Time to go back to when the mystery began.
Heroes Reborn delivered a massive twist in “June 13th – Part 1,” with a cliffhanger ending promising even more surprises next week.
Spoilers from the seventh episode of Heroes Reborn continue below.
The big surprise in Heroes Reborn’s trip to the past proved to be about Claire — though, sadly, it wasn’t that she was actually alive and Hayden Panettiere returned to the show. No, Claire is really dead but — twist! — she died giving birth to twins.
The second that was revealed, it was obvious who they were: Malina and Tommy (aka Nathan), the two characters Heroes Reborn has been reminding us again and again are here to save the world. To hide them from Erica and Renautas, Hiro takes them back in time to 1999 so their powers will manifest the year after the Odessa attack (and the year after their birth/time they turn 16 — time travel can be so confusing).
We want to hear it.
This is a neat plot twist to get around not having Claire on the show but still having her presence be felt, though creator Tim Kring is walking too fine a line with showing so much Claire and not actually having it be Panettiere. I think he pushed it a bit too far here with the phone calls and morgue scene, and was better off having her be a character who was discussed but not present. Still, the reveals in this episode raise plenty of important questions, like who the father is and what exactly caused Claire to die, and I’m excited to find out more in the second “June 13th” episode and back half of this season.
“June 13th – Part 1” didn’t really add much more to the present day mystery, but did fill in a few key blanks to remind us why we should care about the main characters in that timeline. With the emphasis on the new heroes in earlier episodes, “Part 1” swapped the ratio and had the old guard take center stage. Several of the newcomers had key roles here, including Luke and a (finally likable) Joanne, but this episode was all about the OG Heroes. Beyond Noah and Hiro, “June 13th – Part 1” brought back Mohinder Suresh and Angela Petrelli, and finally this series delivered an episode that felt like it belonged in the mother show’s run.
We want to hear it.
But certainly this trip back in time is going to have negative ramifications on the present. Hiro made plenty of mentions of the butterfly effect, because there’s no way this trip to the past doesn’t deviate in some ways from the original timeline — or does it? I’m assuming the fallout of “Part 1” is going to be dealt with in next week’s episode (and the promo seems to corroborate that). Did Noah get his memory wiped so that he wouldn’t remember seeing himself? Are there more big secrets lurking in the near future waiting to be revealed? And what exactly are Tommy/Nathan and Malina going to be able to do to save the world?
This episode didn’t hit the same highs as last week’s “Game Over,” but it was refreshing for Heroes Reborn to finally start filling in some blanks with its various mysteries. It also was nice to see new sides of Luke and Joanne before the death of their son sent the characters on a dark path. This episode did a lovely job shading in the origins of Joanne’s hatred of Evos, and Judith Shekoni delivered some of my favorite acting this week. More of this, please, and not the one-note performance we’ve been suffering through all season long.
Heroes Reborn delivered its big plot twist in this episode literally when viewers found out Claire died giving birth to twins. The series is getting a bit timey wimey with Hiro and Noah’s trip back to June 13th, but at least that means the series answered some big mysteries. With six episodes left this season, one can only imagine what’s in store.
