then it must have been some real whiplash when the series jumped almost eight thousand years into the future in the final moments of “Sundae, Bloody Sunday.”
This “sundae” clearly was a banana split, because goodness did it go off the crazy end — and that’s saying something for Heroes Reborn. After spending two weeks in the past resolving the mysteries of June 13th, the series jumped back to the present to catch up with its ensemble of characters. Remember Carlos and Captain Dearing? Yup, they’re still around! Their trip to find Jose and Father Mauricio took a turn for the worse when Dearing was outed as an Evo while in the belly of the beast and Jose was also incapacitated.
Gatlin Green as Emily Duval in Heroes Reborn
Turns out Greg Grunberg’s appearance as Matt Parkman in the past was only a prelude to the trouble he’s causing in the future. He is still working under Erica at Renautas and is the mysterious “Director,” using his mind control powers to keep the Evos subdued and also wheedle out their secrets. He has a now-adult Micah under his control (which is a bit messed up, considering their history in the first Heroes show), seemingly caused Dearing to kill himself and also got into Carlos’s mind to find out the deep dark secret that he’s been hiding about his time in the war.
Another familiar face popped up when the Haitian proved to still be alive and on the hunt for the rebel Evos’ leader who, plot twist, is Micah. They team up with Taylor to get Micah away from the mansion where Matt is holding him, and she reveals that the mansion is owned by her mother — of course.
As for the world-saving Petrelli twins, Malina and Nathan come together pretty quickly, though they still don’t get a chance to exchange words. Through some rather convoluted plot turns Nathan, Emily, Luke, Malina, Joanne and Casper all end up as the only patrons of the ice cream shop, and Joanne proceeds to kill the Penny Man on her way to track down Nathan — hence the “bloody” title. Luke happens to show up in time to try to stop her, but fails miserably and Joanne turns her gun on Emily. Nathan, who by now knows he has Hiro’s powers and has learned his erased backstory, stops time to save Emily and teleports them both out of there to safety, seeing a frozen Malina in the process.
We want to hear it.
Sadly, his great escape plan goes awry when Quentin and Phoebe show up at Nathan’s mother’s hospital room, where he’s rendezvoused with HRG and Emily, and take him captive. (Here Noah has a cheesy “Quentin, you’re the butterfly” revelation. Is he really the only change from the other timeline? Hopefully not, because Heroes Reborn has proven it’s way too bananas to miss the opportunity for more loopholes.) They head to Erica’s house, where she sits Nathan down at her outdoor dinner table and promises to tell him how he is supposed to save the world.
But wait! There’s more! If one cliffhanger wasn’t enough, Heroes Reborn speeds 7957 years into the future to show Miko in the post-apocalyptic deserted wasteland that is our future. She spots some sort of solar-powered structure nearby, and then the episode cut to “to be continued…”
If only Heroes Reborn had been this nutso from the beginning! This is far from award-winning television, but if Heroes Reborn can’t be amazing, at least it can be amazingly weird. That video game storyline was just a taste of the strange places this show would eventually head in, and I wish it had embraced that from the start. For now, bring it on. Let’s see how off the rails this show goes before the end.
