A serialized drama that’s a genuine quadruple threat: Great writing, great acting, great directing, and it’s not on Fox.
If any of you ever wondered what one of the X-Men films would have been like if they’d adapted “Days of Future Past,” last night’s episode answers that. Spoilers below…
As has often been the case ever since the show’s “title character,” Hiro, was introduced, Hiro serves as the moral center for the series. But in this outing, the world has gone dark, bleak and immoral, and whether Hiro’s transformation is a reflection of that or, in some small way, the cause, is open to debate. For all the chilling moments that we witness in this episode set five years hence, the one that got me most was this: Confronted with armed opposition and a means of simply walking past them via freezing time, Hiro and Peter instead choose to take them on directly, slicing and dicing their way through the hopelessly overmatched guards because they “haven’t had a good fight in a while.”
Frankly, I’d been a little dubious about taking a future digression at such a late date in the story arc, but I needn’t have worried. Essential information was passed along, and the Christmas Carol-ish second chance presented Ando and Hiro (“I will save you, New York!”) was especially uplifting given the overall grimness of the preceding hour. Plus I was, frankly, torqued with myself that I didn’t see the reveal with Nathan coming. It’s the best kind of blindsiding: The reveal that on the one hand was shocking, but on the other was natural and made perfect sense given the set up. That throwdown between Peter and his “brother” toward the end looked so kickin’ that I’m almost sorry that future will (hopefully) never happen, ’cause I’d love to see how it would have played out.
At the end we’re asked who will stop Sylar. Personally, I’m betting Ando. I mean, yeah, there’s the illustration that shows Hiro doing it, but Sylar absorbed Isaac’s abilities; for all we know, Sylar himself did the drawing as a means of luring in Hiro with a false prophecy. Having the non-powered sidekick take down the main villain…I kind of like that notion.
My one concern is the announcement of the introduction of a new character: Molly, with a formidable power all her own. If she plays heavily into the resolution, I won’t be thrilled by that. Introducing some young girl into an alternate-world storyline as a deus ex machina…that trick never works.
PAD
• 
Clarification about the above: This is the scene where Future Hiro and Ando are asking Bennet for help to free Hiro after Peter had turned them down.
Neil
Quote:
“Posted by: Barry at May 1, 2007 01:15 PM
I almost fell asleep during the first episode of this series. Not surprised to hear that it’s as boring as it was 8 months ago.”
Wow. Way to troll there dude. Everyone else on this page has made insightful comments, or just commetned on the episode in hand. If you don’t like the show, that’s fine. Go complain about it on your own blog. People here seem to be making a great effort to be constructive and polite with each other. We don’t need you. I don’t like Lost, but I don’t troll posts about it to complain. It’s my opinion, and people discussing the show aren’t interested in how I feel about it.
Get a life, get a girlfriend, or, Barry, if that’s causing you trouble, you can always use your other hand. I’m sure neither care if you “cheat” on them.
Usually on a well known blog you just get idiots like yourself filling the comments section. Thankfully, that’s not the case here. The community on this blog is awesome. Any time I’ve been interested in rerading the comments on a post they’ve been smart and intelligent.
Denis.
As to Peter’s scar, I wonder if he maybe receives a wound while in the presense of the Haitian, leaving him unable to fully heal before the scar forms?
Mmmm… maybe I was the only one to catch it or maybe it wasn’t there but I could’ve sworn that when future Hiro was lying on the ground dying, he was well aware that this was the moment of his death and he had the comic book with him that foretold of the moment.
I also don’t think it’s a question of Hiro going back in time and killing Sylar, I think it’s a matter of Hiro going back and killing (or attempting to kill) Peter which could explain the scar on Peter’s face.
Hiro tries stopping Peter before he can explode and Peter carries the mark as a reminder of the curse his powers are. Save the cheerleader – save the world could only be a way for Peter to meet and absorb Claire’s power and grow well accustomed to them before his final showdown with Sylar in the future. Although Sylar has absorbed Claire’s powers at the end of the episode, they are still very new to him at that moment in time perhaps giving Peter the upper hand?
We are all supposing the season will end with the explosion or the resolution of that single plot thread and while the producers have said they will wrap up the season, it may be they don’t get to that plot point.
Besides, how can Sylar die, he was signed for season 2, unless its all flashbacks…
Given that Mary Alice kicked it on the first episode of Desperate Housewives and is still around as a character, you never know…
Denis, does it count as trolling, if it was sarcasm…?
