‘Heroes Reborn’: Robbie Kay Talks Tommy, The Mysterious Text & More

Tommy Clarke, it seems, has a guardian Evo on “Heroes Reborn.”

In the NBC drama’s series premiere last week, the teenager got a very important text that helped saved his life. With all the moving around he’s had to do to stay under the radar though, don’t expect the young teleporter to start investigating the origins of the message (hey there, Penny man).

“I think he’s so anxious at this point, he doesn’t even want to reply,” Robbie Kay, who plays Tommy, told Access Hollywood. “I think he doesn’t want to give any information away about him, and he might think, ‘Oh, well, if I text, maybe he’ll know my location, so maybe let’s keep this anonymous.’ And I think right now, the information that he has been given is more than enough for him to kind of spur himself on and to take that and to think about it. So, right now, that’s where he’s at.”

Robbie Kay as Tommy in ‘Heroes Reborn’ (NBC)

Tommy may not want to reply (and he “definitely has location services turned off” on his phone, Robbie joked), but the high school student character has realized that whoever it was that sent him that message is on his side.

“[W]hen he finds out about the church fire and coach Lewis and everything like that in the school, I think it really hits him hard, and he’s like, ‘Hold on a minute, the reason that I left that church was because of that text,’ and I think he kind of – he holds significance to that a little bit,” Robbie said. “So, I think he’s a little bit apprehensive, but at the same time, he kind of sees it as a bit of a guardian angel as well, and [he’s] thinking, ‘Hey, maybe I do need another pair of eyes to kind of look behind me and make sure that I’m gonna be OK.'”

WATCH: Robbie Kay & Ryan Guzman Preview ‘Heroes Reborn’

In the “Heroes Reborn” series premiere, viewers learned that Tommy was once held under observation by Primatech, something that was revealed when he transported Joanne (Judith Shekoni) and Luke (Zachary Levi) to the spot.

“At the end of the second episode he tells Emily that, ‘I was thinking about the place that they took me when I was a kid,’ and that kind of reveals a little bit about Tommy’s significance and how he was kind of — at one point — put in for testing and he was kind of analyzed and whether or not that kind of part of his past is revealed later on or not, I don’t know,” Robbie said.

Tommy wants to fit in and be normal, but moving around so often hasn’t made that easy. Despite always being on the go, Tommy doesn’t resent his mother.

“It’s tough to be so displaced. Even the last kind of year, to move so much is very, very disruptive. So I don’t know that he necessarily resents his mother. I think that there is a kind of – there’s a sense of protection from both ends,” Robbie said. “I feel like she wants to protect him because he is her son and she cares about him, and he wants to, at the same time, protect her with his abilities and he feels guilty because the reason that they’re on the run really, is because of him, and because of his power and that’s a real burden for him. So I don’t know if he necessarily resents his mother, but I think there is that really, real kind of strive for normalcy, that real kind of yearning for, ‘I just want to be a regular kid,’ and the fact that his mum is moving him around all the time kind of gets in the way of that, so I think there’s a definite source of conflict, looking at that.”

WATCH: Zachary Levi On His Challenging, Darker Role In ‘Heroes Reborn’

“Heroes Reborn” continues Thursday at 8/7c on NBC.

— Jolie Lash