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The first episode starts four years in the future, with Future Peter, still sporting those facial scars, telling Future Claire he's going back to our present to stop Nathan from telling the world about them, as he thinks doing so will stop the horrors in their present (camps, experiments and such, like we saw when Peter lost Caitlin). Future Claire is not so thrilled with that plan, as shown when she tries to kill Peter, but Peter gets to our present in time to shoot his brother (answering the question of who the assailant in the season finale was), assume his present self's identity while imprisoning him in another Hero's body, one who just happens to be a Company prisoner (as Bennet also is, now), and teleport Matt into a desert somewhere. However, after Nathan flatlines, he mysteriously recovers. When he starts spewing churchy stuff about how God saved him, Peter no longer feels the need to kill him, but that's not enough to satisfy Mama Petrelli, who tells the future version of her son that he's screwed everything up by trying to kill his brother. Also, unbeknownst to everyone except Nathan, his mysterious healer was…LINDERMAN! Awesome!
Hiro is bored with running his dad's company and all the millions he's got (boo hoo), so he defies his father's wishes (or DOES he?) and opens his secret safe, in which he finds half of a formula that apparently could destroy the world in the wrong hands. Hiro manages to hang onto said formula for approximately .4 seconds, though, before a female version of The Flash steals it from him. He's worried about the ramifications of this, of course, so after a fruitless chat and a punch in the face from Flashette, he pops into the future and sees a horrifying vision: Ando, with powers seemingly similar to Elle's, zapping Hiro's future self and stealing the formula only a minute before Tokyo (if not the whole world) is destroyed, which would seem to bear out Mama Petrelli's words. Of course, the whole thing would have a bit more impact (sorry about that) if it hadn't been done before, but at least they're repeating a Season One plotline. Hiro pops back and tells Ando they have to find the formula, so it's good that he's paying attention.
Claire starts to leave to try to help her biological father, but Sylar is waiting for her. He's not fully cured, which is why he's there, but he's got powers enough to eventually prevail in slicing open her brain. He succeeds in getting her ability (how he does this is still not exactly clear) and seems fully healed, but Claire doesn't die -- because, according to Sylar, she never can. Claire does not take this as the great news some people might, because she is not an idiot…
…unlike some people. Maya tries to get Mohinder to cure her, and Mohinder has a breakthrough -- but it's figuring out how to give anyone Hero powers, not take them away, and the explanation for his discovery seems awfully facile. Maya is rightly disgusted with Mohinder's shocking lack of judgment in being super-psyched about this development, and leaves after giving him a grim warning. Mohinder, however, doesn't heed her, and injects himself -- and immediately develops strength and fighting abilities that seem similar to Niki's. Speaking of whom, Ali Larter is now going by "Tracy," and working with the "Governor," who sees Nathan's religious talk on TV and thinks he's the candidate they need for some unstated purpose. Tracy seems not to recognize Nathan, but when she's alone, it seems possible that she does, so we'll see if this is a different character or still Niki. In the end, we see, in more than one place, a painted image of the world rent in two, before we cut to the end of Part One.
Click here to read the recaplet of part 2. Plus, don't miss our exclusive Heroes blog by Jack Coleman, aka H.R.G.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Welcome to Season Three! As we knew from last season's finale, we're now in Volume Three, entitled "Villains." The usual shot of the earth spinning gives way to Peter running as fast as he can by a bunch of warehouses. He reaches a particular one and quickly enters and bolts the door, but when we pan back, we see a figure behind him, holding a gun. Chyrons tell us that we're in Manhattan, four years in the future, and as we switch angles to a front shot of Peter, the figure behind him raises and cocks the gun. Peter breathes, "Come on, Claire. It's me." On the one hand, I'm pretty sure she knows that, so playing on her sympathies doesn't seem too likely to work. But it's possible he intended to convey, "I have so many powers at my disposal that I need a PDA to keep track of them all, which you know, so the idea of you thinking you can stop me with a mere gun is so ridiculous that I would be cracking up if my mother had ever taught me to laugh, which she did not." Future Peter is still sporting that facial scar, and begs a now-brunette and leather-catsuited Claire to put down the gun, and says he's going to go back to "the day they all found out." She thinks it's too late for that, but he pleadingly says there would be no camps and no experiments if the humans had never found out about the mutants, to put the idea in the terminology of X-Men from whose universe the show seems to be borrowing. He adds, "They're gonna destroy everything," but Claire stalks forward and says she made peace with that a long time ago. "You never did." Well, Claire, I hate to piss off an angry twentysomething with a gun, but it's kind of hard to blame him, no? Future Peter sadly asks Claire how she got to this place, and she seethes, "I'm different, remember? Special." He begs her one last time to reconsider, and there's a moment when it seems like she's torn, but she steels herself and tells him she's sorry. "I always loved you." She moves to fire, but he closes his eyes and stops time, leaving the puff of smoke from the shot and the bullet itself to hang there in midair. He plucks the gun from her hand and vanishes, and once he's gone, the bullet ricochets against the door, and Claire looks around warily. Honey, even if you'd managed to shoot him, he would just have borrowed your regenerative powers, right? But hey, thanks for the gun! I know just where to use it!