I think Future Hiro really changed the fact that Sylar killed Claire in his past, otherwise FH wouldn’t have remembered Sylar regenerating… (Again, unless, as has been posited on this board, Peter was posing as Sylar at the time (explains regeneration ability and the sword-scar (really deep, maybe inflicted when time was stopped, and thus regeneration wasn’t working (but I like the Haitian proximity explanation better)))where was I? oh yeah, one more parathesis… )
The real question is, if Sylar ate Peter’s brain, would he only gain the mimic ability or all the abilities Peter can access?
Okay guys just a slight explanation of things from what I’ve gathered.
Timeline one:
This is the original timeline:
Sylar kills Claire. Gets her regenarative powers. Kills Ted. Nukes New York.
Timeline two:
This is the timeline created by Future Hiro going back in time saying “Save the Cheerleader. Save the world.”
Sylar doesn’t kill Claire. And somehow Peter dupes Ted’s powers and nukes New York instead of Sylar.
When we see Future Hiro meeting present Hiro it loosk like he just got back from telling pete to save the cheerleader. He tells his reasons. It’s pretty obvious that Future Hiro still has his memories of the timeline one. Weather this meanst hat over time he would get new memories of the timeline two or never get them at all we’ll never know.
But it was obvious he was still working with the timeline one’s events. So obviously since he was working with those set of memories he didn’t know that his time travel changed the past and made Peter nuke New York.
Wow. Way to troll there dude. Everyone else on this page has made insightful comments, or just commetned on the episode in hand. If you don’t like the show, that’s fine. Go complain about it on your own blog.
For the record, I totally disagree with Barry’s comments. I love Heroes, it’s my favorite TV show, it’s potentially my favorite TV show of all time, but…
If you’re gonna get angry whenever someone dismissively puts down something you like, you’re gonna stay angry all the time, my friend. Nothing is sacred in the Internet. Whatever it is that you like, you can bet there will always be people who hate it and are eager to tell the world how much they hate it and why the object of their hatred stinks.
I know. One of the reasons why I take long absences from message boards and stuff. My hide isn’t thick enough, and I tire of all the negativity and the see-how-smart-I-am-for-not-enjoying-something attitude that is so prevalent these days.
But you either get used to it, or you’ll spend more and more time arguing with people, to no avail.
It’s the Haitian. He gets close enough to Sylar that he can’t do anything. Then Hiro runs him through.
That’s my theory.
I enjoyed this HEROES episode. (Incidentally, does anyone know what the title was? My TV’s info listed it as “String Theory” but the credits showed “Five Years Later. Personally, I like the former title.)
I think this episode *proves* that Hiro will be able to change time and prevent the explosion. Even if the show’s creators considered opting to have the explosion and season 2 happening in a post-explosion/near-apocalyptic NYC (which after 9/11 wouldn’t be too popular; heck, they didn’t show an INVADER ZIM episode with a devastated Manhattan!), this episode would have showed all too clearly what will happen. I stand by my original theory that as Peter’s about to blow, Nathan flies him away from everyone else (I believe Nathan said “Let me help you” in the premonition) and, with Claire’s healing power, Peter survives.
Also, is anyone else ready to see Sylar killed? I find it almost lazy that they can give him just about any power they want, on the assumption that he had killed someone with it earlier. We’ve seen some of the ones he’s acquired, but they seem to add new ones at whim (like faking his death or recovery from paralysis). If there’s a situation where they want him to fart Froot Loops, he’ll just do it. Snuff him already! (Incidentally, anyone want to venture a guess why Mohinder didn’t kill him last episode? Mohinder was willing to shoot Syler when the villain was thought paralyzed; but after Syler was knocked unconscious and Mohinder thought Syler had killed Peter (who Mohinder thought could be the key to the research and evolution), Mohinder just left him there? I think several bullets to the brain would’ve been called for. Let’s see some different evil and/or selfish villains, or the machinations of Lindemuller (sic).
