Series / Heroes Reborn (2015)

aka: Heroes Reborn

Heroes Reborn is a 13-episode Mini Series and continuation of Heroes, airing on NBC in Fall 2015.

The series takes place five years after Claire Bennet's revelation of the existence of special humans, and one year after a tragic terrorist attack happens in Odessa, Texas. The government has blamed special humans for the loss of life, forcing the surviving specials who haven't been killed or taken into custody to go into hiding, alongside those associated with them. Noah Bennet is soon talked out of hiding by a Conspiracy Theorist named Quentin Frady to take a deeper look into the attack, while a new cast of characters discover their latent special abilities.

It did not receive a second season.

The show's website is here, and the official trailer can be seen here.

Not to be confused with the The Avengers and Fantastic Four storyline, Heroes Reborn.

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This show provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Brad's stepfather is a drunkard who does nothing but watch TV all day and beat on Brad.
• Advertised Extra: The original cast members (especially Hiro Nakamura), who are featured prominently in promos even for episodes in which they don't appear. Averted with Matt Parkman, who plays a major role in the second half of the series.
• Anyone Can Die: By the series finale, Claire, Noah, Molly, Joanne, Luke, Phoebe, Hiro, Harris, Erica and Caspar are all dead. Compared to the original series, that's pretty high for a show that only lasted thirteen episodes.
• Apocalypse How: Class 4. The characters discover that soon, the Earth's magnetic poles will reverse, during which time 96% of the planet's species will be wiped out by a coronal mass ejection. In the final episode, Tommy and Malina manage to avert this, at the cost of Luke and Noah's lives.
• Back for the Dead:
  • Rene returns in the first episode and has a bullet in his heart shortly afterwards. He's alive and well in the new timeline and leading the Hero_Truther group. Too bad Matt manages to successfully override Rene's ability and mind-control him to "go home".
  • Molly Walker is reintroduced for three episodes as a young adult hiding from Renautas before killing herself to prevent Erica Kravid from locating Nathan and Malina.
  • Claire Bennet. See under Death by Childbirth.
• Battle Couple: Carlos and Farah in their Army days and when they reunite as prisoners at Sunstone Manor and escape. She even gets annoyed when he takes out a Harris clone before she could.
  Farah: I had him! [Carlos smirks at her]
• Big Bad: Erica Kravid is the main antagonistic force. She's using her company, Renautas, to gather specials and digitize their powers before killing them, and she's a big part of the anti-"evo" movement.
• Big "NO!": Erica gives one as Nathan!Tommy leaves her ahead alone in the future that will soon cease to exist.
• Bilingual Dialogue:
  • The Gutierrez family converse in English and Spanish to each other.
  • Ren addresses his social media in English, while explaining in Japanese to Miko about what he's doing.
  • In "Game Over", Miko, Ren, Hiro, Noah, and Harris switch between English and Japanese in conversation. In "June 13th - Part 2", Hiro and Nathan!Tommy do the same. In "Company Woman", Ren is having an English conversation and breaks into Japanese when he's thinking out loud.
• Bittersweet Ending: The world is safe from the HELE, Tommy and Emily are in a happy relationship, Malina is doing well in school and is reunited with her brother, Carlos and Farah have patched up their relationship and are working with Jose to keep their neighborhood safe, and Ren and the Otomos have safely returned to Japan. However, Noah Bennet and Luke Collins die so the twins can eliminate the HELE, Quentin is in police custody for killing his sister, and the twins' mysterious biological father is coming to find them with sinister plans in store.
• Blackmail: Brad threatens to tell Tommy's secret unless Tommy makes his stepfather disappear.
• Blessed with Suck: How Tommy views his power. Because of it, he spent time as a child held captive at Primatech, and after he got out he and his mom have had to move often, whenever someone finds out about his power. He just wants to be normal.
  • It's later revealed that Tommy knew everything from the start and actually embraced his powers, being guided by his adopted father Hiro in Odessa. However, Caspar altered his memories of his entire life to make him harder to find.
• Bolivian Army Ending: Hiro. The last time we see him, he's fighting off Harris and his clones. However, considering he isn't mentioned again and was Brought Down to Normal, it's highly probable he died.
• Bootstrapped Theme: Downplayed, but the piano composition that's usually Mohinder's leitmotif appears in an epilogue scene that has nothing to do with him.
• Bottomless Magazines: During his and Joanne's escape from Primatech, Luke shoots out eight light fittings with a handgun and still has enough bullets left to shoot several people.