Future Peter appears back in the Present Day, and grabs a hat from a nearby coat rack. He walks over a chyron of the episode title, which never stops looking totally cool, and we hear his brother giving the same speech from in the season finale. Future Peter sees his present self up on the dais with Nathan and Matt, but before he can really dwell on the existential oddity of the situation, he has to shoot his brother to prevent him from telling everyone about his powers. He then goes and stashes the gun in the closet in which he first materialized, and makes his escape. His present self is in pursuit, though, followed closely by Matt and some cops. When Matt reaches a men's room a few seconds after Present Peter, however, he only finds Present Peter holding Future Peter's cap and jacket. Peter tells Matt that he lost the assailant, and didn't get a good look at him. It occurred to me, especially given how shifty he's acting, that this might be Future Peter, but I wouldn't necessarily expect Matt to work that out. I would, however, expect him to wonder how the assailant made his escape from a total dead end, as the bathroom is. Does he think they're chasing someone with the ability to flush himself down the toilet? That's kind of a dud on the powers list, no?
We see a TV broadcast from Odessa about the shooting, and Present Claire, at the Bennet house in Costa Verde, is of course out of her mind with worry over her biological father. She calls Peter, who answers his cell (in an ambulance! You'd almost think he's trying to kill Nathan!) and tells her Nathan's alive, but is in bad shape. Claire says she should be there, and that her blood can help, but he tells her he needs surgery, and she should hang tight. You'd think Claire would point out that Peter could pop out to her and get her to the hospital before the doctors would even have a chance to scrub up, but of course Claire has no reason to suspect that Peter wouldn't have Nathan's best interests at heart, so it's believable that her mind wouldn't think to contradict him in the heat of the moment. On the other hand: What's West up to?
Nathan gets rushed into the ER, and among the information we hear the staff barking at each other is that Nathan was "down" for four minutes. Yikes. The guy in charge boots Peter out, who watches worriedly as Nathan gets the paddles. Peter sits against the wall...
...and we dissolve to later, when the doctor chucking something against the wall in disgust pretty much tells us everything we need to know. Peter gets to his feet, and the doctor is like, "I'm sorry." Um...thanks? Peter enters to stand to Nathan's corpse, and ruffles his hair as he wonders who plastered the pancake makeup on him. Seriously, I know he lost a lot of blood, but he's putting to shame both kabuki dancers and the cast of True Blood. Peter kisses his brother's forehead and says it should never have happened this way, and you'd think he's been on a television show long enough not to tempt fate like that. Because sure enough, after a couple cuts back and forth, Nathan suddenly comes to life, although between the makeup and the disorientation he certainly seems more like a zombie than anything else. We don't get to see just how freaked out Peter is, though, instead cutting to the title card.
