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Heroes Reborn – The Needs of the Many Review

“The Needs of The Many” continues to show us exactly why the original Heroes died a painful death all those years ago.

If there was any question that Heroes Reborn is literally nothing but a predictable and generally shallow mess, “The Needs of the Many” will definitely remind you of its failings.

Once again we have our focus split into far too many ways to really get into any depth, and any character changes or revelations we get seemingly come out of left field with the whole purpose to be because the plot needs it to happen.

Tommy and his mom end up in the hospital, and he heroically needs to first get his blood testing to see if he’s a type match, and then after that fails, he has to teleport to get the blood they need. Of course, with his blood tested, the feds find out that he has been a hidden evo and come out to get him. My question is, why didn’t he just go to the nearest blood bank to begin with. Could he have not found some favor with the nurse and told her, “I can get the blood right away, but you can’t ask me how I got it so quickly”? I feel like that would have made so much more sense to do, and would have been the obvious thing do first as a porter.

HEROES REBORN -- "The Needs of Many" Episode 104 -- Pictured: Robbie Kay as Tommy Clark -- (Photo by: Christos Kalohoridis/NBC)
HEROES REBORN — “The Needs of Many” Episode 104 — Pictured: Robbie Kay as Tommy Clark — (Photo by: Christos Kalohoridis/NBC)

If the nurse didn’t favor evos, she would have turned him in regardless of the blood test. If she did have sympathy for them, she could have hidden him further. Now, though, he’s basically captured. If he runs, the “feds” are going to stop treatment of his mother, somehow.

Meanwhile, in what was the point of it, Miko and Ren make their way to Odessa from Tokyo. Of course they do it in the span of a day somehow. It’s almost as if they teleported but clearly we see them take commercial flights. This logistic issue lies solely in the fact that Heroes Reborn has some insane need to show us every single story line in every single episode, and combined with poor editing, is just plain confusing to get a handle of what events happen at what time.

In a car in Tokyo, Ren calls to his followers to meet them in Odessa “tomorrow”, but what does that mean in the global scheme of things? Never mind the idea that they can just hop a plane to Texas and be sneaking around like it was nothing. Even then, once they get there, what do they even do? The whole sequence for them involves a few minutes of plane time where we get some horrifically forced “we’re on a quest” dialogue and then Miko just walking up to the crowd. Without any type of resolution to what’s been going on, I don’t even know why they bothered putting that in the episode.

Meanwhile, Noah and Quentin are busy in Odessa as well continuing to infiltrate (which seemed far to easy) with the help of Taylor. Once we find Molly though, we see that all the captured evos as reduced down to Matrix tables to be human processors for whatever nefarious plan they have. I understand the need to turn Taylor towards their side, but it just seems to happen so quickly. Merely holding her for a little bit to make her ask some pointed questions to her mother Erica seems to be enough to make her abandon her mother and join Noah. Again, it just happens so quickly, and it needs to in order to fit all of these parallel-ish storylines together into a single 45 minute episode. There’s no buildup, there’s no development, just straight point A to point B without any emotional tie from the viewer.

The suicide of Molly Walker also makes little to no sense in the scheme of things. I still don’t understand why she thought she’d be better off running from Noah who at the time clearly wasn’t the worst choice to go with. Then again, when he rescues her, she’d rather off herself than escape with him just defines reason. Clearly he’s not the same kind of person as the past, and she even understands this yet it’s far safer for her to just end it right there. They tried to build her out as a tragic fallen hero as well by her heroic work to hide what I assume is Malina out in the arctic. Had she not let herself be captured in the first place, none of this would have even happened.

Speaking of Malina, we get yet another bit of zero development as to what her purpose will be in the grand scheme. We do get to see that she has a masterful control of the elements and nature, which I assume is how she and Farah managed to get from the middle of the arctic somewhere to middle Canada in the span of a day or so via foot. Also, I’m not sure what the point was of growing a tree in the middle of the woods was other than to give a random hiker (who also comes out of nowhere) the opportunity to see them. Of course that hiker is also a jerk and immediately calls it in.