  • This is actually possible, as the average semi-automatic handgun carries between thirteen to seventeen rounds (in 9MM, the most common semi-auto caliber available).
• Bus Crash: Claire Bennet died from giving birth before the start of the series.
• Butterfly of Doom: Hiro is very concerned about this in "June 13th, Part One", which is why he tries to limit his interference in the past. He apparently tries different ways of changing the events of June 13th, but he declares that there are "too many butterflies" and every alternate future is actually worse. However, Noah is not so disciplined and changes the future by trying to kill Erica Kravid, which leads to him being captured and the bad guys finding out Claire died and had kids.
• The Cassandra: In "June 13th", Angela tells Suresh of her vision of Earth ravaged by the HELE event and that only the Evos can save it. However, Erica is going to kill the Evos and let the event happen with only those she chooses saved. Angela also tells Suresh that his team have been killed and Erica is setting him up. Because of Angela's past of manipulation, Suresh doesn't believe her...and regrets it.
• Catchphrase: At first, Caspar always says "Penny for your thoughts?" before he wipes someone's memory. Hiro still says, "Yatta!"
• Chekhov's Skill: Ren's skill and experience playing Evernow is repeatedly useful for navigating real-world locations which levels are based on and untlimately for entering the Eternal Fortress and freeing Tommy.
• Child by Rape: Taylor was conceived when Erica was extorted by an evo to have sex with him.
• The Chosen One: Tommy and Malina are the only ones who can save the world from a global extinction event.
• Cliffhanger: The miniseries ends with new plot threads opened leading into the games Gemini and Enigma.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: In the first episode, Miko easily incapacitates several Renautas security guards, but Harris Prime floors her with a single punch.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Quentin Frady. He's convinced that something else was behind the Odessa attack, especially since Phoebe is framed as one of the suspects, and he manages to track down Noah Bennet and convince him to come out of hiding to look deeper. He meets Micah Sanders, who tells him that he needs to find Bennet after finding evidence that Phoebe was kidnapped and framed by Renautas Corporation.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Dark Matters makes several references to the parent series, such as the Primatech burning down incident, which was in "Dual". Renautas Corporation got their hands on Primatech's files and has been tracking down specials ever since.
  • The password for the secret Evo meeting at the beginning of the premiere is "Cockroach", referencing Suresh's speech about cockroaches in the pilot of Heroes.
  • Tommy collects 9th Wonder comics, which are featured in the parent series and written by a character from there.
  • The middle school that Carlos gives a speech at is called Linderman Middle School and Tommy's new high school is called Pinehearst High School.
  • When Noah, Taylor, and Quentin discover the room of Evos, including Taylor's boyfriend Francis, plugged into the EPIC system, Noah quickly deduces that Erica has discovered another way to harvest powers, referring to Sylar's more fatal methods.
    Noah: I once knew a man who could harvest people's powers through their brains. He collected them and used them for his own ends.
• Curse Cut Short: Quentin cursing gets cut off by a commercial break.
  Quentin: Holy sh—
• Cynicism Catalyst: Luke and Joanne were Happily Married but lost their child in the Odessa attack, which spurred them to murder specials in revenge for their loss.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Tommy is wanted in three states because he can't control his powers, and when he was a child, he was held at Primatech.
• Darker and Edgier: The show's storyline is much darker, with all the evolved humans having gone into hiding or been killed by anti-Evo actions, especially after a tragic terrorist attack in Odessa was blamed on them. Noah Bennet has been in hiding, too, and had his memories wiped.
• Death by Childbirth: In the time skip since Heroes, Claire became pregnant and went into labor the day of the Odessa bombing. Unfortunately, one of her babies stole her healing factor and she died while giving birth to them.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: Poor Mohinder. For extra credit, Renautas has a shapeshifter impersonate him and basically go, "It was me, I did it, muhahaha I'm so bad and evil!"
• Decoy Protagonist: The prequel miniseries Dark Matters sets up Phoebe Frady as its protagonist but by Episode Four, the focus has shifted to her brother Quentin thanks to Phoebe being used as a scapegoat for the Odessa bombing and presumed dead until Episode Six - where she appears to be a future antagonist.
• Deuteragonist: Noah. He's not a full on decoy protagonist, as he does eventually help Tommy and Malina save the world. However, the further along the show goes, the less focus his character is given, and it becomes more apparent that Tommy and Malina are the real heroes whereas Noah's role is to aid them as much as possible.
• Dirty Cop: Captain Dearing and several of his acolytes are working off the books as mercenaries to capture evolved humans for money. Dearing, himself, has Super Strength and easily kicks Carlos's ass. He also kidnaps Jose and Father Mauricio in hopes of capturing the underground railroad.