Hiro stares blankly into space, but then gets a mischievous look on his face and starts playing with the clock on his desk, using his power to keep pushing it back by a few seconds at a time. I wish I could do that when I'm on deadline. I have to say, though, that at first I couldn't believe they were recycling so many storylines -- Nathan going back into politics with a certain someone pulling his strings, Hiro visiting an apocalyptic future, and the like. It seemed lazy and uninspired. But I realized, on second viewing, that even little details from the beginning are being copied, such as this one, with Hiro dicking around with the clock, and Claire recording her self-inflicted injuries in the ep. It makes me wonder if all the repetition is intentional and part of the story they want to tell. Either that, or it's really lazy and uninspired. Anyway, Hiro entertains himself in this vein for a while, each time squeezing his eyes in so tight a manner as to look more appropriate for the executive toilet, before we're told that we're in Tokyo, at Yamagato Industries, which was of course his father's company. Ando brightly enters and asks if he's busy, "sir," and Hiro tells him to knock it off with that crap. They chat in Japanese, with Hiro saying that he's not turning into his father, and Ando contending that regardless, all the power Hiro now has is intimidating, as is the two hundred and fifty million in cash of which he's apparently in possession. Hiro: "I have no interest in money." Well, my boy, feel free to send some of it this way. It seems only fair, given your excruciatingly boring storyline I endured last season. Of course, if it's yen we're talking about, I think he's only got the equivalent of around two and a half million dollars, but still. Ando basically says the same thing more diplomatically, but Hiro starts babbling about his destiny and how he's bored. Hey, Hiro, why not pick up a copy of Oh, The Places You'll Go? It seems especially appropriate in your case. Also, I'm sure your sister is thrilled with your ho-hum attitude toward the business she slaved over while you were busy being a huge disappointment to your dad. Hiro then reaches into the Dusty Drawer of Television Conventions for a call-and-response bit as he says that it's not like destiny is going to come knocking, and just like that, there's a rap on the door. An older Japanese gentleman pokes his head in, and I pictured someone younger with much bigger boobs to be named Destiny, but they do things a lot differently in Japan, from what I've gathered from Babel and Lost In Translation. The guy hands something over to Hiro and leaves, and Hiro tells Ando that that was actually his family's lawyer, and that Kaito apparently recorded a DVD message to him before he died. "He said it was about my destiny." I mean this in the nicest possible way: Shut up, Hiro.
Claire is watching an extended version of the news report on the shooting from earlier, She makes a decision, and, presumably a short time later, she's tossing the last of some stuff into a bag and striding purposefully toward her bedroom door. However, when she opens it, she runs smack into Sylar OH MY GOD AWESOME. Actually, it's not only awesome but also hilarious, because he's just leaning against the jamb, like "I would have just hung out for six more hours if that's what it took for this moment, because one of my less-known powers is my ability to be the biggest drama queen on the planet." With conversational menace, he walks toward her as, terrified, she backs up, and he tells her that he took a little detour down Mexico way from his "career path" (heh), but it's all behind him now, "like a long night after a bad taco." That is certainly something that will end up behind you, yes. (Hey, he started it.) Claire tells him that she saw Hiro kill him, like that's at all relevant, and he says he's recovered, but not fully, which is why he's there. Creepy ticking starts kicking up throughout the scene, which I'm just going to refer to as Sylar's Theme Ticking, because that's what it is, and he breathes that he wants her power. Claire, however, has backed up to the point where she's surreptitiously able to wrap her hand around one of her larger cheerleading trophies, and she swings it now, clocking him across the temple and sending him to the ground. Good thing she learned to be aggressive! B-E aggressive! She goes running down the stairs and gets the front door open, but it suddenly slams shut and won't budge, and soon all the other means of egress follow suit. The phone also turns out not to be an option, so in the darkened house (Sylar killed the lights, too, just for good measure) Claire grabs a large knife and listens for Sylar's footsteps. She opens the French doors to her dad's study and walks in, and, creepily, we see Sylar appear behind her but keep on walking like he just wanted to check out her ass. But while Sylar may have a lot of powers, the ability to pull that off convincingly isn't one of them. Claire backs up without looking, which: stupid, and then swivels toward where Sylar now is, but he's apparently gone invisible. But only for a moment, as when Claire turns and walks the other way, we see Sylar's reflection in one of the glass panes in a kitchen cabinet, and jokes and horror-movie clichés aside, this scene is creepy and well done. Claire keeps going, but suddenly Sylar is right behind her. She seems to divine his location, however, and whirls and swings the knife at his face, forcing him to duck to the floor and giving her the opportunity to run and hide in the pantry. Sylar looks like he's had enough cat and mouse, and heads meaningfully to the doors, but Claire manages to wrap a handy chain around the two handles, thwarting him for the moment. I'm assuming that this is where the fact that his recovery is only partial is hindering him, because normally the thought of chains stopping him would be even dumber than the thing with Peter and the gun earlier.