(The series has been (thankfully) vague about the actual mechanics of how Sylar steals powers from other heroes, but it’s strongly implied that he needs to remove their brains to take them. How he uses those brains to graft their powers onto his DNA…I don’t want to think about. Since Peter still has his brain (or as much a one as he ever had), I think we can assume that Sylar didn’t get anything from him. Of course, if he had taken Peter’s brain, he wouldn’t have needed to continue being a seriel killer to expand his abilities. He could just take on any power from meeting someone…not that I think that he’d stop the killing if he had Peter’s power. I think that Sylar is a classic seriel killer and that the pleasure he gets from repeating his power/brain-taking ritual is too great for him to give up. He might rationalize it by saying that there being someone with the same powers made him less “special,” or might not even bother but I find it hard to believe that he’d stop. I’m actually surprised that he wanted to exterminate the remaining Specials. There his chosen victim-type. He’d never get his kicks from de-braining a normal person.)
As I understand Sylar power (as shown us in the flashback ep)–He’s just like peter, an Empath. He diverges in ability because he can’t relate to humanity. He’s special–no one else is. His mindset won’t allow for him to synch with others. Worse–he a sociopath–people are THINGS to him. He can deal with things–like watches. He understands them by taking them apart to see how they tick.
He cuts open peoples’ skulls, and “sees how they tick”, and from there mimics what they do.
(Incidentally, anyone want to venture a guess why Mohinder didn’t kill him last episode? Mohinder was willing to shoot Syler when the villain was thought paralyzed; but after Syler was knocked unconscious and Mohinder thought Syler had killed Peter (who Mohinder thought could be the key to the research and evolution), Mohinder just left him there?
I think Mohinder realized that Sylar getting Peter’s powers would be about the worst thing that could happen to the world. So his first priority was to get Peter’s dead body away from Sylar. Fast.
I enjoyed this HEROES episode. (Incidentally, does anyone know what the title was? My TV’s info listed it as “String Theory” but the credits showed “Five Years Later. Personally, I like the former title.)
It’s “Five Years Gone”. “String Theory” is the name they gave Chapter 30 of the HEROES online graphic novel.
I think this episode *proves* that Hiro will be able to change time and prevent the explosion.
The second episode where Hiro pops into New York on Boomsday shows that time can be changed. Ando isn’t in Japan now, wondering where Hiro is.
(Incidentally, anyone want to venture a guess why Mohinder didn’t kill him last episode? Mohinder was willing to shoot Syler when the villain was thought paralyzed; but after Syler was knocked unconscious and Mohinder thought Syler had killed Peter (who Mohinder thought could be the key to the research and evolution), Mohinder just left him there? I think several bullets to the brain would’ve been called for. Let’s see some different evil and/or selfish villains, or the machinations of Lindemuller (sic).
“How do you shoot the devil in the back? What if you miss?”
Mohinder tried to shoot the devil. He missed. Mohinder paid dearly for it and now he’s too dámņ afraid to try again, no matter how temptingly easy it might seem.
Yeah, warning bells started going off when “Nathan” made a comment about knowing how things work, but I didn’t think about psycho-ášš illusion girl until he really started chewing the scenery.
For all the chilling moments that we witness in this episode set five years hence, the one that got me most was this: Confronted with armed opposition and a means of simply walking past them via freezing time, Hiro and Peter instead choose to take them on directly, slicing and dicing their way through the hopelessly overmatched guards because they “haven’t had a good fight in a while.”
I found that scene effective for entirely different reasons. I saw it as a case of gallows humor as a means of coping with being forced to do something distasteful yet again for the greater good. They needed to take out the guards one way or the other, since if they had stopped time and walked right past, they would have had heavily armed foes behind as well as in front when the Haitian shut their powers down. I think it showed that a certain amount of nobility remained in future Hiro and Peter that they gave the guards a (very slim) fighting chance instead of simply butchering them in stopped-time.
I just had a potentially disturbing thought about one possible way for Sylar to show up in the second season, even if he’s killed by Hiro. Since we don’t really know how time travel works in the Heroes world, it would be very comic-bookish of them to have Future-Sylar eat (or whatever) future Hiro’s brain and jump back in time to a point before Present-Sylar dies, collapsing Future-Sylar’s timeline.
I think I gave myself a headache writing that…
-Rex Hondo-
Matt wrote:
It wouldn’t surprise me too much if Hiro had to sacrifice himself to keep this from happening, just like Eden did.
… except that Eden’s sacrifice apparently didn’t do any good; if you’ll recall, Sylar used The Voice last week…
We know that this future is not the future of the series’ present; among other things, in the present our heroes all know that Claire survived the prom. Future Hiro thought Sylar had killed her there. So even though she survived in both timelines, the circumstances were different.
