RIP Heroes Reborn: Was the Finale Everything You Hoped It Would Be?

NBC said goodbye to Heroes Reborn (for now, at least) after one last confusing ride into the future

Some Heroes are born. Some Heroes are Reborn. And some Heroes really sucked after a couple seasons and was never anything anyone was clamoring to see again, especially not in any stage of birth. Or so I've heard. 

I never actually watched the original series, and I couldn't get myself to watch Heroes Reborn. 

OK, that's a lie. I watched the premiere, and I watched the finale, while casually ignoring everything in between. Naturally, I'm here to eulogize this most puzzling series as it waves goodbye from 5,000 years in the future or whatever. 

Heroes Reborn was an odd beast, hanging out at the gates of this weird wave of nostalgia we're all riding straight to a new season of Gilmore Girls and the reunion of Mulder and Scully. It was one of the first dead shows to be resurrected, but probably not the one people were most excited for.

Despite all of that, Heroes Reborn could have been good. It could have taken a page from the many other successful superhero shows on TV right now and at least partly redeemed itself and gained a few new viewers, like myself, a lover of superheroes, time travel, and complicated character histories. Instead, we got teenagers stuck in a video game, some scattered time jumping and something about a clock tower with a world that needed saving, and that's about as much of a summary as I can figure out. 

Did I feel anything as Zachary Levi was sucked into the sun during tonight's finale? Yes, of course, because when I look at him I still see the dopey grin of Chuck Bartowski, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what effect that moment had on the Heroes world at large. 

How did Peter Pan end up reliving his own life like Matthew McConaughey near the end of Interstellar? What was so important about that woman's Fitbit that it needed to be knocked off of her wrist with a sword? Why did original Heroes dude just decide that it was his destiny to leave those two kids in the lurch by dying of sun ghosts or whatever? Whose idea was it to end this thing with a parental cliffhanger, like there's going to be more of this? 

The only thing that really made sense to me tonight was when that same woman, before she lost her Fitbit, said, "the future we're standing in exists only because the Heely happened," because Heelys truly were an innovative masterpiece that separated the kids from the really lame kids who didn't ride around on shoes with wheels, and I have no trouble believing that they will continue to shape the future we're living in. If that's not what she was talking about, I don't want or need to know. 

Anyway, RIP Heroes Reborn. Here's hoping that one of these days, Zachary Levi either finds a job worthy of his face, or just somehow figures out how to do Chuck Reborn. I would watch the chuck out of that. 

UPDATE from my coworker Jean Bentley, who inexplicably watched all of Heroes Reborn. Can she explain this finale? No, she cannot: "I don't know why but I watched every episode. I'm still not sure who half the characters are, and I definitely wasn't paying enough attention to the later episodes to know why Chuck got raptured into the sun. I don't remember those roller skate sneakers playing a role in the show, but it would make about as much sense as anything else that happened so sure, okay. I was intrigued by the new story at first, but once HRG (Horn-Rimmed Glasses guy a.k.a. Hayden Panettiere's dad) got his memory of Odessa back, I didn't really care how the rest of it unfolded. But I still watched it! Sometimes I don't make great choices. I'm working on it."

(E! and NBC are both part of the NBC Universal family.)