In a cool cut, we see a door handle turning, but when we pan left, we see not Claire but Maya. All right, it would be cooler if it were, say, anyone else. She's holding what I actually think is a cricket bat, which is a nice touch given Mohinder's heritage, and also makes sense in that cricket is about as boring as his voiceovers. (I lived in England for a couple years, and I at least really tried to get into it, so save your e-mails, cricket fans.) When the door opens Maya swings the bat, thinking, from the suspicious way the handle was moving, it's Sylar come back for her. Honey, he's a little busy with someone who has a power a lot cooler than bug eyes and black viscous tears. The man opening the door is actually Mohinder, who somehow manages to avoid getting his skull split open. He tells Maya that the lock is dodgy before adding that he got Molly away on a plane, and the flight attendant said she'd be taken care of, but he's still unsure he did the right thing. Maya thinks no one will find her "there," and then says it's time for her examination. I've got the results right here: boring. Although if she were to find a way to resurrect her scorching brother, most would be forgiven. Anyway, Mohinder tells her that he can't help her -- he's at a dead end with his research, so he's packing up and heading back to India. Maya's like, I cried deadly tears all the way from South America to get a cure, so you'd better at least try, or you're just going to be the last in a string of rather aesthetically displeasing corpses. The music swells to punctuate this sentiment, and her eyes start to go dark. Mohinder's follow suit, but with an effort, she pulls herself back to normal and apologizes. She starts to leave, but Mohinder's had an epiphany -- does her ability always manifest when she gets upset? She confirms that, and adds that it stops when she manages to calm down. So all those people died because she couldn't close her eyes and count to ten? Mohinder realizes this must mean that the key to the abilities are tied up in adrenaline, and explains that while his father was trying to isolate the gene that caused the powers, he was looking in the wrong place. That...really doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and I think it's totally lame that suddenly everyone can have powers when up until now, they've so clearly been handed down through bloodlines. He pulls out a hypo and tells Maya, "All I have to do is make you mad again." At the risk of repeating myself: Have you tried a voiceover?
Hiro plays the DVD, and Kaito tells him that if he's viewing it, that means Kaito's dead. He goes on that not only has he left him his fortune, but he's passing on a sacred duty -- "you are now to be the sentinel of a dangerous secret." He says said secret was guarded by him and his father before him, and it's in his personal safe. In the wrong hands, it will destroy the world, so it must never be opened. Hiro's face: "Okay, no." I kind of have to agree -- if he's not going to tell him in what circumstances the secret is necessary for a good purpose, why didn't he just destroy it? In other words, why keep something around that can only be used for evil? I mean, I don't necessarily support Hiro opening the safe for no better reason than he's bored even though he CAN TRAVEL ANYWHERE AND IN ANY TIME, but if I were him, I'd wonder what the logic here is and if I weren't meant to open it after all. Anyway, Hiro starts rushing around the office like he managed to decapitate himself with the Kensei sword, but finally finds an electronic control for the safe. Over Ando's strong objections, he opens it, and a heavy panel slides out of the way to reveal a thumb scanner. Ando wonders why his print would work, as Kaito didn't want him to open it, but Hiro gives it a try and is successful: "Or maybe he does." Inside, along with some papers, there's another DVD, with a note that says, "Press play." They get it going, and Kaito sternly notes, "I asked you not to open the safe!" It would be hilarious if that were the extent of the message. But no -- referring to the papers, Kaito says there are people who will stop at nothing to get "this half of the formula." Should that happen, there's only one hope: "A chosen one among you who carries the purity of blood, the 'light' to safeguard against the darkness." He asks if he understands, and Hiro is like, I didn't even understand that I wasn't supposed to open the safe, so what chance do I have with this cryptic gobbledygook? Kaito instructs Hiro to guard that half of the formula with his life. "The fate of the world depends on it." The message ends, and Hiro opens the envelope, which contains a complex chemical formula. Hiro bemoans the fact that he didn't pay attention in chemistry class, not that that's really relevant when the paper suddenly gets snatched from his hands. His reflexes are up to the task, though, as he immediately stops time. Once he does, he sees that the sound waves and distortion of the air that the thief left are now suspended like multicolored gossamer, and seriously, can I just geek out about how cool that is, both in concept and execution? Anyway, Hiro follows the trail out to a young woman with somewhat feathery blonde hair whom he apparently stopped mid-Flash-like run, and then is startled when she breaks out of her frozen position and asks how he's doing this. "Are you a speedster, too?" Don't think I don't love Hiro despite anything I might say, but "speedster" is not a description he brings to mind in any context. He tells her he stops time, but Flashette pertly points out that he obviously doesn't do so completely, or they wouldn't be chatting as they are. So presumably this is as fast as she can move while his time freeze is on, but still, it's not clear why she was completely frozen for those earlier few moments at all. It's possible she was faking, but it seems unlikely. He asks if she moves fast (see what I mean about the uptake?) and she corrects him that she moves really fast. And considering that when Peter stopped time earlier, the bullet didn't move a hair that we could see, I don't think she's guilty of hyperbole. Flashette shows him the paper she stole, and he starts to spaz out, but she grabs him by the throat and asks exactly how the time stop works. "If you chase me to Bangkok, will time stay frozen here in Tokyo?" He tells her he doesn't know, which has to be the wrong answer, and she replies that he can contemplate the question when he gets back on his feet. Hiro: "But I am on my feet." Do you think Claire's blood would heal the massive brain damage that Hiro undoubtedly suffered at some point in his life? Flashette of course clocks him one, and as he falls, time resets, which sends all the papers she passed at massively high speeds flying into the air, another touch I loved. With the snag taken care of, Flashette hightails it out of there.
