One of the many things I loved about this episode of Heroes is how it just went balls up and committed to a large multi-season plot arc in the first five minutes. Essentially, what Future Hiro spells out for Peter is that what’s happening now — “Save the Cheerleader” and whatnot — is only the tip of the iceberg for all of them, plot-wise. Get past this, and it’s a whole new world.
My guess is that it will take the rest of the season to prevent NYC from being blown up, and by the time that’s resolved, our Heroes will have actually come together as a team. And then the fun will really begin. We already know that over time, Hiro will become more suave, less enthusiastic, and speak perfect English. Peter will get a scar on his face, which for some reason he won’t heal by simply “borrowing” Claire’s healing factor — because she’s not around to heal it? because he chooses to keep it as a reminder? because it’s unhealable? Hard to say.
That aside, I really wish they hadn’t spoiled Nathan flying in last week’s preview. Because watching him take off straight up like that, then do a right angle in the air? That was awesome. He’s clearly been practicing. Although his landings are still a bit rough. And his scenes with Hiro were priceless. Just when you want to hate Nathan, you see how patient and amused he is with Hiro, and you can see that there’s a good guy in there under the dickhead politician. But does anybody have a theory about why Hiro was suddenly talking some workable English in these scenes? That detail bugged me a bit.
The other sniggling detail for me is all the coincidence. Peter being one degree removed from Isaac by way of the girlfriend. Nathan landing at the same diner that Hiro’s at. Niki being used to blackmail Nathan. Ando being a customer of Niki’s. There’s SO much coincidence involved in these characters coming together that I can only guess it’s not coincidence — that maybe Future Hiro or some organization (without initials) has “nudged” past events to make things come together like this? What’s interesting is that so far, neither Claire nor Matt has coincidentally intersected with anybody yet. It’s just a closed loop of association of six characters: Peter – Nathan – Niki – Ando – Hiro – Isaac – Peter – etc. But I have no idea what that means.
As for Claire, I was somewhat surprised to see just how much her Evil Dad seems to care about her. I’d convinced myself that he probably didn’t think of her as anything more than an adopted lab rat, but that’s clearly not the case. Meanwhile, Matt is walking a fine line by using his powers to woo his wife back to him, and it’s sure to blow up in his face.