• Disappeared Dad: Taylor's father is not mentioned before "Company Woman", when we discover he was an Evo who coerced her mother into having sex with him. Then he tried to take Taylor from her after he found out, and Erica killed him. Additionally, Tommy and Malina's birth father hasn't been revealed, as Claire died without telling anyone.
• Disney Villain Death: Phoebe, who's shot out of a high-up window.
• Do Not Adjust Your Set: Hero_Truther (Micah Sanders) hijacks every video feed on the planet to get the word out about Erica's lies and manipulations.
• The Dragon: Harris Prime is Erica's main henchman.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: In "Send in the Clones", Miko, before disintegrating for good, kills Harris Prime in a duel, simultaneously destroying his clone army.
• Elemental Powers: Malina's power interacts with nature. She can make plants grow, can control water, seems able to control or at least communicate with bees, and apparently can even hold back the Earth's magnetic poles from switching.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: Nathan!Tommy learns how to be in two places at once in the finale, which comes in very handy for solving his Sadistic Choice problem.
• The Elites Jump Ship: This is basically Renautas's plan.
• Everyone Is Related: Tommy and Malina are revealed to be the long-lost children of Claire Bennet.
• Expanded Universe: Just like its parent series, there will also be comics, novels, and webisodes that will expand the storyline as well as a mobile app and two videogames, Gemini and Enigma. According to Tim Kring, they are all canon as well.
• Face–Heel Turn:
  • Due to agreeing with Erica Kravid, Phoebe Frady joins up with her, becoming "the Shadow".
  • Matt Parkman joins up with Renautas to help his family, though he's reluctant to act against Noah Bennet. He's also the director of Sunstone Manor, presumably brainwashing them into staying there.
  • Due to a bout of Time Travel and an issue with the Butterfly of Doom when Future!Noah shot Erica, Quentin is on her side in the present day.
• False Flag Operation The Odessa bombing was really carried out by Renautas to amplify anti-evo sentiment.
• Fantastic Racism: Ever since Claire's reveal, people with evolved powers are forced to register with the government and businesses refuse to hire them, placing "We Hire Humans" signs where they can be seen. In fact, when Phoebe heads to a job fair on campus, the only place that will accept her internship application is Renautas. Erica Kravid's words to Noah in private make it clear she considers specials non-human, and her actions make it clear she hates them.
• Fling a Light into the Future: A rare villainous example. Renautas's ultimate plan is to allow the apocalypse to happen, capture or recruit as many specials as possible, use their powers to send select people and resources in the future, and recolonize the planet under their iron grip while they let the present world burn.
• Follow the Leader:
  • In-universe, evolved humans have copied Claire's reveal, by filming themselves saying their name and "This is attempt number [x]." This is how Phoebe reveals to Quentin that she has a power.
  • Out-of-universe, Heroes Reborn aired during the time of renewed interest in superhero TV shows.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • Just from the trailer for Dark Matter alone, things will go bad for Phoebe and lead to her disappearance, which kicks off Quentin's search for her, eventually bringing him into contact with Noah Bennet. For one, she's framed as one of the suspects in the Odessa bombing, with Mohinder accused of being the mastermind. In episode four, she's seen to be a Renautas weapon, "the Shadow".
  • "June 13th, Part One" shows Angela promising that she would raise her great-grandchildren and keep them safe. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen as the children are Tommy and Malina and Tommy was raised separately by Anne, with Angela's fate currently unknown.
• Forgot About Her Powers: Molly Walker, of all people, aimlessly wandering the wreckage of the Odessa bombing yelling, "MOHINDER? MOHINDER?" makes very little sense. Also, Matt uses his ability to threaten Erica, when you'd think he could have used his usual Jedi mind trick on her instead.
• For Want Of A Nail: Time travel in the "June 13th" two-parter undoes two characters' deaths, but causes one of them to perform a Face–Heel Turn.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Quentin hacks into Renautas' archive of Primatech's files, with folders referring to events in the original series and separate entries just for Noah Bennet, Adam Monroe, Samuel Sullivan, and Sylar.
• Fun with Subtitles: Each time non-English dialogue is used or there's a Title In, the subtitles are placed against an object in the scene or follows along with the speaker.
• Fugitive Arc: Most of the specials have gone into hiding or been killed since the Odessa attack. Mohinder has proven very hard to find, especially since he's accused of orchestrating the Odessa bombing. Quentin isn't a special, but he's on the run after Renautas ambushes his meeting with Micah.
