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Episode Reviews

Heroes Reborn – June 13 (Part 2)

“June 13th Part Two” provides all the back story we can handle and works to tie up a lot of loose ends in the plot, but does it merely create even more loopholes to handle with only two episodes left?

This episode spends the entire time giving us the viewer all the back story we could possibly handle into what happened on June 13th, how everyone ended up the way they were, and attempting to cleverly tie everything neatly in a bow that is so hard to do when you introduce time travel paradoxes into a story. Unfortunately, at the very last moment, they manage to mess things up that just break all logic and destroy any benefit of the doubt they might have built up to this point.

HEROES REBORN -- "June 13th - Part Two" Episode 108 -- Pictured: Jack Coleman as HRG -- (Photo by: Christos Kalohoridis/NBC)
HEROES REBORN — “June 13th – Part Two” Episode 108 — Pictured: Jack Coleman as HRG — (Photo by: Christos Kalohoridis/NBC)

Centered around this whole mess is the concept of butterflies affecting the future, which is a completely fair concern (depending on the model of time travel you adhere to). The problem is that if you thought about the paradoxes for a few minutes, they quickly unravel into a mess of carelessness that makes it obvious that the writers didn’t think more than an episode ahead or behind when they wrote the series.

I hate to do a recap, but in this situation it’s actually relevant to the discussion.

HEROES REBORN -- "June 13th - Part Two" Episode 108 -- Pictured: Masi Oka as Hiro Nakamura -- (Photo by: Christos Kalohoridis/NBC)
HEROES REBORN — “June 13th – Part Two” Episode 108 — Pictured: Masi Oka as Hiro Nakamura — (Photo by: Christos Kalohoridis/NBC)

Here’s the sequence of events concerning the time travelers. Hire and Noah go back to June 13, 2014 to stop the bombing of the summit, but Hiro must allow it to happen to save the continuity. Noah and Hiro then end up in the hospital with Angela. They now have Claire’s twins who are destined to save the world. But in order for them to be grown enough to use their powers, Hiro must go back to 1999 with Angela so they will be 16 by the time they are needed.

Meanwhile, future Noah attempts to assassinate Erica before she can execute her dastardly plan, which is the main “butterfly” we have to deal with. She now sees 2015 and 2014 Noah’s together, which means she knows that Hiro is around somewhere. She then goes on to capture 2014 Noah and have Matt Parkman try to extract the info out about Claire’s fate and the fate of the children (of which he only gets the information she’s pregnant but without specifics). Casper saves 2014 Noah and wipes his mind of his grand children and the events of the day, dropping him off back at the summit as if he were injured and lost his memory.

Meanwhile, Erica is now on the hunt for a baby, and by manipulating Quentin (who saves her from bleeding out in this timeline), she is able to control him into working for her instead of Noah.

I don’t really question the fact that in the original timeline, Noah and Hiro had to have gone back to 2014 and end up sending the kids back to 1999. That’s a simple and undisputed plot point. The real pain is when Noah shoots Erica creating all kinds of ripples. Thanks to Noah shooting Erica, everything that happens to Tommy and Malina happens the way it’s supposed to. Malina ends up in a convent until Angela immediately sends her and Farah off to the arctic after Noah reveals he undid all the precautions of hiding them by shooting Erica. This matches the original timeline.

Meanwhile, just after Tommy/Nathan sends off Noah back to 2015, Harris shows up and Nathan has to port out with Casper and his Mother leaving Hiro behind to fight Harris. (Never mind that doesn’t make sense, why would Nathan just not take everyone?) Casper has to wipe Nathan’s mind to prevent him from going back to save Hiro. This also matches with the original timeline where “Tommy” doesn’t remember anything about his past and has no control of his powers or idea about his destiny.

HEROES REBORN -- "June 13th - Part Two" Episode 108 -- Pictured: Danika Yarosh as Malina -- (Photo by: Christos Kalohoridis/NBC)
HEROES REBORN — “June 13th – Part Two” Episode 108 — Pictured: Danika Yarosh as Malina — (Photo by: Christos Kalohoridis/NBC)

But the only reason Harris shows up at Nathan’s home, is because he’s hunting Noah. And the only reason Malina has the photo of Nathan was because Noah show’s up with Nathan at the convent. And the only reason he shows up to the convent is because he shot Erica and had to warn her. The only reason 2014 Noah even gets interrogated was because Erica saw both Noah’s and knew something was up.