Peter's back in the closet looking for the gun when Matt appears, holding it in his hand with an accusing look on his face. Peter tries to dissemble, talking about how the medics are calling Nathan's recovery a miracle, and saying that the bullets hardly did any damage. "Like his body had already healed from the inside." Matt won't be deterred, however, asking how Peter knew where to find the gun, and pointing out that there was no reason for Peter to believe the gunman left it behind. Which brings up another issue: Why did he stash it? Even if he had planned on replacing his present self rather than doing it on the fly, he could have just teleported the gun away, especially given that it took him several precious seconds to hide it. It seems contrived. Through jarring camera cuts and dissonant music, we're then meant to know that Matt is trying to penetrate Peter's mind, but it seems like Peter is able to ward off the attack, which causes Matt physical pain, much as when his own father repelled his mental probe. Peter then sneers, "You had to go and be the detective, didn't you, Matt?" Well, it has always been pretty important to him. Peter's face then morphs to that of Future Peter, which I'm guessing means that among the powers he has is Candice's illusionism. Matt's floored, and Future Peter tells him he came back to stop Nathan from telling the world about them. "Now that you know, you can't be here." He raises a hand, and Matt flies toward him and then disappears. Peter may not have his shirt off, but that was still hot. Future Peter emerges from the closet, and as he heads toward us, he changes his appearance back before we cut to a commercial break.
In the hospital, Nathan comes to with a start. He sees an innocent-looking suit and dress shirt hanging on the door to his room, although from the creepy music playing, you'd think it was made of anthrax and spiders.
Future Peter enters the hospital. Is he going to try again? No, because when he checks Nathan's room, he's gone. And so is the suit DUN DUN DUN!
Outside the hospital, some reporter is doing a TV segment about Nathan when the man himself appears and crosses behind him. Smelling a promotion, the guy gets the crew to follow him...
...into what I'm guessing is the hospital chapel, although he had to walk across an outdoor courtyard to get there. Nathan stands at the front of the pews, and then turns to a woman who's praying behind him and tells her in Spanish that he saw God that day. The woman gives a little smile like, "You probably don't know the Spanish word for 'blasphemer', so I'm not going to waste my breath."
Peter sees the crew heading into the chapel and follows them.
Nathan goes on, in English, that he was dead, and God gave him another chance. He says that he now knows the reason he's there is to do God's bidding. Just then, the reporter reminds him that he said in his speech earlier that he had a message to deliver, and wonders if he's ready to do that now. Future Peter reaches into his pocket and cocks his gun, probably figuring that he's already a modern-day Cain (are the scars his mark?), so how much worse can committing murder in a church be? But he lets Nathan talk, and hears this from him: "God is the only one with the message. It's a message of hope, and urgency, because he's not going to wait much longer. His message is a simple one. We're all connected." He goes on that only together can people's time on the planet mean anything, and they all have one goal: "Save ourselves. Save the world." Satisfied that his brother's churchy rantings are no threat to their kind, Peter goes to Nathan, who falls shakily into his arms. Just in case you were wondering if the Petrelli brothers still were touching each other more than any other two people on the show.
Mohinder drops some cloudy liquid onto a slide, babbling about the test he's running on Maya's blood or saliva or tar or whatever. While he waits for a reaction, he tells Maya that she was very brave to come to him. Well, if there's one thing this decade has taught us, is that's many people that are called brave are actually massively stupid. He goes on that although he knows her power is scary, he thinks it must be cool to be so special. And I get that he's setting it up so that what happens at the end of the episode doesn't seem so out of left field, but it seems rather uncharacteristic that he's suddenly forgotten that Hero abilities were used to kill his father. But story-wise, I am beyond ready for Mohinder to have something cool to do, so I'll let it go. He gets excited and announces that the experiment worked -- he's isolated the "genetic building blocks of these abilities. I've found the source." He babbles about going to the loft and verifying the results, but when Maya asks him to explain, he tells her that what's in the syringe he just filled up could give powers to anyone, and with adrenaline thrown in the mix, the effects would be instantaneous. Maya doesn't even get a chance to complain about her sucky power before he's out the door.