  • After the bombing, Oscar took it upon himself to help guide specials on the run to safety in Canada, getting assistance from his church priest. The priest himself is also a special, like Oscar.
• Gender Bender: In "Sundae, Bloody Sundae" (episode 9), the Evo named Henry will use this ability to transform into Erica Kravid.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The promotional materials and teaser trailer show that Claire's revelation did not go over well with the public. Four years later, a tragic terrorist attack in Odessa is pinned on specials, forcing most of them to go in hiding from anti-evo factions. Claire Bennet died the day of the bombing, Noah has amnesia and is living under an alias, Mohinder has been labeled a terrorist and was killed in the Odessa bombing, and Hiro has been a Renautas prisoner.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Averted in the flashback when Erica's father finds out that she's pregnant and says he'll support whatever decision she makes. She continues her pregnancy though.
• Good Powers, Bad People: After Erica's father became sick, she asked for the help of a doctor who had the ability to heal others. The doctor healed her father, but sexually extorted her as repayment. He later impregnated her, causing her to give birth to Taylor, and decided he would take Taylor away. Erica killed him to prevent this.
• Good Is Not Soft: Nathan!Tommy cuts Erica's gateway watch off her wrist so she won't be taken back to the present with everyone else, leaving her trapped in a future that will soon cease to exist. He then gives her a sarcastic salute before he goes.
• Heel–Face Turn: Quentin has Luke at gunpoint and is preparing to shoot him, but then hands the gun back to Luke. Luke makes it clear there's no turning back and the decision's permanent, and Quentin agrees.
  • Luke has one himself after Malina stops him from killing himself, and he goes from killing Evos to helping them.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Hiro stays behind to hold off the Harrises from catching Tommy. Undermined by the fact that Tommy could have easily teleported him to safety without the risk of getting caught in the process, making it a blatant case of Stupid Sacrifice.
  • Caspar dies protecting Emily from an enraged and unbalanced Joanne Collins.
  • Luke uses his power to absorb and counter the first solar flare and dies in the process.
  • Someone has to act as a conduit in order for The Chosen Ones to safely combine their powers, but doing so will kill him or her. Noah Bennet agrees to do so.
• Heroic Suicide: Molly Walker shoots herself to prevent Erica Kravid from committing genocide with her (unwilling) help.
• Hidden Depths: Erica Kravid is portrayed straightforwardly as a manipulative, power-hungry villain, but then it's shown that she genuinely loves her daughter and wants the best for her.
• History Repeats: Hero_Truther / Micah states in one of his videos that despite the lessons of history, people are once again giving in to prejudice and discrimination.
• I Have Your Wife:
  • Hachiro Otomo works for Erica Kravid and Renautas because they have his comatose daughter and are promising to heal her.
  • A doctor once held ransom the prospect of healing a teenage Erica's father from his terminal illness in order to force her to have sex with him.
  • Matt Parkman holds Erica's daughter and fetal grandchild hostage to secure passage for his family to the future.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Tommy just wants to survive high school and ask out the girl of his dreams. He and his mother are in hiding because of his ability.
• Idiot Ball:
  • Noah letting Erica ramble on about her plan instead of just shooting her and solving the problem right away.
  • Noah and his allies undermine their counter-plan by having Caspar erase Nathan's memories of Hiro, leaving him in poor control of his power when simply time traveling to the point where Erica intends to enact her plan was a more logical option. Saving the human race is worth stepping on a few butterflies.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: Matt's threat to make Taylor commit Psychic-Assisted Suicide gets a little extra oomph when he tells Erica about Taylor's pregnancy, proving he'll really do anything to save his family from the HELE.
• Internal Reveal: Once he's set free, Hero_Truther reveals Erica's plan to the world at large through the Internet.
• Irony: Situational: Luke Collins's son Dennis had a medical condition that made him burn severely and instantly in direct sunlight. A year after Dennis's death, Luke manifests an ability that empowers him in direct sunlight.
• Jerk Jock: Brad is a subversion. At first, he acts like your stereotypical bully, aggravating Tommy and trying to blackmail him once he learns that he's an evo. However, the only thing he wanted was to make his abusive stepfather disappear, and once he does, he becomes Tommy's friend.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Miko's power is tied to a katana. Drawing the sword from its sheath sends her into the world of Evernow and resheathing it sends her back to the real world.
• Kiss of Life: Carlos does this in an attempt to wake up a drugged and unconscious Farah. Subverted in that she was already awake from when he slapped her in his first attempt to wake her up; she just wanted him to kiss her.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia:
  • Noah has lost his memories and is living in exile, and it's not until Quentin finds him and convinces him that he decides to dig deeper. He had Caspar erase and alter his memories of June 13th, so that Erica wouldn't be able to use him to find the location of Claire's children.
