With 3 episodes left in this “event” miniseries, we break for the holiday season being no closer to saving the world than when we began. Tommy is still without his memory or real allies, and Malina is stuck with our mass-murdering psycho, Luke. Okay, he’s reformed now, but I’m with Noah—no reason to trust this dude (though Zachary Levi is at least making me feel his pain).
“11:53 to Odessa” is more about moving pieces into place than pushing the story forward. That’s more than a bit frustrating after all the momentum of the flashback Odessa episodes.
So, where do we stand?
Tommy is off for parts unknown. How does he get there?
He wakes up in a beautiful bedroom with a scar on his neck. Erica tried to plug him into her Plot Device, er, machine that siphons Evos’ powers. That didn’t work however, because Tommy is unique; so Erica tries persuasion instead.
Erica is at her most mellow when attempting to talk him over to her (dark) side, which basically means she smiles every now and then. Seriously, how the heck does she have the loyalty of Phoebe, Harris, and the others when she’s so one-dimensional?
Last week, I posited that Tommy couldn’t escape Erica because he’d swapped his time travel power out for either Luke’s or Malina’s. I was mistaken because, once again, it was Phoebe dampening an Evo’s powers. My bad. But, still, given how Erica reveals that she knows nothing about how Tommy’s powers work, by all means, let’s keep the guy who absorbs powers near Phoebe.
That’s bound to go well.
Anyway, Tommy listens to Erica enough to take her to the future haven of Erica’s chosen saviors of mankind. Whether the kid is going along with her or playing her is unclear. If he was swayed by her logic, he’s the dumbest Petrelli ever, and that’s saying something. See: Peter.
Aside: what is with the floor designs in Erica’s office and home? The black and white one this week is as odd as the multi-colored mess in her office.
Whatever Tommy’s intentions, it doesn’t matter, because Miko is still floating around Future-verse. She finds her “father” Otomo and her actual self hooked up to one of those machines that keeps people in comas. Otomo explains to Miko that she is a construct, but he still needs her to save the Master of Time and Space—aka Tommy.
Miko takes this well, even when her father calls the guards on her. As Erica notes, Miko is a persistent construct.
Miko fights her way to Tommy, and they teleport out together, presumably to wherever Otomo’s odd messages are sending Ren. That is the 11:53 bus to Odessa, and there we have our episode title.
Otomo’s ability to send messages to Ren does beg the question of whether Ren is also one of his constructs.
Meanwhile, Malina and Noah bond over what a creepy stalker Luke is being by following them around. I presume they’re headed to Odessa to save the world, but they run into a mega-storm of swirling black dust on the highway. Noah tells Malina to stay put while he assesses the situation, but Malina gets out and, in an impressive display of her abilities, dissipates the storm.
Naturally, the people around her decide to burn the witch, or at least shoot her, instead of being grateful their lives being saved. That’s an argument for Erica’s plan to let most of humanity die.
Luke, lurking around, saves Malina because Noah has vanished.
But how?
Noah was teleported away just before a car landed on him.
Tommy? Hiro? Who knows?
Instead of an interesting development, this feels like yet another frustrating dead end, only serving to drag out the plot.
In our 3rd storyline at Sunstone Manor, Matt is busy torturing Farah for information about Malina. Greg Grunberg plays a decent nice guy, but he makes a great villain—far more so than Erica.
At least he has a motivation: Erica’s promised to save his family. Except, something Matt learns from reading Harris’s mind makes him doubt her word, to say nothing of the fact Harris seems fine with shooting him.
Or, rather, killing the shape-shifter impersonating him. 50/50 odds of getting it right, Harris says.
Worried, Matt consults Micah to find out if he’s still on Erica’s “nice” list. Micah is inside a clear cube, hooked to the internet, and apparently under mind control/brainwashing. Matt seems pleased to find he’s on the list after all. He trusts Erica because of a piece of paper?
That seems short-sighted, but Matt was never the brightest of Evos.
Matt’s distraction allows for Carlos to gain a spine, free his lady love Farah, and team-up with Taylor and her group of Evos infiltrating Sunstone to free Micah. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.
Oh, maybe not, because their big plan seems to be running outside, encountering all the Harris clones, and scattering again.
This crew seriously needs a tactician. Worst. Plan. Ever.
I’m torn about recommending Heroes Reborn. As someone who loved the first season of the original series, this miniseries often showcases what I loved about it, including Noah and Hiro. On the other hand, the new characters, save for Miko, are less than intriguing, and I’m not sure the show’s winning any new fans.
The last 3 episodes had better finish with a bang, because how the show concludes will determine if I’d recommend this miniseries to others.
See you back on January 7th.
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.