Two episodes left in this mini-series, and we still don’t have the twins united. That’s a good indication of everything wrong with this show.
It had an intriguing start that centered around Noah Bennett (Jack Coleman) and his twin grandchildren, with several characters meandering in and out, but the two-part time travel episode where Hiro (Masi Oka) finally appeared actually got me excited for the show.
Of course, that’s just when the show went off the air, blowing away any momentum it had. I have to wonder if NBC thought they could just sneak in the last three episodes, because I’ve seen so little marketing for the show’s return. Do they already consider it a failed experiment?
Either way, tonight featured a few advances in the story. Too few, but we’ll take what we can get. We have three basic plots that intersect:
1. Malina (Danika Yarosh) and Luke (Zachary Levi) are on the run and dismayed by Noah’s strange disappearance. We know this because Malina keeps staring at Noah’s broken glasses. Luke stops for ammunition because his powers are unreliable at night. “We are in Missouri, you know, we could get you your own gun,” he offers to Malina.
Isn’t he sweet?
She declines the offer though, and quickly regrets it, as Phoebe (Aislinn Paul), Quentin (Henry Zebrowski), and a Harris (Clé Bennett) clone hunt them. But, Luke turns the tables and captures Phoebe and Quentin. Alas, Malina stops Luke from killing them and instead says they have to take the two with them.
I don’t know about you but that seems like a VERY. BAD. IDEA.
2. Tommy (Robbie Kay), Erica (Rya Kihlstedt), and Otomo (Kiki Sukezane) are in the far future. Erica tells Otomo that all she has left to sway Tommy are her “powers of persuasion.” As Erica possesses exactly zero charisma, she’s in trouble.
Right now, she’s worried about Katana Girl running around creating problems. She tells Otomo to “do your job” and fix the problem. I had a quick vision of Erica wearing a New England Patriots hoodie and a headset. However, if Belichick were running this show, it’d be a lot more organized.
Tommy talks with Miko/Katana Girl and they bond over a 9th Wonders comic that has a scene with them talking inside. Random, but okay. Tommy’s still not sure Erica is on the good side (Really, kid, what gave you that idea?) but he sends Miko over into our third plot, the rescue at Sunstone Manor.
3. Miko is just what the Sunstone Manor crew needs because Ren (Toru Uchikado) and Taylor (Eve Harlow) make the utterly stupid mistake of interrogating Matt (Greg Grunberg), a telepath. Yes, curse his sudden but inevitable betrayal. Haven’t they watched Jessica Jones?
See also: Jessica Jones Review: Season 1, Episodes 1-4
Matt escapes with Taylor in tow, apparently to blackmail Erica into taking his family away from the End of the World.
Miko has no such distractions. She knows her destiny is to stop Harris. Why Harris doesn’t attack and overwhelm her with his army of clones, I have no idea, except the plot compelled him to fight her one-on-one. But then, Harris has always been a plot device/cipher. Miko wins after a cool fight sequence and chops off Harris’s head. A cipher killed by a girl who isn’t real—poetic justice.
Inside Sunstone, Farrah (Nazneen Contractor) and Carlos (Ryan Guzman)—now in his superhero gear—rescue Micah (Noah Gray-Cabey) from being a plugged-in drone. Father Mauricio (Carlos Lacamara) helps. “Water to wine, flesh to powder, we do what we can,” he says. It’s one of the best lines of the episode. Too bad it’s the good Father’s last words as he’s shot and killed by a random Sunstone guard.
The good news is that Micah is free, and he told the whole world, via his power, that Erica is evil. Go Team Carlos/Farrah/Micah.
The bad news is that there’s only two days, er, episodes, to go before The End of the World™.
This miniseries should have been truncated. We already had an episode with a Sunstone Manor breakout. We already had Erica talk to Tommy about saving the world her way. We already saw Tommy waver. We already had the twins running around to find each other. Instead of moving on with new twists, there is more of the same, despite the few new developments.
The ending of this series will have to be epic to overcome the show’s flaws.
But, hey, I’m sticking around to find out if Noah gets his glasses back.
Corrina Lawson is a writer, mom, geek and superhero, though not always all four on the same day. She is a senior editor of the GeekMom blog at Wired and the author of a superhero romance series and an alternate history series featuring Romans and Vikings in ancient North America. She has been a comic book geek all her life and often dreamed of growing up to be Lois Lane.