Heroes has continued to impress since returning from its December/January hiatus, consistently delivering episodes that have answered important questions while ratcheting up the serialized tension.
For any other series, last night would have been a season-ending clifhanger of epic proportions. But in an example of why Heroes is such a damn good show, they don’t play for the cheap, easy shows that end up stretching out the story’s continuum for years on end (like say, LOST). Instead, they take us to the future — five years into the future — and show us the consequences of not saving the world.
In doing so, the series ties into some of its signature moments from the fall, in which we see bad-ass Hiro traveling back in time to warn the power-mimicking hero Peter Petrelli to “save the cheerleader, save the world”. This episode explains the tagline, and does so in such a way that builds the show toward and ever-more epic conclusion.
The episode itself reminded me greatly of the classic X-Men storyline “Days of Future Past”, which features a future in which mutants (and humanity itself) are hunted to the edge of extermination killer robots known as Sentinels. One of the surviving X-Men, Kitty Pryde, projects herself back in time to warn her friends against the event that will lead to this horrible future.
The parallels to Heroes‘s “Five Years Gone” episode are obvious. While there are no giant robots, New York has been nuked by a mutant gone bad. It’s given rise to a future in question those with powers are hunted and sequestered … and where a far more terrible fate might await them. But while it clearly evokes the X-Men, Heroes has more than a few surprises of its own.
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The appearance of Sylar in the future was simply brilliant. Killing Nathan Petrelli and assuming his role as president was great; using those presidential powers to plan a genocide against his own people just to secure his own power base is even better.
and then planning a genocide against his own people to further cement his power.
The future showdown between Sylar and his “brother” Peter was perhaps the show’s only disappointment — they teased us with a “fire and ice” show down, but the actual battle happened of screen. I’m looking forward to a chess-like fight between those two, and I hope we’ll get to see it by season’s end. Peter, like Hiro, has had a fascinating story arc, and I’d really like to see him finally come into his own.
All in all, this was a satisfying, thrilling episode that makes me want to buy the series on DVD as soon as its available. If the last three shows of the season match the caliber of this one, we might — just might — be looking at one of the best speculative fiction series of all time.