Neither is it the same one that Hiro on the train came from. In train-Hiro’s future, Claire may or may not have survived the prom, but Mohinder would have no memory of Hiro going back to the train because it hadn’t happened.
Re: Future Peter’s scar – he clearly survived blowing up because of Claire’s powers. Maybe regenerating after being blown to bitty bits is just hard and imperfect and that’s why the scar.
But who was the woman with Bennet who got shot in the head? Was that Candace? If so, how did Sylar get her powers? That bit confuses me.
I think they hinted at the Nathan/Sylar reveal last week.
If memory serves, after Sylar took Isaac’s powers, he painted a picture of himself in the oval office, standing in the same position as Nathan was in Linderman’s Oval Office painting.
Let’s not forget that with Sylar, and Hiro dying in the episode, that Sylar could have gotten Hiro’s powers in the future. That would allow him to gain anyone’s powers in the future, and use Hiro’s power to come back to the past and use them. I don’t think it’s a problem for Sylar to have almost unlimited powers, as that just adds to how difficult it would be to stop him. It’s when a heroe is omnipotent that it’s hard for him to have a good villain.
Rob
The signing of an actor for a second season doesn’t mean the character survives. They know we know when an actor ‘signs’. It’s so easy to issue a press release saying an actor has signed, even when they haven’t. Don’t ever blindly trust ‘news’ like that in a show with this many surprises.
2) If Hiro kills Sylar, and Peter explodes, that certainly doesn’t mean that the horrible future happens. .7% are dead, but if Sylar is out of the picture, a different future chain of events will occur.
They mentioned in the episode that Hiro couldn’t kill Sylar because he regenerated with Claire’s power. So they changed things so that he couldn’t get it. So here’s my theory: they now need Sylar to become the bomb.
If Peter is the bomb, as in the future, he won’t be killable because he has Claire’s power and the bomb still happens. If Sylar becomes the bomb, he can be killed since he now doesn’t have Claire’s power, and the bomb stopped. I also think they may need to kill Sylar after he has taken Sprague’s power. If they kill him beforehand, Peter could still absorb Sprague’s power and be the unstoppable bomb. Of course, they could just kill Sprague, but no one who knows about the bomb knows about him as the source of the power yet.
The other possibility I see is that they kill Sylar thinking he’s the bomb, only to be wrong. Then Peter ends up being the bomb, and we end with the moral dilemma of having to kill Peter.
Time travel paradoxes make my head hurt.
Marcos wrote: “But who was the woman with Bennet who got shot in the head? Was that Candace? If so, how did Sylar get her powers? That bit confuses me.”
That was Hana aka Wireless. We saw her in one scene on TV, when she was talking with the Radioactive guy on his computer. We see her more in the online comics and on the Heroes 360 webpage http://samantha48616e61.com/
Neil
Do you guys realize what’s been happening? What you’ve been saying?
Here you are, all of you experienced and knowledgable geeks, and none of you – not even the pro who’s paid to write this stuff – knows for certain how any of it is going to fall.
Heroes is written on two levels; one for the average “mundane” who doesn’t know, understand or likely care about genre fiction…and also written for geeks who do. Kring and Company are keeping hold of them while keeping hold of us. I can’t recall any show in history that pulled off that feat.
Kring has a lucrative future, not just in creating this show and others for TV, but in holding writing seminars that amateurs and pros will pay big bucks to attend.
“Do you guys realize what’s been happening? What you’ve been saying?
Here you are, all of you experienced and knowledgable geeks, and none of you – not even the pro who’s paid to write this stuff – knows for certain how any of it is going to fall.”
That, my friend, is the hallmark of good writing. If it was all predictable, then it wouldn’t keep us watching.
I am confused, you sound angry at everyone who posts on this page, but yet you are reading and visiting this site…
Rob
“Introducing some young girl into an alternate-world storyline as a deus ex machina…that trick never works.”
Tee Hee Hee, that’s funny! Now we just need her to say she “knows things.”
Between this week’s Heroes, Spider-Man 3’s impending release, a couple comments on another blog, and my own warped imaginings, I just couldn’t help myself…
http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m297/Rex_Hondo/SylarBrock08.jpg
-Rex Hondo-
… except that Eden’s sacrifice apparently didn’t do any good; if you’ll recall, Sylar used The Voice last week…
That question’s come up a few times in the regular “Behind the Eclipse” Q&A with two of the show’s writers on CBR. Per their responses, Sylar does not have Eden’s power…the instances of his voice going all modulated like that are just the sound editors making Sylar spookier.