In the pantry, Claire sits in terror as the door shakes violently. The chains won't give, though, so Sylar tries the effect of conversation instead, saying that he knows he's scared. "I would be too, all alone in this house with someone like me. A man you barely know." I don't think going out for ice cream or a shopping excursion would make her less afraid of you, Sylar. But it does make me giggle to picture it. As he continues that he lost everything that made him special, he opens a box marked "Dad's Office," and inside, sees a lot of Bennet's Company records. We see a closeup of a group of files marked "Level 5," with the names "Jesse Murphy" and "Knox" visible. Sylar gloats that what was lost now is found, as he opens the records and sees pictures of three men -- one a burly shaved-headed white dude with a goatee who looks like a biker type, one an African-American looking to be in his late thirties, I'd say, and the last another bald but less beefy white guy. Sylar muses that he's got a whole shopping list of abilities at his fingertips, but he's going to begin with the best. He starts to continue his musings, but when he turns around, Claire is there, and stabs him right in the chest with that big knife. I'm guessing his super-hearing is one of the powers that's on the fritz. Claire runs, but Sylar's telekinesis is still in working order, and he slams her into the wall, turns her around, and, index finger pointed, starts to slice her forehead open as she screams. We cut down to her feet, still suspended off the floor, and a splat that should make the Foley guys proud sends us to a commercial break.
When we come back, Claire is laid out on the coffee table, twitching as Sylar roots around in her skull. But unlike his other victims, she's still alive, so they get to have a chat as he works. It would be funny if she just annoyed him by asking him random teen-girl questions like what he thought of the latest InTouch, or singing "Sylar Sylar Fo-Fylar", because what else can he do to her now? But she just asks what he's up to, and he grits, "I'm looking for answers before I bleed to death." At least he doesn't seem to be holding a grudge. He's also still got the knife buried in him to the hilt, and that's probably serving to minimize the blood flow, but I'm surprised he can move his hands or even talk without screaming. Claire says she's looking for answers too, and wonders why she can't feel anything, so Sylar has to tell her that the brain has no nerve endings. He extols the wonders of that organ, and muses about how much we'd know if we used all of it. We'd probably be able to figure out what that whole "lipstick on a pig" expression is all about, at least. Sylar groans in pain before continuing, "Why is there evil? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? How do we make love stay?" He touches Claire's exposed brain and says the answers are all right there, and she asks if he's going to eat it. Sylar: "Eat your brain?" He leans in and whispers, "Claire, that's disgusting." HA HA HA! Oh, man, I wish Erin were still doing this show for many reasons, the first being that her recaps were hilarious and I miss them terribly, but I also wish that she were around to claim this shout-out to the many "Braaaaaains" jokes she made about Sylar. But I will pick it up in her stead. Sylar gets back to work, and finally finds what he's looking for. He does whatever it is he does, which basically looks like tapping her brain in a particular spot, and it's not like I wanted to see him chow down but that does seem pretty anticlimactic. When he's done, he removes the knife -- and his wound closes up. As Jerry Seinfeld once said in another context: This is no good. But Sylar doesn't see it that way, as he grins maniacally to another round of Sylar's Theme Ticking. He starts to leave, but pauses at Claire's hair and skullcap, which are lying there on the floor like a wig at the end of a drag show. Seemingly moved by some affinity for Claire, he picks it up and replaces it almost affectionately atop her head, and once it's reattached itself, she regains her ability to move normally. She sits up and disbelievingly asks the exiting Sylar if he isn't going to kill her, but he merely looks at her with a mixture of curiosity and sympathy: "Poor girl. There's so much about yourself you don't understand." He tells her that her brain, and her whole self, are not like the other Heroes. "You're different. You're special. And I couldn't kill you even if I wanted to." He adds that she can never die, and now, he supposes, neither can he. If, as seems overwhelmingly likely, Peter is also immortal, that is going to be one awkward threesome when they're the only ones left on the planet. Seriously, though, aren't Peter and Sylar getting a little too powerful? How is this all going to end? Sylar's Theme Ticking cranks up to eleven as he heads out, leaving Claire and the abject look of horror on her face behind.
