Television News
Heroes Reborn Review
SPOILER WARNING
Can You Go Home Again?: Heroes Reborn Episodes 1 and 2
Episode 1: Director: Matt Shakman
Episode 2: Director: Greg Beeman
Stars: Jack Coleman, Zachary Levi, Robbie Kay, Kiki Suzemane
Five years is a long time in entertainment and an eternity in television. People’s viewing habits have changed hugely in less than a decade. When Heroes was a big hit on TV, The Walking Dead was just a virus-infected foetus in the minds of the programme makers. The big problem with the show was that, after the huge fanfare of the first season, they didn’t seem to know what to do with it. So we had three more seasons of it digging itself into a bigger hole, messing around with the status quo for arbitrary reasons and then ending in 2010 with its incredibly unsatisfying fourth season. Fast-forward to 2015, to a period where everything old is new again. 2015 has seen Jurassic World, Mad Max and soon we’ll have the X-Files back on TV. So can Heroes with its slightly new agey take on superheroes reclaim its place in a television environment where viewers are so saturated with superheroic content, whether that’s Flash and Arrow on CW or Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter on Fox? The answer is sort of.
Zachari Levy plays hero hunter Luke Collins
Kike Suzekane is Miko Otomo, a girl who lives much of her life in a video game
This double episode opens with the world coming to terms with the presence of superheroic beings on the planet, only to have it all shattered by a terrorist bomb at a conference designed to celebrate these Evos in Odessa, Texas. Of course, Odessa is where Noah Bennet (Jack Coleman) is from so we are reintroduced to Bennet, five years after the end of the last series. Coleman was always the most interesting character in the original run, so it is good news that he is back. So far, everyone else here, mostly, is new to Heroes.
Luke Collins (Zachary Levi) and Joanne Collins (Judith Shekoni)
Jack Coleman returns as Noah Bennet
Noah Bennet (Jack Coleman) is reunited with his friend The Haitian (Jimmy-Jean Louis), returning from the previous run of Heroes
The world has changed here since the original run. People with powers are outcasts, hiding out, with husband and wife team Luke Collins (Zachary Levi) and Joanne Collins (Judith Shekoni) hunting Evos. We are introduced to a lot of new characters including Miko Otomo (Kiki Suzemane), a girl who spends much of her life in a popular video game, and Quentin Frady (Henry Zebrowski), who introduces Bennet to the idea of a new conspiracy. As with the original run, there are too many characters here but the show’s creator Tim Kring and his team are good at managing a big ensemble programme. It is a decent start to proceedings but let’s see if the makers can maintain the plot cohesion without it all going pear-shaped like it did in the fourth series.
JOEL MEADOWS
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