  • Tommy Clarke, who is really Claire's time-displaced son Nathan. He grew up raised by Hiro and Anne knowing who he was, how to control his power, and what he needed to do. His memory was almost completely rewritten by Caspar on June 13th to make it harder for Renautus to find him and to keep him from stopping Hiro's Heroic Sacrifice, leaving him only with memories of his mother and turning him into the sullen teenager he is at the start of the show.
  • Erica had Caspar Abraham wipe Taylor's memory of her father coming, trying to take her away, and Erica then killing him.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Matt Parkman. At the end of the series, he crashes his car near a river and gets trapped inside.
• Leave Him to Me!: Harris Prime says this to his clones regarding Miko in "Send in the Clones".
• Love Makes You Evil: Matt loves his (ex?-)wife and son so much he'd do anything to save them from the HELE. Even helping Renautas round up evos. Even threatening to kill Erica's daughter and future grandchild.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Quentin holds up surprisingly well when Luke and Joanne shoot him in the arm.
• Mama Bear: Erica Kravid killed Taylor's father to protect her from him.
• Meaningful Name:
  • "Renautas" is a typical trademark-ese garbling of Latin "renatus", "re-born". Erica's ultimate plan is to let humanity go extinct and start over with humans and evos strictly segregated; humans enjoying a utopia and evos plugged into machines so humans can use their powers without need for their consent.
  • Phoebe's name is meaningful and ironic given her power; it means, "radiant one".
  • "Ever-now", where there is no past and no future, is the perfect place to imprison a time traveler.
• Medal of Dishonor: Carlos Gutierrez and a fellow soldier arranged for Carlos to take credit for something the other did, in order to hide the other soldier's use of her power. Carlos was awarded a medal and branded a hero for his "bravery" and is ashamed of the accolades because in reality he was hiding at the time.
• Medium Blending: Whenever Miko enters Evernow, the medium shifts to video game graphics.
• MegaCorp: Renautas Corporation is a massive biotech firm specializing in working with powers. All of Primatech's surviving information is under their control and they are the culprits behind the Odessa bombing.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The first full trailer make believe you the the Collins are main villains. Wrong..
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Claire revealing the existence of specials to the world led to them being registered, later framed for terrorism, and hunted worldwide. Not a smart move considering the exact same thing happened in Season 3 of Heroes but this time it's public and on a worldwide scale.
  • Although there is no way he could have foreseen the consequences; Tommy teleporting Luke and Joanne to Primatech leads to them murdering several people and destroying Primatech's data on Molly Walker during their escape, shooting Quentin in the arm, and stealing Noah's car which contains the names and addresses of a huge number of specials.
  • Noah undoes all the precautions he and Angela took to hide the existence of Claire's babies and changes the future by trying to kill Erica Kravid. Ironically, this is what establishes the events of the series up to that point. This results in more trouble for those he wants to hide the existence of, but also leaves Quentin alive... and having made a Face–Heel Turn.
• No Ontological Inertia: All of the Harris clones die as Harris Prime does.
• Off with His Head!: Harris Prime gets decapitated.
• Parenthetical Swearing: Erica calling Miko a "tenacious little construct" in a tone that makes you realize you can't spell "construct" without... all the letters in "cunt" jumbled up a little.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Miko, a petite young woman, is able to successfully take down seven or eight security guards larger than herself in quick succession.
• Plot-Relevant Age-Up: Tommy and Malina were actually born the day of the Odessa bombing in 2014. In order to protect them from Renautas, who are still looking for a year-old toddler in 2015, Noah has Hiro transport them and Angela back in time to 1999 to allow them to grow up naturally until they became teenagers in the present day.
• Power Nullifier: Phoebe Frady's darkness-creating ability nullifies other specials' powers like an eclipse does. Tommy/Nathan, like his uncle and great-grandfather, can absorb other specials' abilities, but when he does the other person loses his or her power.
• Prequel: Dark Matter is a digital mini-series expanding Quentin's ties to the main series. His sister Phoebe is an evolved human and is the main character of the miniseries.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: "Send in the Clones" has Matt force two of the Harris clones to kill themselves when they try to take Taylor from him. In "Company Woman" he uses the threat of it, making Taylor pick up his gun and put it to her head so Erica will give his family passes into Gateway.
