Tai Freligh reviews episode 4 of Heroes Reborn, ‘The Needs of Many’…
Heroes Reborn has settled into a groove of seven distinct character arcs- Tommy/Emily, Luke/Joanne, HRG/Quentin, Miko/Ren, Carlos/Oscar, Malina/Farah, and Erica Kravid/Mr. Harris. We move through all the storylines in a rapid fashion, jumping back and forth between all the characters and keeping the action going in this week’s episode 4. Let’s jump right into the recap.
This episode does an excellent job of keeping the action moving in all the story lines and also shifts the main story arc from HRG to Malina and Farah and reveals a bit more about the overall plot. Malina is the one who has been groomed since a child to save the world, and she has been hunted by Renautas all this time. She wonders if she can do it, but her keeper Farah tells her there are others who will help her, they just don’t know it yet. In a nice moment of continuity across the character arcs, everybody sees the Aurora Borealis that Malina creates, bringing the point home that they are all connected in the fight to save the world.
Carlos has no powers. I kept thinking that he had EVO powers, but maybe didn’t know, but that’s not the case. In this episode he decides to power up his car and suit with hydraulics and armor to help him better take on the mantle of El Vengador. He shows off the suit to Father Mauricio who questions his motives, but Carlos just wants to be part of something bigger than himself. His nephew Jose accidentally finds the Vengador cave and upon discovering that his father Oscar was El Vengador decides to reveal his powers to Father Mauricio, but shortly thereafter they are both captured by the police. Uh oh!
Meanwhile, HRG and Quentin are looking for Quentin’s sister Phoebe and enlist the help of Taylor, Erica Kravid’s daughter after convincing her to look closer at what her mother is doing with EVOs. Taylor confronts her mother and discovers her hatred of EVOs, including Taylor’s boyfriend Francis and after pressing her for more details on why she’s tracking all these EVOs, she finally begins to realize that her mother is up to no good and helps HRG and Quentin break into Renautas to see what’s going on. The team encounters Mr. Harris’ clones, which they dispatch quickly. Afterwards, they find a room with EVOs strapped to tables and HRG finds Molly Walker while Taylor finds her boyfriend Francis. Molly is done with being used by everybody and (SPOILER) after telling Noah that she didn’t reveal the location of “her” to Renautas and to save the future and forget the past, she takes her own life. Whoah! Now Hiro is the only one who can tell Noah Bennett what happened at the hospital. Back at the Renautas office, Erica Kravid gets the lowdown from Mr. Harris that her daughter helped HRG break into her secret chamber and that Walker is dead. They have not found “the child” yet and now that Walker is dead, their global tracking system is reduced to 100 yards. Harris says they have a lead in Canada and Kravid tells him she wants the child dead and that he needs to take The Shadow with him to ensure it happens. The plot thickens! As we see at the end of the episode, The Shadow is actually Quentin’s sister Phoebe and she is looking very much like an evil Sith Lord.
Ah, my least favourite story arc of the show- Luke and Joanne. At least Luke has second thoughts about being cold-blooded killers, especially after Joanne kills an EVO without a second thought only to discover that he was a father and husband. In a bit of overkill, the family’s golden retriever comes downstairs and lies down next to his dead owner. We get it! Luke has powers and finally reveals to Joanne that he too is an EVO and that they have lost themselves on this crazy Natural Born Killers streak of murders. Joanne leaves Luke behind in the road while she walks away and he weeps quietly to himself. Yay!! Now we just need Joanne to die.
Miko and Ren are on their way to Midian, CO to retrieve her father’s sword from Renautas HQ. Miko realizes that her father was able to go into the game like her and that’s why his video game was so realistic and also why he was captured. Ren enlists the help of his adoring fans to meet in costume at Renautas to provide a distraction. Miko is surprised to see that the outside of HQ is filled with people dressed like Katana Girl and warriors. They might actually have a chance!
Tommy and his mother survive the horrific car crash from the end of last week’s episode, but his mother is in bad shape. He transports her to the hospital where she needs a blood transfusion of a rare blood type to get stabilized. Knowing that he will be discovered as an EVO, Tommy asks for his blood to be tested in case he is a match. Emily and Brad show up to support him and she argues that he can’t take the risk of being found out. He doesn’t care and does it anyways. He’s not a match and the closest place that has blood is in Indiana, so Tommy whisks Emily and himself off to steal blood and give it to the nurse. To the surprise of no one, the government has tracked the blood and is coming for Tommy, so he needs to leave. Too late! Bad government guys are already at the hospital and they threaten to cut off the blood supply to his mother if he doesn’t come with them. Another EVO has been captured. It doesn’t look good for Team Heroes.
This is my favourite episode so far as it flowed very well and moved the plot forward while ratcheting the tension up a bit. Major things happened in this episode with a main character dying and the psycho couple splitting up among others. I’m still a bit disappointed that we are a third of the way through the season and still have not seen any of the original Heroes characters make an appearance (Mohinder’s narration is a nice touch, but I’m not sure new fans even know who is doing the talking and why it’s significant). For that reason I give this episode a score of 9 out of 10.
Official Episode Synopsis: Renautas reveals its plan to harvest EVOs, while HRG and Quentin look to save Molly Walker, and El Vengador rises from the ashes.
Heroes Reborn airs on Thursday nights at 8pm EST on NBC.
Tai Freligh
(Article originally appeared on Flickering Myth)