Tai Freligh reviews the eleventh episode of Heroes Reborn, ‘Send in the Clones’…
So this week’s episode of Heroes Reborn was the first one back after the mid-season finale. It was a doozy as the stakes were ramped up. In case you didn’t remember what happened in the first ten episodes before the break (that was a long break!!), this week’s episode returns to Mohinder narrating the “previously on Heroes Reborn” segment. Now that we’re caught up, we join Luke and Malina on the road to somewhere not filled with angry gun-toting humans, minus Noah. Let’s get to the recap and review!
Luke and Malina, having just stopped a major weather event and received gun threats as a thank you, are driving to find Tommy and complete the mission they were on when HRG “disappeared”. They stop at a sporting goods store to get supplies, including a gun for Luke, who also offers to buy one for Malina because, you know, you can do that in Texas. She refuses and asks why he needs a gun when he has powers, but he says his fire abilities are spotty and he needs the insurance. Funny how this will come into play almost immediately afterwards. They get in the car and start driving again. Meanwhile, Phoebe, Quentin, and some Harris clones spotted them on a YouTube video and have positioned themselves at apparently the only road out of Missouri because they have the good fortune of finding Luke and Malina. Rather than just speed past them or hit them in the road, Luke decides that the smart think to do is to run into the cornfield. Phoebe chases after them and when Luke tells Malina to run and hide because they can’t use their powers, she asks him what he’s going to do since he’s powerless too. Now this is either blatant product placement or a cheesy line that somebody in the writers room came up with, but he says “Because you can’t stop a glock!”. Malina runs away and is immediately captured by Phoebe and Quentin. She is about to have Quentin kill Malina (he earlier expressed his hesitancy in the car ride to the cornfield) when Luke knocks her out and fries the Harris clone. He convinces Quentin to drop his gun and takes both Phoebe and Quentin hostage and ties them up in a barn. After questioning Phoebe, he realizes she was the one who blocked everyone’s powers at Odessa and allowed all those people to be killed, including his son. He wants to kill her, but Malina stops him saying that he shouldn’t have anymore regrets. Quentin then spills the beans about Erica’s plan to transport everybody to the future because the earth is going to be destroyed.
Tommy transports Miko to another building in the future and then realizes she’s Katana Girl from the 9th Wonders comic book he picked up while on his joytrip to Paris. Just like in the first Heroes show, events that happen in the comic book mirror real life and the panels show him and Miko having the very conversation they are having. He reads ahead and sees that she needs to be at Sunstone Manor to stop Harris Prime. He needs proof that he “killed her” for Erica to believe him, so he takes her hair tie and then sends her to the Manor. Tommy reappears where Erica is. She has been joined by a guard and Hachiro, who she says needs to fix the problem he created (namely Miko causing havoc). Tommy gives her the hair tie and says she disintegrated. Then, the hair tie disappears. Miko is apparently dying a virtual death slowly as she glitches throughout the episode. Erica shows Tommy that she has brought his mother and girlfriend to the group of people who will be saved, but she needs to show him something and he is curious as to how he’s supposed to teleport all these people to the future. She has a special chair that will amplify his powers and tells him only the people with her special watches on will be transported. Meanwhile, Harris Prime is at Sunstone Manor with his hundreds of clones and when he sees Miko appear, he calls Erica and fills her in that she is in fact, not dead. She tells him she will deal with the Tommy problem.
Carlos, Farah, Taylor and Rene are already at Sunstone Manor and looking for his nephew Jose and the Father. They find the control room and shut off the soothing sounds of Matt Parkman and free the EVOs from his mind control. He also finds his nephew and the priest. It seems that Micah is the key to fighting Erica and he is trapped at the Manor, so Farah takes her EVO army outside to try and fight the clones while Carlos, the priest and his nephew go in search of Micah. Carlos also finds his El Vengador costume and dons it to give himself extra strength and protection. Rene and Taylor head off to find Parkman and see if they can get Micah’s location from him. Carlos and crew manage to find the room where Micah is trapped in, but not before guards attack them and the priest is killed. Carlos uses his suit and anger to break the glass and free Micah from the sedation he’s under.
Taylor and Rene head to Matt Parkman’s office to try and find out where Micah is. Rene uses his powers to cancel out Parkman’s abilities while Taylor grills him about what he’s doing. He claims he is doing this to ensure that him and his family have a spot in the new world, but Taylor clues him in to the fact that her mother is a lying and conniving bitch who absolutely will NOT be taking him along. He manages to pull a gun out of nowhere and shoot Rene’s ear off, stopping his blocking powers. Parkman immediately tells him to walk home and then mind controls Taylor to come with him so he can use her as leverage against Kravid. He probes her mind and discovers that she’s pregnant with a baby from her EVO boyfriend and Erica doesn’t know. Parkman and Taylor head outside, but not before he dispatches a few Harris clones.
Finally, the battle we’ve been waiting for ever since Harris subdued Miko rather easily back in the beginning of the season. Somehow she has gotten better at fighting, even though she’s a program and not a person. Nevertheless, we are excited to see the battle and so it seems is Harris Prime as he comes walking outside with a giant axe and calls off his clones. They engage in ferocious battle, which she wins at first, but as she becomes more and more glitchy (cyber-dying), she loses the advantage and just when it looks like she’s going to be killed, she sacrifices herself by stabbing her spear through her own stomach and into the chest of Harris, who is right behind her about to bludgeon her. He dies and all the clones disappear. Having sacrificed herself, Miko also finally disappears into that long, cold cyber-night.
Micah, Jose and Carlos head to Parkman’s vacated office and tap into his computer. Using his special power with machinery, Micah hooks himself up to all the media outlets in the world and broadcasts a message. He shows a video of an outtake from the supposed video of Mohinder Suresh taking credit for the Odessa disaster. We see Erica Kravid come into frame and coach the person, who is not actually Suresh, but a shape-shifter pretending to be him. Micah tells everyone that EVOs and non-EVOs are meant to live together in harmony because feels. Meanwhile, Kravid brings Joanne into her office (we haven’t seen her since she got into the car with Harris several episodes ago) and gives her a new mission to find and kill Luke and Malina. We close the episode with everybody heading to Odessa in their cars…converging for what promises to be the big final battle for the fate of the world.
With only two more episodes to go, I would have thought we’d see more action, but there was enough to keep me satisfied. We lost two good guys and one bad guy and still don’t know where the hell Noah is or Hiro for that matter. This episode gets an 8 out of 10.
Official Episode Synopsis: Phoebe, Quentin and a Harris clone try to capture Malina and Luke; outside Sunstone Manor, Harris Prime and Miko face off in an epic sword duel.
Heroes Reborn airs on Thursday nights at 8pm EST on NBC.
Tai Freligh
(Article originally appeared on Flickering Myth)