• Rape as Backstory: Erica's Freudian Excuse for hating evolved humans is that when she was a teenager a doctor with a healing power promised to cure her father's terminal illness. This was at the cost of him having sex with her, got her pregnant, and years later expressed a disturbing interest in her daughter and declared his intent to take her with him. Erica learned of and got involved with Renautas when Caspar visited her about the doctor. In every episode both before and after she's portrayed as a power-hungry schemer willing to let the world burn, but for this one episode they play the rape card to make her a sympathetic character just long enough for Taylor's claim that she'd rather die than live in the future with Erica to hurt.
• Regretful Traitor: Quentin is a good guy until he gets conned into helping Erica Kravid. He kidnaps Tommy when Tommy's found and starts working openly with Renautas. However, when he sees how far they're willing to go and what working for them has done to Phoebe, he has a Heel Realization and joins the good guys again.
• Redemption Equals Death: Luke Collins sacrifices himself to stop the first solar flare and buy Malina and Tommy more time, after saying something about how he doesn't deserve to live.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Matt Parkman gets a karmic version of this. His obsession to make up with his estranged family distracts him enough that he drives off the road and ends up trapped in his broken car, injured, with the watches he extorted out of Erica for them lost, unable to do anything but wait for the apocalypse.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Everything Luke and Joanne do is revenge for the death of their son in the Odessa attack.
• Rule of Drama: The researcher who accidentally acts as a conduit for the twins' powers died immediately, but Noah, after being a conduit for much longer and on a much larger scale, lives just long enough for some last words.
• Sadistic Choice:
  • In the finale, Quentin has to choose between killing his sister or letting her stop the protagonists from saving the world.
  • Also in the finale, Erica Kravid presents Tommy with a choice between letting the world end in the present day or saving it and thereby erasing from existence the future they're currently in and the lives of the thousands of people (including his girlfriend and adoptive mother) who were brought there.
• Secret-Keeper:
  • Tommy is worried he's going to have to go into hiding again after he gets caught. Emily promises not to tell anyone.
  • Emily's boyfriend finds out and threatens to expose him unless Tommy makes his stepfather disappear.
• Self-Duplication: Harris can create autonomous clones by cutting off a part of himself and healing from both ends. Killing Harris Prime will kill all of his clones, too.
• Separated at Birth: Claire Bennet gives birth to fraternal twins but dies shortly after. In order to protect the children, they're sent back in time with Angela by Hiro and placed under the watch of Farah, Caspar, and Anne. The children are, in fact, Tommy and Malina. They have to be separated because if they get too close, then one will absorb the other's power.
• Sequel Hook: In the epilogue montage, Tommy and Malina receive tarot cards, and Angela tells Malina that they are from their father, who's coming after them, and that nothing can protect them from him.
• Sequel Series: The series is a sequel to Heroes.
• Ship Sinking: "Game Over" sinks the budding Ren/Miko ship, as Miko isn't even human, but an advanced program, and she sacrifices herself in Evernow to release Hiro Nakamura, who's been trapped inside the game.
  • Or maybe not: "11:53 to Odessa" reveals that she's not dead; she was just teleported to the future, and now she's on her way back, and Otomo is trying to arrange for Ren to meet up with her again.
  • With Miko's disintegration in "Send in the Clones" it seems sunk for good, unless Hachiro's trying to play matchmaker between Ren and the real Miko, which seems ready to work after Hachiro tells her about Ren risking his life to save her.
• Shout-Out:
  • In Game Over, which aired on October 22, 2015, just a couple days after Marty and Doc Brown's arrival in the future, we find out that a major Renautus campus is located at an address of "88 Hill Valley Road".
  • Ren's Love Confession to Miko is a direct quote from The Empire Strikes Back:
    Ren: Miko...daisuki da yo.^note "I love you."
    Miko: Shiteiru.^note "I know."
  • Hiro says, "Great scott!" when he sees Harris's clones appear. Also, Angela says Noah came "Back from the future."
  • Another Star Wars one: male and female twins born to a mother who died in childbirth and fated to save the world? Hell, the next episode promo even calls them "a new hope."
• Slipping a Mickey: Molly Walker is captured by two bounty hunters sent by Renautas via a drugged drink.
• So Proud of You: Noah Bennet says this to his grandchildren after they save the world.
• Stable Time Loop: Established to have occurred due to the events of "June 13th - Part 1 and 2". Well, mostly stable...
• The Stoic: Hachiro Otomo, Miko's father, maintains his stoicism in the face of dire threats and when his life is on the line. Miko likewise remains stoic in the face of interrogation.