Mohinder's at the lab when Maya comes in, and he babbles about his success so far. She tells him he needs to destroy the formula, and he's like, "What? Why would I do that? Just because in the wrong hands, it could be used to make a race of evil immortal supervillains is no reason to flush this thing down the toilet!" Man, he's an idiot. Oh, I'm sorry, he's "brave." The conversation continues in this vein for a while, with Maya contending that this is a horrifically terrible idea of epic proportions on a grand scale, and Mohinder completely ignoring her, which I'd be on board with ordinarily but she's of course completely right. Mohinder does, at least, recall his father, but he thinks that if he'd had a Hero ability, he might have been able to stop Sylar from killing him. She's aghast that he would inject himself with the formula, and opines that the abilities are a curse. This seems like an ideal time to start with the crying, just to drive home the point, but she skips it, instead asking if what's in the syringe can cure her. Mohinder's awkward expression is all she needs to see: "Then it's evil. And you should destroy it. For the sake of all of us." She exits, and I commend her for making her point succinctly and well and then leaving. I will commend her much more if she'll just stay away.
Nathan's back in his hospital bed, and wakes to find Peter in the chair to him. The pancake makeup has lessened, but he still looks crappy for him, which would of course be a good day for most of the rest of us. Peter shows him a newspaper with a banner headline about his miraculous recovery, and Nathan closes his eyes exhaustedly. "I thought I dreamed that." He tells Peter that God saved him, which seems like as good an excuse as any for Peter to come a lot closer for really no reason at all and point out that there are a lot of people with extraordinary abilities, and he himself came back from the dead. Nathan puts a hand on Peter's shoulder: "And who's to say this isn't the hand of God?" I'll just leave that one alone. His point is that they could be angels, there to do God's bidding, and if that's true let's grab a pin and get the answer to Sylar's question from earlier. Peter looks at Nathan and asks what happened to the idea of telling the world about them. Nathan: "Well, we couldn't be angels if everyone knew, now could we?" Nathan pretty clearly needs a nap, so it's nice that he passes out immediately, leaving Peter the opportunity to say that he doesn't expect Nathan to understand what he did to him, but he hopes someday he'll forgive him. He kisses his brother again, and when you think about how many takes they must do to film this show, you have to wonder if there's a permanent imprint of Milo Ventimiglia's lips on Adrian Pasdar's forehead. Peter leaves, but just when you think we're going to cut out of the scene, we stay on Nathan for a while, and then pan right again to reveal...LINDERMAN! WOW! That was completely unexpected and totally rocked my world. Nathan realizes that Linderman's the one that healed him, and Malcolm McDowell's authoritative voice intones, "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will. It seems you and I are meant for great things, Nathan. Great things indeed." Awesome!
Some expensive-looking guy in his fifties is watching a news bulletin from the reporter from earlier, and he calls to "Tracy" that he thinks they've found their man. She calls in, "Isn't that my job, Governor?" and when her scantily-clad ass appears, we see that it's Ali Larter. She doesn't seem to recognize Nathan from his image on the TV, asking his name as she sits with the Governor in a very familiar manner. When he tells her, she smiles. "I like him." No need for a white cane, then.
In a desert somewhere, Matt is lying unconscious with a SCORPION ON HIS FACE. He comes to, possibly from feeling the thing but more likely from the "I'm going to STING YOU, mwa ha ha" telepathic message that keeps running through his head. He manages to brush the thing off without incident, but still isn't all that happy with his situation, hammily yelling "No!" and "Is there anybody here?" By way of answering, the camera quick-pulls way back, which is much cooler than a simple negative.
It's night on the streets of Tokyo, and Hiro is telling Ando about Flashette, saying it was like she was moving at the speed of sound, and speculating that she knew he was going to open the safe. Hiro and Ando babble uselessly for a bit until Ando suggests he go back into the past and ask his father the full deal. Hiro isn't down with that, though, as the lesson he took from last season's excruciatingly boring storyline is never to go back into the past again. He decides instead to head into the future and see how the world is destroyed, so he can stop it. Ando starts to object, but Hiro makes his Number Two Face, and disappears...
