SEASON FINALE REVIEW: Heroes Reborn 1×13 “Project Reborn”

It’s over. It’s finally over. I’m just glad we finally reached the conclusion of Heroes Reborn. However, as we witnessed on tonight’s season finale, the story may not actually be over… (spoilers ahead!)

The season finale, entitled “Project Rebirth”, takes place on the final day of Earth’s existence. Solar flares are on their way to destroy the planet, and Erica Kravid and Renautas are dedicated to transporting a portion of the population 8,000 years into the future. Meanwhile, Tommy/Nathan is stuck in this weird vault where time and space are irrelevant, Luke and Malina are trapped in the present-day with the impending solar flares about to kill them, and everything else is just pure chaos.

First off, I thought it was a little dumb how there had to be TWO solar flares. It’s so random. The first one is stopped by Luke after he sacrifices himself, because apparently his Human Torch abilities allowed him to do that for some reason. I’m guessing they made it two flares so that they’d have an excuse to kill off Luke. Pretty lame, if you ask me.

I knew from the last episode that we’d be treated to some video game crap this week, and I wasn’t wrong. Ren and Miko enter the video game world to save Tommy, who is trying to find his way through this weird hallway maze that shows him flashbacks of random memories from his childhood. Thankfully, these flashbacks actually help him unlock his potential and discover his true destiny. Tommy freezes time just as Erica shoots at him.

Here is where the episode kinda picked up. Tommy uses his newfound powers to make a copy of himself. One of the Tommy clones teleports everyone in the room (except for the still-frozen Erica) to safety, while the other one uses the infinite time to find a solution for the solar flare. As Tommy learned from the flashbacks in the maze, he needs to join hands with Malina so that their combined power can save the world. After repeated attempts, he finds out that it won’t work. Instead, they need a conduit – a person to hold both their hands and to direct their power at the flare. The only problem is that this person would die from the sheer amount of power being channeled through their body.

I thought this would’ve been a perfect opportunity for them to defeat Erica by using her as a conduit. Instead, Tommy travels back two days and grabs Noah. Remember a few weeks ago when Noah disappeared during that storm? Looks like it was Tommy who whooshed him away. A nice little twist, but I still wish they used Erica as the conduit.

As one clone of Tommy works with Malina and Noah to stop the flare, the other one works on transporting everyone back from the future. After all is said and done, Tommy finally confronts the still-frozen Erica. He uses the samurai sword to slice off her Gateway transportation watch, then destroys the Gateway portal device once and for all. Since Tommy, Malina, and Noah stopped the solar flare, the future never happened, meaning that the future city of Gateway doesn’t exist. With the disappearance of Gateway, it looks like Erica was blinked out of existence as well. It’s a little confusing unless you’ve been following the timeline very, very closely. That’s why I always get iffy about time travel being introduced in shows; you have to constantly look back to remember what’s going on when.

Now the world can live somewhat peacefully. Unfortunately, not everyone has a happy ending. Quentin’s sister, Phoebe, was a casualty of Erica Kravid’s big plan, and Quentin himself is now incarcerated for his role in the big scheme. Malina lives with her grandmother, Angela Petrelli, and attempts to live a normal life, until she discovers a weird card stuffed into her locker. Elsewhere, Tommy receives a similar card as a tip from a customer at the ice cream shop. I didn’t get a good look, but I think Malina’s card said “the twins” and Tommy’s card said “the destructor” in Latin. What does this mean? The only clue we got was that it might have been the twins’ father who left the parting gifts.

Even though Heroes Reborn was not renewed for a second season, this ending left the show wide open for future installments. Personally, I’m not exactly looking forward to a new season since I thought this one was so poor, but at least the option for continuation is out there.