• Stupid Sacrifice: There was no logical reason why Hiro Nakamura had to stay behind when Erica's men came for Tommy. He could have been teleported along with everyone else, but senselessly chose to stay behind.
• Super Registration Act: The government imposes one in the wake of the Odessa bombing, forcing evos to not only register but submit to implanted tracking devices.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Several of the new cast members are reminiscent of original series characters at their introduction, but as the storylines continue there are some interesting subversions as well.
  • Tommy Clarke is a male Claire Bennet with the Healing Factor being swapped for an Open and Shut-type ability. His power appears at first to be a retread of Steven Canfield's, but is revealed to be closer to Hiro's. It is in fact Hiro's power, which he unintentionally stole from Hiro, but he doesn't know how to use it properly. Appropriately enough, he turns out to be Claire's son and to have had Hiro as an adoptive father.
  • Carlos' description makes him sound similar to Niki Sanders. He's trying to save his family, he's implied to have Super-Strength, and according to his actor he has mental issues. He doesn't have an ability, the Super-Strength was his brother's.
  • Malina's Jumped at the Call-attitude is suspiciously similar to Peter Petrelli's Chronic Hero Syndrome. Like great-uncle, like grandniece.
  • Luke Collins is a powerless Sylar. And then he discovers he's developing Ted Sprague's power.
  • As well as their nationalities, Ren and Miko both have similarities to Hiro Nakamura. Ren has the nerdier facets of his character, and Miko his Chronic Hero Syndrome and drive to follow a destiny. She also has the katana of Takezo Kensei, Hiro's Iconic Item, which her father stole from him.
  • Young woman working for her parent's company in capturing specials? Are we talking about Taylor Kravid or Elle Bishop?
  • Caspar Abraham's name is not said in the first few episodes, but he's referred to as the penny guy, just like how Noah Bennet was referred to as "the guy with horn-rimmed glasses" at the start of Heroes. He also has a power similar to The Haitian, thus combining the two characters into one.
• Sword Fight: Miko wields her katana against various sword-wielding enemies in Evernow. In the real world, she wields a makeshift naginata vs. Harris wielding a giant silver battle-ax.
• Take a Third Option: When Erica presents him with a Sadistic Choice (see above), Tommy decides to take a third option: put himself in two places at once and have one of him send all those people back while the other goes back in time and saves the world.
• Taking the Bullet: An invisible Farah takes one meant for Malina.
• Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo: Most of the Japan-related elements are very old-fashioned and/or would-be futuristic (although the video game graphics actually look like they're ten years out of date). Otomo's apartment◊ is a good one: bonsai tree, paper cranes, painted lacquer walls, and a round shoji-style window in a highrise building.
• This Cannot Be!: Erica's reaction when Tommy tells her that thanks to her having him trapped in Evernow he's literally had an eternity to learn how to use his power to be in two places at once.
• Time Skip: The show's events take place five years after Claire's revelation of the existence of evolved humans and one year after a horrible terrorist attack in Odessa, Texas, which was pinned on specials.
  • "Sundae Bloody Sundae" ends with a shot of Miko staring at a human settlement, nearly 8000 years in the future.
• Time Stands Still: Tommy eventually figures out how to use this part of his power.
• Time Travel:
  • Hiro Nakamura is "the master of space and time". He takes Noah Bennet to June 13th a year in the past. He then takes Angela Petrelli and Claire's children back to 1999. Nathan/Tommy "inherits" this ability and Hiro teaches him how to control the ability.
  • Erica Kravid plans to circumvent the H.E.L.E. by harnessing the ability of Hiro Nakamura, whom she's trapped in the Evernow game and using it to send supplies nearly 8000 years into the future to build the city of Gateway. If she can manipulate Tommy to her side, she'll use him to send her "Evo" prisoners and the people she wants to save there as well; if she can't, then she'll just have him imprisoned in the game like his dad.
• Title In: Whenever the scenes cuts to a new location and/or character.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Luke discovers, much to his horror, that he's developing sunlight and radiation powers.
• Trailers Always Lie: The trailers and promos implied that Carlos is "El Vengador", but as the "Brave New World" reveal, it's really Oscar, who dies 30 minutes in and asks him to take up the mantle. Carlos does eventually take up the mantle in order to avenge Oscar's death.
• Trapped in the Past: Hiro gets stuck in 1999 with the people he brought back and has to take The Slow Path back to 2014.
• Trying Not to Cry: Poor poor Matt is shown trying not to cry while alone in a storage closet, after being assigned to interrogate Noah, finding out about Claire's death, feeling sorry for Noah, letting him escape, etc. Probably an indicator that Matt is still never going to be quite ruthless enough for any of his plans to work out well for him.