HEROES REBORN -- "The Needs of Many" Episode 104 -- Pictured: Ryan Guzman as Carlos Gutierrez -- (Photo by: Christos Kalohoridis/NBC)
HEROES REBORN — “The Needs of Many” Episode 104 — Pictured: Ryan Guzman as Carlos Gutierrez — (Photo by: Christos Kalohoridis/NBC)

Meanwhile in storylines that take place in the span of 5 minutes, Carlos continues to be kind of a jerk uncle to Jose while making cliche grand pronouncements “to believe in something bigger than me.” Turning himself into Hispanic-Batman with his own Batmobile (which he basically steals from his nephew), he leaves young Jose to get captured by the dirty cops. All Jose wanted was to go on a joyride with him, and besides it was his and his father’s car to begin with.

HEROES REBORN -- "The Needs of Many" Episode 104 -- Pictured: Zachary Levi as Luke Collins -- (Photo by: John Medland/NBC)
HEROES REBORN — “The Needs of Many” Episode 104 — Pictured: Zachary Levi as Luke Collins — (Photo by: John Medland/NBC)

Finally, we have our favorite murderous duo of Luke and Joanne. Now, after a year of ruthlessly murdering evos to make themselves feel better, Luke has a complete change of heart once he starts to manifest powers. I’m surprised he doesn’t have whiplash from the sudden jerk of running around gunning innocents with a grin on his face to this broody angst at all the death he has reaped. Of course as a “main character”, he’s going to be very important when “The Big Thing” comes later, but until then, we as a view have to suddenly have emotional ties towards him and forget the fact that he up and murdered untold numbers of people. At least with Sylar, we had a season or so of his angst and he attempted slowly to redeem his humanity piece by piece.

Joanne though still proves to be a cold homicidal sociopath that clearly is headed towards teaming up with Erica to wipe out 7 billion people. I think the only reason we can even feel anything for Luke is because of the pure distaste we have for Joanne, who can’t even rationally justify her actions in any way other than seeing all evos as monsters that must be destroyed on sight, regardless of their story, their family, or their role in society. I’m almost surprised she didn’t just shoot Luke, but the plot armor would have saved him regardless of her decision.

It’s hard enough to follow each of these stories each week with such little air time available to them. With such truncated development, it’s even harder to care about the characters and any plot movements require an insane amount of concessions in logic. With 9 more episodes to go, I hope this aimless wandering comes to a focus point soon.

Other Observations

  • Father Mauricio had the slowest transition to smoke possible. Just long enough for him to get incapacitated.
  • Once again, we have the pompous Molinder Suresh berating us with a narration.
  • I guess when the Harris clones die, they return to salt.
  • Why exactly does Farah need to go invisible when she does? First when she was standing next to Malina, then while she was doing her prayers.
  • How did Tommy and Emily get the blood so quickly? It seemed like it took 3 seconds to pop in, get the blood, and come back.
  • How has none in that garage found the secret lair before now anyways?
  • El Vendor becomes El Champion. Seriously?
  • And how did he build all that armor and fix the car so quickly?
  • Ren is “internet famous” with 2000 followers and a million subscribers?
  • I feel like “Digital sheep pedaling their free bikes” is a weirdly specific reference to Google.
  • “Forget the past Noah, save the future” because we haven’t had a good catchphrase yet.
  • Local tracking still functions for EPIC, which with Molly dead doesn’t make any sense. Did they imbue her essence into the technology or something?
  • “The Shadow” appeared in the webisodes from the summer.
  • And for the final bit of copying, Inhumans

By Kien Tran

Based in Dallas, Texas, Kien Tran is an avid television enthusiast. After spending hundreds of hours wasting away on a couch, he decided to actually do something creative with his hobby and created this very blog.

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