I had a brief moment wondering why Parkman didn’t spot him from his thoughts years ago, but…It’s Sylar. He could have stolen some weird power along the way that would stop that.
I don’t think Matt was ever in the same room as Sylar/Nathan (in the episode, at least); they only spoke on the phone. Matt’s power doesn’t have that sort of range. We also don’t know exactly how long Sylar had been masquarading as Nathan.
Plus, Matt should have enough control over his power, especially by five years hence, to only glean information from Sylar/Nathan if he intentionally probed him. He may not have, for whatever reason.
About Future Peter’s scar, I personally think that it caused by an accident sword cut because Hiro said that the sword have a special ability to enhance the user’s power. However, it may have another hidden power to prevent the wound from regenerate completely or made a wound becomes very difficult to healing. That would explain why Future Peter couldn’t able to regenerate at all. That scar look like a deep wound and almost a sword cut. And of course, Sylar’s signature cut is on the forehead always unless a rare event may occur where Sylar made an accident move.
About an illustration which shows the Asian person stabs Sylar with a sword, I have a strong feeling about an Asian person turned out to be Ando, not Hiro. Why Ando? Look at the picture carefully. That person doesn’t have glasses on and is fair tall and skinny (neither short nor chubby). It hit my thought from the beginning of that scene that it’s going to be Ando which fits that character in an illustration unless it may be very twist.
About how Sylar steal the special powers from Heroes, look back to the previous episode where Mohinder’s father first met Sylar and expected that Sylar have some special power. Follow me on that? Okay good. However, Sylar was the clock fixer and can able to understand how the clock broke inside. Same idea as Sylar can able to understand how a special power functions inside a Hero’s brain by looking at that person’s eyes or brain then alter his own DNA inside his brain by learning a new power, not eating other person’s brain. That’s how Sylar got his first stolen power from a person who has a power of telekinesis. Sylar is completely opposite of Peter the Empath. And I called Sylar “The Fixer”, not “The Brain Eater”. I don’t know anything about Sylar’s mother or father because it’s too early to tell a story about them and the season two may be ready by then.
Lots of things that goes on from latest episode are hard to explain such as why Parkman becomes a bad copy, How Haitan gets on Parkman’s side, where Peter’s mother and Linderman have been, and how Hiro becomes so cool and no longer need glasses at all.
Like other people said before, time can tell and we will wait and find out on next three more episodes.
… except that Eden’s sacrifice apparently didn’t do any good; if you’ll recall, Sylar used The Voice last week…
That question’s come up a few times in the regular “Behind the Eclipse” Q&A with two of the show’s writers on CBR. Per their responses, Sylar does not have Eden’s power…the instances of his voice going all modulated like that are just the sound editors making Sylar spookier.
To wit, maybe that was the power of Molly’s father that he stole… or the dude in Chicago if he got the crynokinesis from Molly’s Dad and froze him post mortem…
I thought I caught Linderman in the crowd scene at the memorial, I’m going to download the episode and check it out again tonight… Kinda scary either way…
I don’t think Thomas Reed sounded angry, he sounded admiring. Granted, it’s hard to tell in the Internet.
Tim Kring did something that appeals to both geeks and the mainstream. He isn’t the first to do so, there was Lost, Twin Peaks, X-Files… but he is the first to do it with original superhero characters, I guess.
I think he came the closest to creating characters that at the same time are and aren’t superheroes. Many people have said that characters like Buffy already were “disguised superheroes”, but Heroes takes the idea to it’s extreme.
You shave off the elements mainstream people would consider childish in the superhero (costumes, codenames, mild-mannered secret identities, fictional cities, crimefighting), but you keep enough of the essentials to please superhero fans too.
For what it’s worth, on the topic of who drew the sketch of Hiro stabbing Sylar, you can tell it must have been Isaac simply because it was drawn by Tim Sale, Isaac’s “ghost artist” – as opposed to Sylar’s “ghost artist,” Alex Maleev (compare and contrast Isaac’s painting of Peter in the Oval Office with Sylar’s painting of the same scene).
Marcos wrote: “We know that this future is not the future of the series’ present; among other things, in the present our heroes all know that Claire survived the prom. Future Hiro thought Sylar had killed her there. So even though she survived in both timelines, the circumstances were different.