If Noah never shot Erica, which is proposed as the original timeline, how does Erica even find out about the twins so quickly? Sure she could trace back Claire’s death records to learn about the twins, but not immediately. She wouldn’t have sent Harris to follow 2015 Noah to Nathan’s home, which means later they wouldn’t have had to all escape leaving Hiro behind, which means Casper wouldn’t have needed to wipe Tommy’s mind. Further more, even in the new timeline, how does Erica not know that there are twins? Wouldn’t that clearly be in the medical records?

So what happens in the original timeline that forces all these events?

Back in episode 2, Noah ends up at the hospital trying to find the security footage and freaks out a doctor who remembers him. What did he even do? In the security video, we see what appears to be 2015 Noah walking around with Molly Walker and random video time jumps. But isn’t Hiro stuck in 1999? How did he go back to 2014 to mess with the security footage?

Also in the current timeline, Quentin is now working for Erica, but is still a close partner with Noah. How does that even happen? Is he playing the spy that works with Noah this whole time? How does Erica even know that Quentin and Noah were working together in the future?

I’m not sure I buy he was a spy in the original timeline, because he clearly had never seen dark Phoebe before, and she probably wouldn’t have gone all dark if she’d been with Quentin the whole time. She also probably wouldn’t have actually killed him. The idea he was a spy in both timelines is pretty far-fetched, which brings us back to why would Quentin end up working with Noah in the new timeline?

They writers could have actually made this entire thing perfectly executed without any real nagging questions if the simply made Erica always have the limp and have always gotten shot in the leg since the start of the series. Then everything that had happened before plays out again like its supposed to minus the weird Quentin/Phoebe/Dark Pheobe plot hole. If Noah always went back in time and always shot Erica, she would always have seen both Noahs, always sent Harris after them, and always forced the children into and out-of hiding. But because she was never shot in the original timeline, none of these events make sense other than to be forced to match the plot points already established.

Meanwhile, we have some pointless plot between Carlos and Farah, who happen to be in the same squad together. Carlos continues to be the most pointless character of the whole show, and unless he pulls something amazing out of his hat in the next two weeks, i have to question why he even exists.

HEROES REBORN -- "June 13th - Part Two" Episode 108 -- Pictured: Judith Shekoni as Joanne Collins -- (Photo by: Christos Kalohoridis/NBC)
HEROES REBORN — “June 13th – Part Two” Episode 108 — Pictured: Judith Shekoni as Joanne Collins — (Photo by: Christos Kalohoridis/NBC)

We also get to see how Luke and Joanne becoming murdering psychopaths, or at least how Joanne quickly becomes a psychopath while Luke looks on in horror. He does try to justify it to himself, and at some point, he goes from horrified to enjoying murder himself. I find it hard to believe that he would just go along with hunting down people considering his shocked and horrified at his wife’s attitude reaction.

Heroes Reborn just proved to everyone that the show has no idea what it’s doing and clearly writes episodes week to week with complete disregard to anything that happened previously. I feel like the whole show must have been roughly storyboarded on a whiteboard with just the main plot point of “twins get sent back in time to be old enough to save the world today” with the every episode being written to fit the main plot on a week by week basis. Any thought on how the episodes would actually relate to each other wasn’t even a consideration. It wouldn’t even surprise me if they wrote the episode and sent it to production before they even started the next one.

With two more episodes, I’m not sure what else we can expect other than the final 11:53 clock tower finale in Odessa, because that’s not anything like another time travel story that involved a clock tower as a key instrument.

Other Observations

  • Seriously, why does Hiro need to stay behind?
  • Can Hiro really defeat the Harris’s without his power?
  • Why exactly does Matt Parkman let them go?
  • At what point does Otomo hide Hiro’s sword for Miko to find it later? Also, at what point does Otomo modify the Evernow code to provide the secret whatever that Ren finds leading him to Miko?
  • What does Miko even do for the next year? Why does she not go out and find her father who she clearly sees getting taken?
  • Why didn’t everyone just peace out of their homes once they knew Harris was coming?
  • Seriously, what the hell happens in the original 2014 timeline?

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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