This week’s episode of Heroes took us five years into the future of the show we’ve been watching all season.
As has always been the case with the show, it was done with style and punch. For those that are familiar with the super hero genre, though, none of what we saw was particularly new.
In the classic X-Men story Days of Future Past, we were shown a similar track of events and a future similarly dangerous to those who are special. That was back in 1981 and the image is still echoing in the genre. Heroes did a very good job of it.
The future we see in Heroes has half of New York in ruins, only barely better than it must have been in the days following the explosion the heroes have been trying to prevent from episode one. We see that Hiro isn’t the only one that has become darker in the five years since the explosion.
We also get some questions answered and are left asking some more.
The government has gone on an all-out hunting spree for those with special abilities. Parkman and the Haitian are in the lead of the Homeland Security shock troops answering directly to President Nathan Patrelli. Mohinder is a special adviser to President Petrelli. Bennet is playing both sides like a low-budget Oscar Schindler. Peter and Niki have shacked up and have retired from the subversive war that their contemporary Hiro is still fighting.
“Future” Hiro has spent years working on a time line–more of a web, actually–so he can determine when he needs to go back to in order to stop this dark future from happening. Or, perhaps, to keep his friend Ando from dying in the blast.
As the episode progresses, we discover that it was, indeed, Peter who was the “Exploding Man” and that Hiro had tried (and failed) to kill Sylar.
This is where the time travel makes things a little odd. Originally, Sylar supposedly survived because he had taken Claire’s healing power. This was the origin of the “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” message Hiro had delivered to Peter. Even with Claire alive and well (and hiding out as a waitress back in Texas), though, the explosion still happened and the world got nasty.
In what passes for the current version of future history, Sylar at some point acquired Candice’s power to take on the appearance of other people. Using that, he his out until he had a shot at Nathan. For some indeterminate period of time, Sylar (as Nathan) has been engineering the destruction of all those with special abilities. As he said himself in the episode as he kills the future version of Claire, “For all I know I’m the most special… I just don’t want any competition.”
Sylar also seems to have picked up the abilities from D.L. (walking through solid matter) and Ted (the original nuclear man who just last week helped Parkman and Bennet escape by burning bright, not hot, to create an EMP).
We also find out that Nathan and Mohinder allowed the explosion that decimated New York to happen. We already know that Linderman wants that to happen. We also know that Linderman is engineering Nathan’s win for the congressional elections about to take place in the base time frame of the show.
The big questions this all leaves me are:
- Why did the Exploding Man explode? Was Peter trying to kill Sylar? Did he just lose control? Is there something that went on that Hiro doesn’t know about?
- How far did Nathan go before Sylar took his place? I’ve always had Nathan pegged as the perfect villain for the show, and he has shown he’s more than willing to bend the rules in half to do what he thinks is right. Linderman can be very persuasive. That is a dangerous mix.
- How did future Peter get that scar? With is acquired healing ability, that shouldn’t happen. Unless he kept it as a reminder to himself of the monster he let himself become when he exploded and killed thousands.
- If he didn’t have Claire’s healing abilities, how did Sylar survive the confrontation in New York? This, I’m sure, will factor in heavily in the next couple of episodes.
- Can Ando survive? His death is what made Hiro into the dark and brooding future version we’ve seen. If that future is averted, can Hiro still mature into a force to be reckoned with? If he doesn’t get that hard edge, what danger may the new future hold for Hiro and everyone else?
Even if it is borrowing heavily from those genre greats that came before, Heroes is more than a cut above everything else on the regular networks. Even better, they’re introducing a depth of conversation to a wide audience using a long-wavering classic–the super hero.
No fancy colored tights yet… just rousing action and more than a bit of social allegory to work on the subconscious minds of the masses drooling at their sets. And, of course, giving those of us who watch with our brains turned on some of the best quality entertainment out there.
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