“Neither is it the same one that Hiro on the train came from. In train-Hiro’s future, Claire may or may not have survived the prom, but Mohinder would have no memory of Hiro going back to the train because it hadn’t happened.”
Actually, if the Heroes graphic novel is considered canon, then chapter 30, “String Theory”, reveals that Future-Hiro and Train-Hiro are the same person. The comic establishes that moments after returning to 2012 after his meeting with Peter, Future-Hiro sees a light on in the loft, investigates, and encounters his past self and Ando.
Yes, Claire survived Sylar’s attack (at homecoming, not the prom), but that’s because Future-Hiro delivered the message to Peter, who succeeded in saving her. However, so far as Future-Hiro knows upon returning to his own time, Peter failed to save her, and events happened as he remembered them.
It’s seems pretty clear to me that upon encountering his present-day self and learning that A) Claire survived, thanks to his intervention into the past; and B) Present-Day Hiro didn’t kill Sylar, Future-Hiro realized that present-Day Hiro needed to return to his own time. He concluded that since Present-Day Hiro jumped forward, he wasn’t there to kill Sylar at the crucial moment. Thus the explosion still happened.
That’s the most logical answer he has, given that he doesn’t know that Peter, not Sylar, is the one who exploded.
It’s also possible that Future-Hiro would have needed his Present-Day self to return to the past, even if there’d never been a bomb, in order to minimize potential paradoxes. Certainly, if Present-Day Hiro had been killed in 2012, future Hiro would have ceased to exist; and everything he’d done would’ve been erased from the timeline. And thus no one would have had reason to capture and kill Present-Day Hiro in 2012.
As to whether the glimpse we got of 2012 is the future of the series’ present, I think it is. Present-Day Hiro wasn’t there to kill Sylar as Future-Hiro believed he was meant to (or to kill Peter, as some have suggested here); or he tried and failed for reasons that had nothing to with Claire’s abilities. Either way, the explosion occurred. And because the future we saw is extrapolated from the series’ present, Mohinder would remember the train incident. There’s no reason why he wouldn’t.
Future-Hiro may or not have been aware that when he returned to 2012, it was the 2012 of an alternate timeline, one he created be going back in time and meeting with Peter. I’m going to assume he was aware this would happen, since it’s a logical result of changing the past. If you go back in time and kill your grandfather as a child, you don’t create a paradox, you just shunt yourself into an alternate timeline (or create it, whichever) in which there’s no record of your existence. Your original timeline is still out there, but you’re now on a different track. In fact, I wrote a short story about a man who uses this feature of the so-called Grandfather Paradox to his advantage.
But anyway, Future-Hiro’s original timeline and the timeline he created are pretty much the same, except that Claire died at Sylar’s hands at homecoming in the original, and didn’t in the alternate. Whether Sylar was the bomb in the original, or everyone just thought he was isn’t clear. We know he wasn’t in the timeline created when Peter saved Claire, but the world at large believes otherwise.
Original timeline: Peter and Mohinder on the train. Nothing out of the ordinary happens; Claire is killed by Sylar; Hiro tries and fails to kill Sylar; Sylar explodes if he’s taken Ted’s power; or Peter explodes and Sylar’s blamed if he hasn’t.
Timeline created by Future Hiro’s visit to Peter: Peter tells Mohinder of his odd encounter on the train; Peter contacts Present-Day Hiro and saves Claire. In the near future, the bomb will still go off, unless Present-Day Hiro (and perhaps some of the others) can stop it. If he succeeds, that will create a new timeline, one in which Present-Day Hiro visited the future, returned to the present, and prevented that future from occurring. Present-Day Hiro will live the next five years in a world where there never was an explosion, but will remember the timeline he visited. And that other timeline will still be out there, as is the original, in which Claire died at homecoming.
As to the Claire of 2012, all we know is that she’s gone underground by that time. We don’t know why. But since the world believes Sylar’s dead, it can’t be because she’s hiding from him. Could be an overdue library book. Some libraries are pretty strict about such things.
Rick
My guess is that the Claire of 2012 (which, if it is five years in the future, shouldn’t it be 2011 since the election was in 2006?) was hiding because the government was rounding up heroes.
Where did Peter gain telekenetic powers?
Did he get them fromm Syler? Which would mean he can copy all of his powers.
In any case, Peter has too many powers. Unless something happens to restrict his abilities, he’ll have to die. Peter seems like the kind of character who would sacrifice himself for the greater good.