• Uncertain Doom: Affects most of the returning characters who get killed off, as if the creators really wanted to keep their options open for a second season. Molly died before Noah time-traveled; her fate in the main timeline remains uncertain. Mohinder presumably died offscreen, but Molly notably doesn't use her ability to confirm it. Hiro likewise got into a hopeless fight without his powers offscreen, but the outcome isn't shown. And Matt ends up stranded and injured, but we're not shown what happens after that... Claire's death looked pretty final, though. And Noah's death looked very final.
• Un-Installment: Related to the aforementioned Time Skip, Tim Kring said that “We’re treating this as if this is not the fifth season" but "like the tenth season, as though there were actually seasons in between."
• Vigilante Man: "El Vengador" patrols a rough Los Angeles neighborhood and keeps the local gangbangers from going too far. Not everyone who lives there appreciates the effort though. The police department, for one, crafts an ambush that gravely injures him.
• Villain Ball: Erica Kravid and Renautas. The Earth is about to undergo a global extinction event, and instead of putting effort into stopping it, which they know can be done, Erica concocts a complex plan to send a select group of humans (with herself at the top) into the future to rebuild the human race after the fact and actively works to stop the people who can instead save the world from doing so.
• Vlog Series: Dark Matters is framed as a series of vlogs by Phoebe Frady as she comes to terms with having an ability and what it's like to be an evolved human. When she disappears, Quentin takes over the vlogs in hopes of finding out what happened to her.
• Wham Line: Delivered by Agent Cutler to a blindsided Tommy: "Anne Clark isn't your birth mother."
• Wham Episode:
  • "Game Over", hoo boy. Miko isn't even human. She's an Evernow program who took up the real and dead Miko Otomo's identity, and sacrifices herself to release Hiro Nakamura, who's been trapped inside the game for who knows how long. He stops time just in time for Bennet to avoid getting shot. Phoebe has fully turned to evil and she kills her own brother. And to top it all off, Taylor posts a video to Hero_Truther's channel revealing Renautas' true goals and she's pregnant.
  • "June 13th - Part 1". Erica Kravid set up the "terrorist attack" on the Odessa summit so she could vehemently blame specials for it. Claire didn't die in the Odessa attack, she died in childbirth. One or both of the children born is/are the only one(s) able to stop Erica Kravid's plan for world extinction. The children are hidden by Hiro taking them and Angela Petrelli to the past. Their existence is what Noah Bennet made himself forget. Those children are Tommy and Malina.
  • "June 13th - Part 2". Noah shooting Erica was actually the precipitating incident for the timeline seen in the first several episodes. It also reveals that all this time Quentin has been secretly reporting back to Erica Kravid.
  • "Sundae Bloody Sundae". Matt Parkman is the director of Sunstone Manor, having converted to Erica's cause. Joanne murders Caspar, and Katana Girl is alive...almost 8000 years in the future.
• Wham Shot:
  • "The Lion's Den" ends with a predicted solar flare extinguishing life on the planet.
  • "Game Over" ends with Quentin dead, and Hiro Nakamura himself unplugging from Evernow and appearing just in time to save Bennet from getting shot.
  • "June 13th - Part 1" ends with Future Noah about to put a bullet into Erica, with Past Noah rushing towards his future self.
  • "Sundae Bloody Sundae" ends with the Miko Otomo construct alive and almost 8000 years in the future, staring at a distant human settlement.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • We never find out what became of Matt Parkman. As far as we know, he's still trapped in his car on the river bank.
  • The show also doesn't disclose what became of Taylor Kravid. Even in the series finale's ending montage, we don't see a glimpse of her. Because she was erased from time!
  • After the timeline is changed, Emily's boyfriend Brad is never mentioned again, with the implication that he and Emily never dated in the new timeline.
  • We also don't know if Mohinder's name has been cleared, what happened to Micah after he's helped the injured at the hospital, or where Rene went after Matt ordered him to leave Sunstone and turn Taylor over to him.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: In Episode 2 of Dark Matters, Quentin mentions that there was an evo on The Tonight Show whose power is to heat water... to room temperature. He and Phoebe admit that power is extremely lame.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: At the end of the finale, Quentin gives a speech about how the Evos are ordinary humans just like everybody else who just want to be left alone.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Downplayed. Once Hachiro Otomo has secured Tommy in the Eternal Fortress and guaranteed that Renautas can use Tommy's power, he is drugged and shuffled off where Renautas will keep him locked up for as long as he lives.

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