...and then reappears in the same spot, but with quite a different scene happening, as there's an airraid siren going off and people running around in a panic. Above him, a level up by what looks like a food court, he sees his future self and Future Ando. Future Hiro is holding the formula, which Future Ando demands from him. Future Hiro says that if Future Ando stops him now, the world will be destroyed. Future Ando doesn't agree, so Future Hiro draws what I'm assuming is the Kensei sword. But Hiro watches in horror as Future Ando zaps Future Hiro with what looks like Elle's electricity power, although the bolts are red instead of blue. Future Hiro collapses, and Future Ando, who, by the way, is dressed in a green jumpsuit that looks kind of military, takes the paper from him. (By the way, this isn't the badass Future Hiro -- he looks pretty much the same as in the present.) Ando rushes off, but probably doesn't get far, as Hiro rushes down the street for a moment, but stops when he sees the skies starting to storm. The power immediately goes out throughout the whole city, and, without ado, a shock wave causes buildings to collapse in his general direction. Cars fly up off the road, but just as one is about to flatten Hiro, he time-shifts out of there...
...back to the present day, where Ando rushes up to him and asks him what happened. Hiro: "We've gotta find that formula!" What's the Japanese for "No shit, Sherlock?"
In New York, Mohinder's down by the harbor, and holds the syringe over the water like he's going to drop it. But he doesn't, which may be just as well from the standpoint that the marine life in there is probably mutated enough. However, possibly troubling is the fact that he injects himself with the formula. We hear an accelerated heartbeat on the soundtrack, and then, with a jolt, Mohinder collapses.
Mama Petrelli is already at the sleeping Nathan's bedside when Peter enters. She turns and looks at him balefully, and he returns the favor before walking on. She leaves to join him for a confab in the hallway: "What have you done with Peter?" He regards her appraisingly, and she explains that his first power -- the dreams -- was "inherited" from her, and she dreamed he'd come and what he'd do. I think it's more likely that it's the first power he absorbed, not that he was born with it, not that it really matters. He tells her that if she can see the future, she knows that the formula she and the ElderHeroes tried to hide gets out and destroys everything, but she shoves him up against the wall (go, badass Mama Petrelli!) and breathes, "The only future I've ever seen is the one caused by you." He says that Nathan doesn't have to die now, but she tells him that's irrelevant -- by shooting him, he screwed everything up. And while I'm not going to parse all the time-travel on this show, the mere fact of Hiro's recent jaunt to the future seems to back up her contention, assuming that she doesn't want to destroy the world, which I'd say is better than fifty-fifty. She goes on that something different happens now, and it's all his fault. She lets that hang for a moment, and then asks again, "What did you do with my son?" Peter assures her he put him someplace safe...
...and we're at Unit 5, where the guy from the file, Jesse Levine (played by Francis Capra, apparently, although I honestly wouldn't have recognized him on my own) is yelling that he's Peter. He's in a cell with a glass front, and he keeps yelling as we pan left to see the African-American guy, Knox, jumping around in a straitjacket, and then the third guy, who's shooting what also seems to be a flamier version of Elle's power uselessly at the glass. From here, Mohinder, in voiceover, recites the entirety of the source of the episode title, William Butler Yeats's "The Second Coming," and while it's way more interesting than his other voiceovers I'm still not going to transcribe it. Let's just say it's heavy with religious overtones and doesn't bode well for the forces of good. (You can read it here.) Jesse Petrelli keeps yelling, and the guards aren't listening but Bennet, in another cell, is. Sandra and Lyle come home to find Claire, crying and devastated. Matt wanders the desert and comes across an image painted into a rock of the world split in two by a fiery, jagged line. Sylar walks jauntily down a residential street, the folder he took in his hand. Nathan sleeps as Linderman sits by his side. Tracy (Niki?), alone, watches Nathan on TV again, no longer looking like she doesn't remember him. Mohinder wraps up the poem...
...just in time, because he's got a scene. Two thugs wake his groggy and disoriented ass up and demand his money. He's not quick enough, so one of them points a gun in his face to shoot him, but Mohinder grabs his wrist and breaks it, mangling the gun in the process. He flips up to his feet and tosses one of the guys about twenty feet, and then looks at his hands in wonder. The punks run off, and Mohinder half-heartedly starts after them but stops to stare at his hands again, which gives us the opportunity to see that the same image Matt just came across of the world ripped in two is painted on the warehouse to him. I really thought that if the cheerleader were saved, this wouldn't happen. I don't know where I got that idea. We focus on the image, and then..."Heroes Continues...Now." Whee!
Click here to read our recap of the second half of the two-hour premiere, then see how we rate each Hero's abilities in our Heroes: They've Got the Power gallery!
John Ramos is a writer and producer living in Los Angeles. You can reach him at couchbaron@gmail.com.