The big question right now is how Hiro’s erronious mission to kill Syler ties up with Peter’s nuclear explosion, Linderman’s plots and where does Nathan stand?
Everybody was asking why Mat Parkman joined the darkside. But why did the Haitian do it?
——————
“and how Hiro becomes so cool and no longer need glasses at all.”
If TV has taught us anything, it’s that when a nerd takes off his glasses and changes his hairdo, he automatically becomes cool. Cool people don’t really need to wear glases, it’s basic science. For maximum effect changing clothing is also recommended, or at least unbuttoning the top button of the shirt.
Conversely, beautiful women become smart by wearing glasses, but their eye sight remains the same regardless.
I still say it looked like future Hiro knew exactly that he was going to die and he was holding the comic that told him of the moment of his death.
Rob, you said:
I am confused, you sound angry at everyone who posts on this page, but yet you are reading and visiting this site…
No, but everyone was just so occupied with the geeky analysis of the events of the episode that they couldn’t step back and see the big picture.
That’s one of the amusing-yet-frustrating things about geek culture – a culture I belong to but am not married to.
It is good writing, true. Something that’s largely ignored in television today, which makes it special. But I was also making the point that this universality of theme, that attracts everyone, is a quality of writing that few in geekdom appreciate. They rarely think of mundanes (and try to get away from them as much as possible). It’s enough that the science, or magic, or whatever, has an internal consistency.
A person wanting to make a successful TV show HAS to think of the mundanes too. Which means that he or she has to have a very flexible mind.
Peter didn’t believe him, though. I know I’m unfamiliar with the characters, but could Sylar be lying about that?
There is a definite possibility. While Peter has a somewhat skewed sense of Nathan’s true nature, Sylar is most definitely a sadist (and has a skewed perception of pretty much everything). It could go either way based on that alone. Then there’s the Nathan factor. Without spoiling too much, appearances are very deceiving with the elder Petrelli brother. It could well be that Nathan was doing something that appeared to be selling out “his own kind” but was actually operating on a master plan that would save them.
We have to keep in mind a couple things. Future hiro goes into the past and talks to peter and then travels to the future, but it is not the future he lived in, but a new alternate future.
(It makes sense doesn’t it. Plus he was as surprised as anyone that the cheerleader survived. He was unaffected by the time change because he had traveled to the past, “fixed things” and came back)
The main reason the future is still bad is that current hiro teleported into the future. It’s as if in the current timeline he just disappeared. Remember in a previous episode when hiro teleported into the future without realizing it and he calls ando in japan. Hiro was missing and their was a “missing persons” poster on andos cubicle. by going into the future its as if hiro disappears from current existance. So in a way hiro’s time traveling to the future powers are quite useless. he’ll never get an accurate picture of the future.
I’m wouldn’t call Hiro’s ability to travel to the future useless. Even if you’re right about the effects of his removal, it still would give Hiro an “I do nothing” view of the future. Kinda like he had gone and lived as a hermit in a cave. Sorta like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but not retroactive.
I think all the talk about alternate timelines is way off base. Earlier in the season (ep 10 Six Months Ago), Hiro went back in time to save Charlie from being killed by Sylar and failed. He pointedly states afterward that the past cannot be changed inferring there is one contiguous timeline (path) the characters must follow. Even String Theory seems to reinforce this because it appears Hiro is trying to find the exact moment when he can ‘course correct’ history. Reminds me of the Voyager episode ‘Year From Hëll.’
And yet Hiro did change the past. When he first meets Charlie, she doesn’t remember meeting him six months earlier. He changed her memory of him by going back in time. The one thing he couldn’t change was the fact that she was terminally ill.
Future Hiro has already succeeded in changin the past as well: He prevented Sylar from taking Claire’s power. The point of the strings was not try and find moments in time where history could be altered, but those moments where changes would lead to the outcome he desired.
Do we know that Future Hiro changed the past? Or that Charlie wasn’t pretending in the present to know know Hiro when we first see them meet?
Having seen each ep. only once, and not really looking for time-travel conundrums, I don’t know. It seems plausible that future Hiro felt the need to travel back to warn Peter to save Claire from Sylar…not because in the alternate Future Hiro present, Slyar succeeded, but because Hiro found out Sylar had attempted to kill Claire, and was stopped by Peter…buy only because of Future Hiro’s intervention. So not changing the past, so much as insuring that what has come to pass will still come to pass.
Which of course leads to questions about when Hiro jumps forward…is what he seeing already occuring? Does Isaac get killed by Sylar, shortly before something goes boom?
Time travel sure makes for interesting stories, but at some point, you have to establish the rules for what can and cannot be changed, how any such changes are shown on the show, and whether or not anyone in the context of the story will even notice. When Voyager did Year of Hëll, they at least came up with a Trekky-plausible explanation for how they could be affected by the time shift one time, and not another.
Where did Peter gain telekenetic powers?
Did he get them fromm Syler? Which would mean he can copy all of his powers.
Yep, from Sylar. When Peter saved Claire, Sylar attacked him with TK, tossing lockers at him.
If Peter can able to copy all of Sylar’s stolen powers include Sylar’s original power of can able to understand how DNA work in Heroes’ brain, then that means Peter don’t know ALL of his powers because he have to understand how each power works. Remember that Sylar stole a “passive” power of superhearing from Dale. Then Peter should pick it up automatically by now when Peter and Sylar met for a second time where Mohinder was captured. Because that power is on passive, not active. Unless Peter know how to turn it off and on like Sylar know how to manage any “passive” power somehow.
That’s how Peter found out that he have a power of telekinesis when the Invisibile Guy was about to hit him with a wooden stick and Peter pushed it off. Yes, Peter did copy ALL of Sylar’s “stolen” powers but still have to figure out what other powers he did copy on his own.
and how Hiro becomes so cool and no longer need glasses at all.
If I were fighting on a regular basis, I’d do something to remove the obvious weak point on my face that says “break these and I can’t fight you effectively any more,” personally. If it happened suddenly it would be difficult to explain, but there’s nothing especially mysterious about Lasik or contact lenses.
Do we know that Future Hiro changed the past?
Yes. Charlie’s birthday picture changed from one without Hiro to one with him. It follows that Samurai Hiro did too.
“Yes. Charlie’s birthday picture changed from one without Hiro to one with him. It follows that Samurai Hiro did too.”
Ah, thankee. You just saved me a few hours reviewing past episodes just to find that out.
So, present Hiro only thinks he can’t change the past. I wonder why Ando didn’t mention to him that the picture changed? I mean, he noticed it changed, so unless his memory somehow vanished when Hiro returned….
We just finished watching Hiro reverse the Themarian Hope’s gunfire. I guess since Hiro had his eyes closed, he missed how he actually made time go backwards, apparantly. Meaning he can change the past.
Bobb, I’d think that Ando’s memories of the photo would change along with everything else. Afterall, from his perspective the photo always had Hiro in it. There’s no reson that Ando shouldn’t be changed along with everything else when the past change just because he knows Hiro. I don’t recall if he actually looked at the birthday photo before Hiro left, but we can rationalize this away be simply assuming that Ando did not notive Hiro in the photo until after he was gone. Also, I am relying on the accounts of others that say the photo actually changed after Hiro left.
Of course, since he was actually time-traveling with Hiro in the last episode, it’s a Horse Of A Different Color. He should remember everything about his most recent trip, I’d say.
I have only seen the last few episodes, but am starting to get into it, it’s a cool show.
I’m surprised nobody has speculated on whether or not the “Hiro” or “Sylar” in the picture might not actually be the shape-changing girl (or does she project illusions? again, sorry, I’m quite new to the show). If Sylar’s an imposter then that might explain why the actor’s lined up for season 2.
This is wild speculation from somebody new, so sorry if it’s been mentioned or discounted.
Fun show, though.
dhole,
Don’t let being new discourage you. All good shows need to new patrons to keep them going.
Regarding the photo, we know for a fact that Sylar is not impersonating Hiro in the photo in question because we get to follow Hiro back into the past when he attempts to save the waitress, Charlie, from Sylar. We watch him pose for the photo. Also, Sylar’s ability to disguise himself is an ability that he acquired at some point in the future. He acquires these new abilities by murdering people with super-powers and doing something vague and creepy with their brains. Future-Sylar mentioned his ability to impersonate Nathan came from “a woman named Candice.” Candice is an established character and is alive and well in the present, so Present-Sylar does not have the ability to impersonate people.
Welcome to the Heroes additiction, dhole.
To answer your question about Candice’s power, it is indeed illusion based, rather than shapeshifting. The first time we saw her use her powers, she not only altered her own appearance, but that of the area around her to keep police officers from seeing a dead body.